Poem of the day-177: The Swing

Poem of the day-176: The World is Too much with Us by Wordsworth

Shakespeare's Sonnets-38:

Shakespeare Sonnet-a-Day
Sonnet 147

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Poem of the day-175: Fame is a fickle food (1659) by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food 

by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food 

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a 

Guest but not 

The second time is set. 

Whose crumbs the crows inspect 

And with ironic caw 

Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn – 

Men eat of it and die.

Courtesy:  Poets.org

Poem of the day-174: Love and Sorrow by Tennyson

Love and Sorrow –

Poem by Tennyson

O maiden, fresher than the first green leaf

With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,

Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee

That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief

Doth hold the other half in sovranty.

Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:

Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:

Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine

My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,

Issue of its own substance, my heart's night

Thou canst not lighten even with thy light,

All powerful in beauty as thou art.

Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,

Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side,

So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,

But lose themselves in utter emptiness.

Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep

They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.

Poem of the day-173: Merry Autumn Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872 - 1906

Merry Autumn

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872 - 1906

It’s all a farce,—these tales they tell

     About the breezes sighing,

And moans astir o’er field and dell,

     Because the year is dying.

Such principles are most absurd,—

     I care not who first taught ’em;

There’s nothing known to beast or bird

     To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn times, when grief holds sway

     With countenance distressing,

You’ll note the more of black and gray

     Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;

     The sky is blue and mellow;

And e’en the grasses turn the ground

     From modest green to yellow.

The seed burrs all with laughter crack

     On featherweed and jimson;

And leaves that should be dressed in black

     Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;

     A singing bird comes after;

And Nature, all from earth to sky,

     Is bubbling o’er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,

     Like sparkling little lasses;

The sunlight runs along the hills,

     And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun

     It really can’t contain it;

And streams of mirth so freely run

     The heavens seem to rain it.

Don’t talk to me of solemn days

     In autumn’s time of splendor,

Because the sun shows fewer rays,

     And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it’s the climax of the year,—

     The highest time of living!—

Till naturally its bursting cheer

     Just melts into thanksgiving.

This poem is in the public domain.

Grateful thanks to www.poets.org

Poem of the day-172: The New Colossus BY EMMA LAZARUS

The New Colossus

BY EMMA LAZARUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

NECTOR OF POETRY-1: NATURE IS WHAT WE SEE by Emily Dickinson

NATURE IS WHAT WE SEE

by Emily Dickinson

Published by NCERT Official on Jan.16, 2018

Glory to Emily Dickinson and Grateful thanks to NCERT and YouTube.

Audio-Video Poems-7: 50 CLASSICAL POEMS READ BY 12 CELEBRITIES

50 CLASSICAL POEMS READ BY 12 CELEBRITIES

Morgan Freeman, Jodie Foster, Gary Sinise and others

126,803 Views
Published by Gently Hew Stone on May 3, 2016

From John Lithgow, The Poets' Corner, 2007:

1: Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

read by Eileen Atkins 0:06

2: W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts

read by Jodie Foster 2:13

3: John Berryman, Henry's Confession

read by Gary Sinise 3:41

4: Elizabeth Bishop, Filling Station

read by Glenn Close 4:55

5: William Blake, The Tyger

read by Helem Mirren 6:48

6: Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool

read by Morgan Freeman 8:23

7: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

read by Helen Mirren 9:08

8: Robert Burns, To a Mouse

read by Billy Connolly 10:18

9: George Gordon, Lord Byron, I would I were a careless child

read by Robert Sean Leonard 12:29

10: Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

read by Eileen Atkins 15:17

11: Geoffrey Chaucer, The General Prologue

read by Lynn Redgrave 16:48

12: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

read by Robert Sean Leonard 19:31

13: Hart Crane, To Brooklyn Bridge

read by Sam Waterston 22:13

14: e.e. cummings, if everything happens that can't be done

read by Eileen Atkins 25:17

15: Emily Dickinson, 1263 (There is no Frigate like a Book)

read by Glenn Close 26:41

16: John Donne, Song (Go and catch a falling star)

read by John Lithgow 27:14

17: T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night

read by Morgan Freeman 28:28

18: Robert Frost, Birches

read by John Lithgow 32:01

19: William S. Gilbert, Love Unrequited, or The Nightmare Song

read by John Lithgow 35:40

20: Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California

read by Gary Sinise 39:16

21: Robert Herrick, The Beggar to Mab, The Fairy Queen

read by Billy Connolly 41:48

22: Gerald Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

read by Kathy Bates 43:09

23: A.E. Housman, When I Was One and Twenty

read by Robert Sean Leonard 44:02

24: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues

read by Morgan Freeman 44:57

25: Randall Jarrell, Death of a Ball Turret Gunner

read by Gary Sinise 46:42

26: Ben Jonson, Inviting a Friend to Supper

read by Robert Sean Leonard 47:19

27: John Keats, To Autumn

read by Lynn Redgrave 49:52

28: Philip Larkin, Days

read by Susan Sarandon 52:00

29: Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

read by Billy Connolly 52:39

30: H.W. Longfellow, A Psalm of Life

read by John Lithgow 54:10

31: Robert Lowell, The Public Garden

read by Billy Conolly 55:58

32: Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

read by John Lithgow 57:39

33: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Love is Not All

read by Jodie Foster 1:00:00

34: Marianne Moore, Poetry

read by Kathy Bates 1:01:07

35: Ogden Nash, No Doctor's Today, Thank You

read by John Lithgow 1:02:55

36: Dorothy Parker, Afternoon

read by Glenn Close 1:04:29

37: Edgar Allen Poe, Annabel Lee

read by Sam Waterston 1:05:27

38: Ezra Pound, The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter

read by Jodie Foster 1:07:50

39: Christina Rosetti, Up-Hill

read by Helen Mirren 1:09:43

40: Carl Sandburg, Chicago

read by Gary Sinise 1:10:56

41: Shakespeare, Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun

read by Lynn Redgrave 1:13:04

42: Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark

read by Glenn Close 1:14:28

43: Edmund Spenser, Sonnet 75 (One day I wrote her name upon the strand)

read by Susan Sarandon 1:18:55

44: Gertrude Stein, If I Told Him

read by Kathy Bates 1:20:00

45: Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream

read by Kathy Bates 1:24:28

46: Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

read by Susan Sarandon 1:25:25

47: Walt Whitman, There was a Child went Forth

read by Sam Waterston 1:26:44

48: William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow

read by Jodie Foster 1:31:38

49: William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

read by Helen Mirren 1:32:06

50: William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

read by Eileen Atkins 1:33:25

Grateful thanks to Gently Hew Stone, John Lithgow, Poets Corner and celebrities who read the poems and YouTube.

Poem of the day-171: Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind – Poem by William Shakespeare

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind –

Poem by William Shakespeare

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,

That does not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As a friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Poem of the day-170: Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Spring 
by Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
        When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
        Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
        The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
        The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
        A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,

        Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
        Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Poem of the day-169: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN BY ROBERT FROST

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

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.

Poem of the day-168: A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within a Dream

Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep 
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Poem of the day-167: So, we will go no more a-roving by Lord Byron

So We'll Go No More a Roving

By Lord Byron

So, we'll go no more a roving

   So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

   And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

   And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

   And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

   And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a roving

   By the light of the moon.

Poem of the day-166: To the Cuckoo by William Wordsworth

To the Cuckoo  
By William Wordsworth  

O blithe New-comer! I have heard, 
I hear thee and rejoice. 
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, 
Or but a wandering Voice? 

While I am lying on the grass 
Thy twofold shout I hear; 
From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
At once far off, and near. 

Though babbling only to the Vale 
Of sunshine and of flowers, 
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours. 

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! 
Even yet thou art to me 
No bird, but an invisible thing, 
A voice, a mystery; 

The same whom in my school-boy days 
I listened to; that Cry 
Which made me look a thousand ways 
In bush, and tree, and sky. 

To seek thee did I often rove 
Through woods and on the green; 
And thou wert still a hope, a love; 
Still longed for, never seen. 

And I can listen to thee yet; 
Can lie upon the plain 
And listen, till I do beget 
That golden time again. 

O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace 
Again appears to be 
An unsubstantial, faery place; 
That is fit home for Thee!

Poem of the day-165: A Farewell by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A Farewell

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,

Thy tribute wave deliver:

No more by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,

A rivulet then a river:

Nowhere by thee my steps shall be

For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree

And here thine aspen shiver;

And here by thee will hum the bee,

For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,

A thousand moons will quiver;

But not by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

Poem of the day-164: This Is My Letter To The World By Emily Dickinson

This Is My Letter To The World

By Emily Dickinson

This is my letter to the world,

That never wrote to me,--

The simple news that Nature told,

With tender majesty.

Her message is committed

To hands I cannot see;

For love of her, sweet countrymen,

Judge tenderly of me!