Joy to the world, all the boys and girls
Joy to the fishes in the deep, blue sea
Joy to you and me
Keep thyself pure! Christ’s soldier, hear,
Through life’s loud strife, the calls rings clear.
Thy Captain speaks: His word obey;
So shall thy strength be as thy day.
- Adelaide Plumptre
Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer
- England Dan & John Ford Coley (Todd Rundgren)
Mark well my words! they are of your eternal salvation
Next morning Palamabron rose: the horses of the Harrow
Were maddened with tormenting fury, & the servants of the Harrow
The Gnomes, accus’d Satan. with indignation fury and fire.
- Blake
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
– William Shakespeare, Richard III
O Shenandoah, I long to hear you
Away, you rolling river
O Shenandoah, I long to hear you
Away, I’m bound away
'Cross the wide Missouri
Traditional American Folk Song
PJ’s her name, eating’s her game.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner it is always the same:
Forty-two seconds to bolt down her food.
Sixty seconds later you will hear something rude.
Chugs enough water to put out a fire!
Gotta go spread it around the backyard.
Though I just fed her, she says I’m a liar;
She’s playing the “starving” card.
- burpo the wonder mutt, “Burpo The Wonder Mutt”
(First verse of a song I wrote about my [3 years gone] dog)
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
Run, rabbit, run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one
- Roger Waters
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea
- Crossing The Bar, Alfred Lord Tennyson
“…The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken
line,
Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e’en in defeat
defeated not, the same:
Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,
Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,
Now, or to come, or past—where patriot wills existed or exist,
Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,
Stands or is rising thy true monument.”
From here: Washington’s Monument, February, 1885 by Walt Whitman - Poems | poets.org
UP the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk, 5
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
- The Fairies, William Allingham
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
– Ecclesiastes, King James Version
When I was one I had just begun
When I was two I was nearly new
When I was three I was hardly me
When I was four I was not much more
When I was five I was just alive
But now I am six, I’m as clever as clever;
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.
- A. A. Milne
(In) Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.
Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.
Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
–Rudyard Kipling, Harp Song of the Dane Women
(The) Zeroes—taught us—Phosphorous—
We learned to like the Fire
By playing Glaciers—when a Boy—
And Tinder—guessed—by power
Of Opposite—to balance Odd—
If White—a Red—must be!
Paralysis—our Primer—dumb—
Unto Vitality!
- Emily Dickinson
A favorite memory from childhood…
Aunt Mary Kate’s secret room under the stairs, where we could hide and listen to the grown-ups talk in the living room, thanks to a well-placed heating vent.
Bicycling down to the High’s store and getting a HUGE double-decker (chocolate chip and butter pecan) ice cream cone.
Climbing through lava tubes barely the size of a child, while my parents desperately searched for me. Good times, good times.