Category Archives: Original Poetry

Denial

When my devotions could not pierce

Thy silent ears,

Then was my heart broken, as was my verse;

My breast was full of fears

And disorder.

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,

Did fly asunder:

Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,

Some to the wars and thunder

Of alarms.

“As good go anywhere,” they say,

“As to benumb

Both knees and heart, in crying night and day,

Come, come, my God, O come!

But no hearing.”

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue

To cry to thee,

And then not hear it crying! All day long

My heart was in my knee,

But no hearing.

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,

Untuned, unstrung:

My feeble spirit, unable to look right,

Like a nipped blossom, hung

Discontented.

O cheer and tune my heartless breast,

Defer no time;

That so thy favors granting my request,

They and my mind may chime,

And mend my rhyme.

• George Herbert

Source: Poetryfoundation.org

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Source: Poets.org

Dead and Gone

Will you visit my grave 

when I’m dead and gone?

Will you keep my memory alive

or will I be lost and forgotten?

Will my name be spoken in songs

and poems for decades to come

Or will it die with a whisper

Barely more than a crumb

Will my family come to my funeral?

Will my friends say goodbye?

Or will I die alone

Ready to take flight

Will I see my love

In the afterlife?

Or will there be nothing? 

No color, no light

Will it be the end

when I’m dead and gone?

Or a new beginning 

waiting to be born?

  • Katie Rose Waechter

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  • Rudyard Kipling

Source: Poetry Foundation