Internet Education Week: Day 3

            For a long time I thought of human beings as mere animals, whose only instincts are to survive and procreate and whose only actions are governed by instinct. Then I realized that we were made for more than food and sex. There is something inside man that searches for a deeper beauty than that which is immediately apparent - a gentle spirit that loves colour and thought and music. I can find no other explanation for the heart-floods that certain poems create in me.
          
              Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. Salvatore Quasimodo

           Here are quotes from a few of my favourite poems. If they intrigue you, google them and read the whole thing! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

The More Loving One 

W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973 

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

         I think of those last two lines a lot (there's more of the poem, by the way, please google it and read the rest). "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me." I chant it to myself as I internet-stalk Charlie McDonnell.

Come into the Garden, Maud 

Alfred Tennyson 1809-92



COME into the garden, Maud,

  For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

  I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,

  And the musk of the rose is blown.



------------- 
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,

  Come hither, the dances are done,

In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,

  Queen lily and rose in one;

Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,

  To the flowers, and be their sun.

 -----------
She is coming, my own, my sweet;

  Were it ever so airy a tread,

My heart would hear her and beat,

  Were it earth in an earthy bed;

My dust would hear her and beat,

  Had I lain for a century dead;

Would start and tremble under her feet,

  And blossom in purple and red.




 And, finally,






 He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

 W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)




HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,



Enwrought with golden and silver light,


The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams




Happy Wednesday!