Category: Poetry (Page 5 of 6)

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

Heaven’s Door

I stand by the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out.
The door is the most important door in the world-
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only a wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands.
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it…
So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door-the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch-the latch that only clicks and
And opens to that man’s own touch.
Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter-
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live on the other side of it-live because they have not found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
and open it, and walk in, and find Him…
So I stand by the door.

Go in, great saints, go all the way in-
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics-
It is a vast roomy house, this house that God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture in a little further;
But my place seems closer to the opening…
So I stand by the door.

There is another reason why I stand there.
Some get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
For God is so very great and asks of all of us,
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia,
And want to get out. “Let me out!” they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.

The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving-preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them too,
I stand by the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they wouldn’t forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too far and stay in too long,
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God and hear Him, and know He is there,
But not so far from men as to not hear them,
And remember they are there too.
Where? Outside the door-
Thousands of them, millions of them.
But-more important for me–
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
“I had rather be a doorkeeper…”
So I stand by the door.

~Samuel Moor Shoemaker

I come in the little things, saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your strait garden plot I come to flowers
About your porch My Vine,
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour. I come in the little things, Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hear and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood —
There doth My Godhead rest.

I come in the little things, Saith the Lord:
My starry wings I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take:
Meekly I fit my stature to your need.
In beggar’s part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead —
As man, to speak with man —
Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan,
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

~Evelyn Underhill

Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.

She screams whenever monarchs meet,
And parliaments as well,
To bind the chains about her feet
And toll her knell.

And when the sovereign people cast
The votes they cannot spell,
Upon the pestilential blast
Her clamors swell.

For all to whom the power’s given
To sway or to compel,
Among themselves apportion Heaven
And give her Hell.

~Ambrose Bierce

But it carries with it so much pain and so little concern so much frustration and so little respect, so much stress and so little understanding that people spend their lives running through their days in the hope of avoiding the long arm of this little word.

To test our vision, you must risk failure.

To temper your ego, you must attempt the impossible.

To tell your story, you must take a chance.

To see beyond the horizon, you must spread your wings.

To be all you can be, you must stretch, flex, try, and go beyond your proven limits.

To bridge the silence, you must risk rejection.

To advance into the unknown, you must risk the peril of all your previous beliefs and emotions that feel so secure.

Failure is not negative. It is a teacher. It molds, refines, and polishes you so that one day your light will shine for all to see.

It isn’t the failure you experience that will determine your destiny, but your next step and then the next that will tell the story of your life.

~Tim Connor

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went-
Then you may count that day well spent.
But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay-
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face-
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost-
Then count that day as worse than lost.

~George Eliot

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His Truth is marching on.

have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
an read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
His Day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.’

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

~Julia Ward Howe

I asked God to take away my pride. And God said “No.” He said it was not for him to take away, but for me to give it up

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole. And God said “No”. He said her spirit was whole, her body was only temporary.

I asked God to grant me patience. And God said “No.” He said patience is a by-product of tribulations. It isn’t granted, it is earned.

I asked God to give me happiness. And God said “No.” He said he gives me blessings, happiness is up to me.

I asked God to spare me pain. And God said “No.” He said suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to me.

I asked God to make my spirit grow. And God said “No.” He said I must grow on my own. But he will prune me to make me fruitful.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.

And God said “No.” He said I will give you life, that you may enjoy all things.

I ask God to help me LOVE others, as much as he loves me. And God said, “Ah, finally you have the idea.”

~Author Unknown

Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she:
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare, rare it be;
And when I crumble who shall remember
This lady of the West Country?

~Walter de la Mare

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
‘Life is but an empty dream!’
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest,’
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us further than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, – act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow