Blog: How Poets Gift Hope To This All Too Dark World
Blog Posted:10/19/2020 5:19:00 PM
Blog: How Poets Gift Hope To This All Too Dark World

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(1.)
https://poets.org/poem/ulysses
Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson - 1809-1892

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

This poem is in the public domain.

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(2.)

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)
---- BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

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This Truth, All Must Find Dear Hope They Embrace

This Earth, this accumulation of life
a great mass of air, water, rock, and soil
a dark world, where danger cuts like a knife
man gets bread and water by daily toil.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

This World, its beauty that rivals its dark
a great mass of people, buildings and cars
a cauldron of darkness violently stark
all made from explosions of long-dead stars.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

This Life, its joys heartaches, and epic pains
a mystery, a climb, race against time
a harvest of precious golden grains
romance, verses born of sweet rhythmic rhyme.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

This Truth, all must find dear hope they embrace
a revelation, a desire, love
a newfound world of divinely sent grace
giftings of manna from Heaven above.

O' but those pleasures of heart-sweet dreams cast.
Calm, peaceful sea, ship sailing at full mast.

Robert J. Lindley, 10-14-2020
Rhyme( When The Days Have Flown, Into That Mystical Mist )