The older I get, the more I appreciate just how well some people can write. There are people who post here that write so well that I can’t even come close to matching them. I would never be able to if I dedicated the rest of my life to it. Its a slow Sunday, there’s the usual coronavirus nonsense, I’m sure somewhere an Antifa or BLM person will toss a Molotov cocktail or two, but apparently that’s the reality we are in right now. I want to break from all that. Robert Frost died in 1963, but in my opinion, because this means this much to me, he is the greatest poet that ever lived. His writing I’m referring to:
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Aside from some things my wife has written, those last four lines mean more to me than anything I’ve ever read. Without getting into specifics, I haven’t always been a good husband, and when I’m feeling down, those words always give me hope. I’ve never been moved to tears by a poem like I am with this. Neither of us are big tattoo people, but we are looking into getting some lines of that on our ribs, in a place that mostly will be seen only by each other. So I’m asking you guys, the people who post here and the regular readers, do you have poem or book that moves you this much?
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of Kingdom and Pope
Like good Christians some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands, to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And till the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The Blue and Grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war was over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it’s a monster and will not obey
The spirit was freedom and justice
And its keepers seemed generous and kind
Its leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won’t pay it no mind
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
Now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it’s all just an echo of what they’ve been told
Yeah, there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin’
The cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin’ the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can’t understand
We don’t know how to mind our own business
‘Cause the whole world’s got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who’s the winner we can’t pay the cost
‘Cause there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin’
America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster
America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster
America…America…America…America
John Kay 1972
I have read that book and seen that movie but it’s been a lot of years. That last bit, is that Fitzgerald or you?
The urbs are deadly for the fools who remain.
Promises made before the Lord attempting to humbly sustain.
And a simple rural life, bringing me daily . . . a little closer to “Main”.
Yo, fellow [still] productive “country-Folk” . . . “carry on”. Continue to . . . “thrive-in-place”! Lock[ed] and load[ed]. No FEAR/HATE. “JC always before me”! Hoo-rah.
The poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.
Darn, you beat me to it!
That’s great. I’ve read that before but it’s been a long time. Thank you. And thank you all for posting what you did. It’s means more than you could ever know.
The last two lines, in particular, of John Mansfield’s Sea Fever
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
Some of my favorites: Li Bai, Chaucer and Ezra Pound in chronological order. Kinda partial to junkie Lenny Bruce’s brutally-frank “insights” on the state of man[not-so]kind also.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy to live in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of his character. (Emerson)
and
One thing is dearer than life – the approval of one’s own conscience. A second thing is nearly as precious, the good opinion of one’s fellow-men. Riches, power, and birth are worse than worthless without reputation. No wrong is blacker than the ruin of reputation of man or woman whose life has been stainless. No public policy can justify the damnation of a man by his countrymen upon error. And, where liberty reigns, truth will vindicate the wronged one in the end. (Speech of Honorable Albert J. Beveridge, of Indiana, in the Senate of the United States, in Support of the Minority Report on the Resolution that Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, is Not Entitled to a Seat in the Senate as a Senator from Utah. February 20, 1907)
Thanks for bringing this poem to my awareness. Words can so deeply impact one’s life. I also appreciate the talented writers on this site.
For me, Les Miserable is an important book that has impacted my life. I read it several years ago (have never seen the play). I think about this book very often as I go about life. It’s never left my mind, heart, or soul.
I also love many of the Founder’s words. Too many examples to list here.
I love how poems, books, and essays shape our souls.
Stanza LXXXVIII of The Rubaiyat
Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits – and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!
(Edward Fitzgerald’s “translation” of The Rubaiyat may be hideously bad — but it is still good poetry!)
Whose life is this I do not know,
His future wanders to and fro:
He does not see me stopping though
To watch his world fill up with woe.
Blunders often feel quite queer,
Confusion makes him think unclear.
between desire and black despair,
The darkest dawning year to year.
He gives his head a lowly shake,
Granting to one more mistake.
The only sounds the halls partake
Of doubts created to forsake.
His life is lonely, dark and bleak
With promises unable to keep,
And faults to mend before I sleep.
And faults to mend before I sleep.
Muscledawg
“Day by day, month by month, doubt by doubt, law and order became fascism; education, constraint; work, alienation; revolution, mere sport; leisure, a privilege of class; marijuana, a harmless weed; family, a stifling hothouse; affluence, oppression; success, a social disease; sex, an innocent pastime; youth, a permanent tribunal; maturity, the new senility; discipline, an attack on personality; Christianity… and the West… and white skin…”
― Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints
Gator, those last 4 lines gave me a shiver, I retire soon to the Almaguin Highlands, on the exact date of the “reset” coincidentally no doubt.
Many poems and books move me, recently on Survivalblog,
“My heart’s in the Highlands,my heart is not here;
My hearts in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.”
-Robert Burns
My all time favorite? Pasted inside the cover of an old Bible I own.
The High Way
To every man there openeth
A way, and ways, and a way.
And the high soul climbs the high way,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A high way and a low,
And every man decideth
The way his soul shall go.
-John Oxenham
Hope I see y’all on the other side
Thanks for sharing the poetry Gator! Thanks also for those sharing more in the comments here –I especially got something out of your outtakes Blaine.
Unfortunately, I can only say I cracked a poetry book only 1 time since college. But a rung or two down from poetry is lyrics to songs which I have absorbed & stored in my head. Us Gen’Xers have a lot culturally to draw on that have warning elements or compositions of a probable future dystopia to avoid. After the heyday of hardcore/punk from the later 70s to the ~mid 80s, there was electro[techno]”punk” which followed in the same tradition of hitting themes big in sci-fi/dystopia movies from the later 1960s thru the 1980s. Here’s the “poetry” of a song that I listened to for the better part of 20 years mostly unaware, and then 5 years ago I finally looked up the lyrics:
One of us is waiting, one side of us waiting
Some of us are striving, somewhere on a mountain
One part of us keeps giving away, giving away, giving away…
And disorder must come
And disorder must reign
Every minute will count
When disorder is king
One of us is waiting, one more number’s waiting
Where’s your revolution plan?
Where’s your need to make a stand
To finalize, to synchronize?
One stand, one stand together
One stand, one stand to hang the standard high
The standard high
Where’s your revolution plan?
Where’s your need to understand
To find more time, to find more time?
And disorder must come
And disorder must reign
One of us is waiting, one side of us is waiting
Where’s your revolution plan?
Where’s the leading upperhand?
To guide your life, to guide your life
One stand, one stand together
One stand, one stand to hang the standard high
The standard high
And disorder must come
And disorder must reign
Every minute will count
When disorder is king
Well, that has a hardcore 4th turning theme to it, eh? Yes, this song identifies the theme of hard-hitting socio-economic storms (like we’ve been experiencing the last 4 months) which hopefully we’re prepared for. From the “church” of hard-hitting techno-beats by the Front 242 “chorus” –this one’s simply titled “Hymn”
By the way Gator, the last stanza of your Robert Frost poem is actually featured in one of those dystopian/disaster/action movies I spoke of: here’s 4 minutes from a 43 year-old flick
The building blown up was part of the high school in Great Falls, Montana. It had a design flaw and had become unstable. The producers talked the city into letting them blow it up.
You will.
I’m sorry I don’t remember where I found this or who wrote it, but I thought some of you might appreciate and understand it.
for a long time it had seemed to me
that life was about to begin – real life.
But there was always some obstacle in the way.
Something to be gotten through first,
some unfinished business; time still to be served,
a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me
That the obstacles were my life.
My Favorite:
Day is Done
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
– Longfellow
So sorry for the length! I’ve read it scores of times and Time is the subject. I used to recite it to myself on long walks.
“Death is the mother of beauty.” Wallace Stevens
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Dylan Thomas
This is also my all time favorite poem, although I have several other close contenders. Some like Robert Frost, some think his poems boring and simple. Being a Connecticut Yankee born and raised, I love Frost for so many reasons. I now live in the Rocky Mountain West but very much miss New England. Alas, neither New England nor my current state of residence are what they were 40 years ago. Yes, I am getting old. As an aside, I have been reading TBP for almost a decade and admire Admin and so many other writers and commenters here. It’s a daily read for me. I am fairly broke but will try to find a way to contribute. I very rarely post anything anywhere. As an introvert by nature it stresses me out. But this poem and TBP felt right tonight.
Dear Miss Vic – another (old)poem you may appreciate is “Invictus” by Henley.. the best lines are “I am the captain of my soul, and the master of my fate”.
Jeepers, Jeanne, why not go for the gusto with Paradise Lost?
Invictus
By William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
So spake th’ Apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:
And him thus answer’d soon his bold Compeer.
O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers,
That led th’ imbattelld Seraphim to Warr
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endanger’d Heav’ns perpetual King;
And put to proof his high Supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heav’n, and all this mighty Host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and Heav’nly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our Glory extinct and happy state
Here swallow’d up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conquerour, (whom I now
Of force believe Almighty, since no less
Then such could hav orepow’rd such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength intire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of Warr, what e’re his business be
Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire,
Or do his Errands in the gloomy Deep;
What can it then avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminisht, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?
Jeanne – I love that poem, as well. “Invictus” is my second favorite poem, right behind Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
Robert Frost has been my favorite poet for more than 50 years. My favorite is “The Road Not Taken”. And in the last stanza: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”.
I am now 74 and have been what you young people call a “prepper” for many, many years.I live 23 miles from the nearest (small) town. My husband, who died in 2017, and I did extensive homesteading in addition to his day job (organic farmer) and my night job (RN in the ER). So very unfortunate that so many people do not take responsibility for their lives. And seem to not have dreams for their future.
Kipling’s “The Return.”
Also Frost:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Has always made me think and I usually take the path less traveled. Has worked out well for me. Especially valuable advice in current times, for many reasons.
Grumpy
The urbs are deadly for the fools who remain.
For the Burning Looting Malcontents come not to entertain.
Promises made before the Lord attempting to humbly sustain.
And a simple rural life, daily brings me . . . a little closer back to “Main”.
Yo, fellow [still] productive “country-Folk” . . . “carry on”. Continue to . . . “thrive-in-place”! Lock[ed] and load[ed]. No FEAR/HATE. “JC always before me”! Hoo-rah.
Love the poetry Uncola! Actually, a lot of ya are “representin'” with some great passages… but with some of us less refined in this crowd, it may kinda go over like this half minute scene:
“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry
In these, or any times, I find it impossible to go past this magnificent, stirring call to Freedom. The entire speech is magnificent, this being the closing paragraph.
Memorized it, and had to recite it to the class in 3rd grade. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen today.
For some reason, it brings to mind a scene from Disney’s Swamp Fox, where he and a companion enter a store. The shopkeeper suspiciously warns them that his store goods are available only for real money. Swamp Fox states he has real money, and the shopkeeper becomes friendly. Swamp Fox and his companion select the goods they want, and when it is time to pay, they pull out Continentals. The shopkeeper cries in disgust — “You said you had real money!”
Imagine that scene on TV or in the movies today.
It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men” and he would have meant the same thing.
Cannery Row, opening paragraph. Not poetry but a great word poem nonetheless.
Any line by Pacino, he’s made millions of movies.
I’m not at all well read. Didn’t go to a university, just community college for engineering prerequisites then when that didn’t pan out another community college for their aviation mechanics program.
The beauty of verse I’m most familiar with is in song lyrics- way too many to list but Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd are favorites.
A poem that I first saw here on TBP has been on my mind a lot. It seems eerily relevant to the times and us normals.
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
Kipling
GDP- You may have misplaced the title…The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon
I also appreciate this one. Thanks for reminding me.
Before this get scrubbed from the books…..
Christopher Columbus [1446? – 1506] by R. and S. Benet
There are lots of queer things that discoverers do
But his was the queerest, I swear.
He discovered our country in One Four Nine Two
By thinking it couldn’t be there.
It wasn’t his folly, it wasn’t his fault,
For the very best maps of the day
Showed nothing but water, extensive and salt,
On the West, between Spain and Bombay.
There were monsters, of course, every watery mile,
Great krakens with blubbery lips
And sea-serpents smiling a crocodile-smile
As they waited for poor little ships.
There were whirlpools and maelstroms, without any doubt
And tornadoes of lava and ink.
(Which, as nobody yet had been there to find out,
Seems a little bit odd, don’t you think?)
But Columbus was bold and Columbus set sail
(Thanks to Queen Isabella, her self),
For he said “Though there may be both monster and gale,
I’d like to find out for myself.”
And he sailed and he sailed and he sailed and he SAILED,
Though his crew would have gladly turned round
And, morning and evening, distressfully wailed
“This is running things into the ground!”
But he paid no attention to protest or squall,
This obstinate son of the mast,
And so, in the end, he discovered us all,
Remarking, “Here’s India, at last!”
He didn’t intend it, he meant to heave to
At Calcutta, Rangoon or Shanghai,
There are many queer things that discoverers do
But his was the queerest. Oh my!
Benet, Rosemary and Stephen Vincent. A Book of Americans. NY: Holt, 1961.
Aka Gators wife
Mine:
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You’d walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.”
He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you.”
In Flanders Fields – Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The Touch of the Master’s Hand
‘Twas battered and scarred,
And the auctioneer thought it
hardly worth his while
To waste his time on the old violin,
but he held it up with a smile.
“What am I bid, good people”, he cried,
“Who starts the bidding for me?”
“One dollar, one dollar, Do I hear two?”
“Two dollars, who makes it three?”
“Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three,”
But, No,
From the room far back a gray bearded man
Came forward and picked up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet
As sweet as the angel sings.
The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said “What now am I bid for this old violin?”
As he held it aloft with its’ bow.
“One thousand, one thousand, Do I hear two?”
“Two thousand, Who makes it three?”
“Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone”, said he.
The audience cheered,
But some of them cried,
“We just don’t understand.”
“What changed its’ worth?”
Swift came the reply.
“The Touch of the Masters Hand.”
“And many a man with life out of tune
All battered and bruised with hardship
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
Much like that old violin
A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on.
He is going once, he is going twice,
He is going and almost gone.
But the Master comes,
And the foolish crowd never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the Touch of the Masters’ Hand.
– Myra Brooks Welch
“But to live outside the law, you must be honest”
(from “Absolutely Sweet Marie”, by Bob Dylan, 1966)
Not a poem, but short, sweet and true:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke
What a son you are.
What a son you’ll be.
Through the sands of time,
You’re what’s best from me.
And as the years go by.
Call us best of friends.
Chasing fireflies.
Walking ’round lakes bend.
But the seesaws say, these times were meant to be.
But I cannot help,to disagree.
Rather choices made and tenacity.
It’s the give and takes of lovings destiny.
Sharing Saturn’s glow.
Gazing Pleiades.
And the Archers Bow and Leonids
I’ve seen rainbows end and
It’s mysteries and
It’s Pot of Gold,
looking up to me
What a son you are.