Beautiful Words From Great Poets

[nia]

taken from GranGran's butterflies
 http://home.att.net/~scorh2/GraphicsButterflies.html

Beautiful Words From Great Poets; 

  A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

translated by -Edward Fitzgerald from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"

  A robin red breast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
William Blake "Auguries of Innocence"

  All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost.
J. R. R. Tolkien "Lord of the Rings"

  And all shall be well
And all manner of things shall be well.
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire,
And the fire and the rose are one.
T. S. Eliot "Four Quartets"

  And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal.
Oscar Wilde "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"

  Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Come away, O human child!
to the waters and the wild
with a faery, hand in hand,
for the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand...
W. B. Yeats

  Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas

  Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.
William Blake "Auguries of Innocence"

  Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches,
And here is my heart which beats only for you.
Paul Verlaine "Romances sans Paroles"

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Sonnets from the Portuguese"

  I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.
Sylvia Plath "Last Words"

  I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
James Kavanaugh "Sunshine Days and Foggy Nights"

  I've lived to bury my desires,
And see my dreams corrode with rust;
Now all that's left are fruitless fires
That burn my empty heart to dust.
Aleksandr Pushkin

  If I could take your troubles
I would toss them into the sea,
But all these things I'm finding
Are impossible for me.
I cannot build a mountain
Or catch a rainbow fair,
But let me be what I know best,
A friend that is always there.
Khahlil Gibran "A True Friend"

  Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
William Shakespeare "Sonnet 18"


thank you for reading, I would like if you add yours too,
with my love,
nia

[Hannah]

Nia
These are lovely! I love the butterflies you've put at the top. I'm going to grangran's to have a look - wow, I love her site. She has so many pages and every page has a different tune playing. That's impressive.
I'll add to this as soon as I get back to Melbourne and have access to my files and collections of things.
Thank you for starting this. Sorry it took so long to come and read it. 
Hannah

[lkmarshall]

Nia:  Thanks for this lovely collection of excerpts!  I have had so little time for poetry lately, and your little collection has "awakened" me.  Thanks.  Linda