Experience poems
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The Road
© Boris Pasternak
Down into the ravine, then forward
Up the embankment to the top,
The ribbon of the road runs snaking
Through wood and field without a stop.
The Race
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
On the hill they are crowding together,
In the stand they are crushing for room,
Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather,
They gather like bees on the broom;
The Fourth Olympic Ode Of Pindar
© Henry James Pye
To Psaumis of Camarina, on his Victory in the Chariot Race. ARGUMENT. The Poet, after an invocation to Jupiter, extols Psaumis for his Victory in the Chariot Race, and for his desire to honor his country. From thence he takes occasion to praise him for his skill in managing horses, his hospitality, and his love of peace; and, mentioning the history of Erginus, excuses the early whiteness of his hair.
STROPHE.
Catching the Moles by Judith Kitchen: American Life in Poetry #106 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 20
© Ted Kooser
By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.
Catching the Moles
First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard
The DreamHouse
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Often we talk of the house that we will build
For airier and less jostled days than these
We chafe in, and send Fancy roaming wide
Down western valleys with a choosing eye
Late Wisdom
© George Crabbe
We've trod the maze of error round,
Long wandering in the winding glade;
Prosopopoia : or, Mother Hubbards Tale
© Edmund Spenser
Yet he the name on him would rashly take,
Maugre the sacred Muses, and it make
A servant to the vile affection
Of such, as he depended most upon;
And with the sugrie sweete thereof allure
Chast Ladies eares to fantasies impure.
Life Is A Dream - Act III
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
Apology
© William Carlos Williams
The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentites
stirs me to it:
The Old Mans Dream After He Died
© Robinson Jeffers
from CAWDOR
Gently with delicate mindless fingers
Come Si Quando
© Robert Seymour Bridges
How thickly the far fields of heaven are strewn with stars !
Tho* the open eye of day shendeth them with its glare
A Poetical Version Of A Letter From Facob Behmen
© John Byrom
TIS Mans own Nature, which in its own Life,
Or Centre, stands in Enmity and Strife,
The Nest
© James Russell Lowell
When oaken woods with buds are pink,
And new-come birds each morning sing,
When fickle May on Summer's brink
Pauses, and knows not which to fling,
Whether fresh bud and bloom again,
Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,
Safari, Rift Valley by Roy Jacobstein: American Life in Poetry #116 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
It's the oldest kind of story: somebody ventures deep into the woods and comes back with a tale. Here Roy Jacobstein returns to America to relate his experience on a safari to the place believed by archaeologists to be the original site of human life. And against this ancient backdrop he closes with a suggestion of the brevity of our lives.
A Panegyric Of The Dean In The Person Of A Lady In The North
© Jonathan Swift
Resolved my gratitude to show,
Thrice reverend Dean, for all I owe,
Too long I have my thanks delay'd;
Your favours left too long unpaid;
The Heroic Enthusiasts - Part The Second =Third Dialogue=.
© Giordano Bruno
LIB. Reclining in the shade of a cypress-tree, the enthusiast finding
his mind free from other thoughts, it happened that the heart and the
eyes spoke together as if they were animals and substances of different
intellects and senses, and they made lament of that which was the
beginning of his torment and which consumed his soul.
In Memoriam A. H. H.
© Alfred Tennyson
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
On Finding a Turtle Shell in Daniel Boone National Forest by Jeff Worley : American Life in Poetry #
© Ted Kooser
A poem is an experience like any other, and we can learn as much or more about, say, an apple from a poem about an apple as from the apple itself. Since I was a boy, I’ve been picking up things, but I’ve never found a turtle shell until I found one in this poem by Jeff Worley, who lives in Kentucky.
On Finding a Turtle Shell in Daniel Boone National Forest
This one got tired
