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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/6/2003 3:24 AM (GMT -6) |   | Let's share some of our favorite poesms.
A couple of cool poems:
A Comparison
The lapse of time and rivers is the same;
Both speed their journey with a restless stream;
The silent pace with which they steal away
No wealth can bribe, no pray’rs persuade to stay;
Alike irrevocable both when past,
And a wide ocean swallows both at last.
Though each resemble each in ev’ry part,
A difference strikes at length the musing heart;
Streams never flow in vain; where streams abound,
How laughs the land with various plenty crown’d!
But time that should enrich the nobler mind,
Neglected, leaves a dreary waste behind.
William Cowper (18th Century)
The Love of the World Reproved
Thus says the prophet of the Turk—
Good Muslimun, abstain from pork;
There is a part in ev’ry swine
No friend of follower of mine
May taste, whate’er his inclination,
On pain of excommunication.
Such Muhammad’s mysterious charge,
And thus he left the point at large.
[Had he the sinful part express’d.
They might with safety eat the rest;
But for one piece they thought it hard
From the whole hog to be debarr’d,
And set their wit and work to find
What joint the prophet had in mind.]
Much controversy straight arose—
These chose the back, the belly those;
By some ‘tis confidently said
He meant not to forbid the head;
While others at that doctrine rail,
And piously prefer the tail.
Thus, conscience freed from ev’ry clog,
Muhammadans eat up the hog.
You laugh—‘tis well. The tale applied
May make you laugh on the other side.
Renounce the world—the preacher cries.
We do—a multitude replies.
While one as innocent regards
A snug and friendly game at cards;
And one, whatever you may say,
Can see no evil in a play;
Some love a concert, or a race;
And others—shooting, and the chase.
Revil’d and lov’d, renounc’d and follow’d,
Thus bit by bit, the world is swallow’d;
Each thinks his neighbor makes too free,
Yet likes a slice as well as he;
With sophistry their sauce they sweeten,
Til quite from tail to snout ‘tis eaten.
William Cowper (18th Century)
Love never ends | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 2/6/2003 4:33 AM (GMT -6) | | Design
by Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white
On a white, heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
What but design of darkness to appall? --
If design govern in a thing so small.
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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following
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 24
| Posted 2/6/2003 4:57 AM (GMT -6) | | Looking at Stars
The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother's robe.
Jane Kenyon
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fyodor
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 179
| Posted 2/6/2003 5:07 AM (GMT -6) | | Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
"Tear down the Wall"
-Pink Floyd
†††"To have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession, an infinite concession, given to man, but it is also eternity's claim upon him." – S. Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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Electra
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611
| Posted 2/6/2003 5:26 AM (GMT -6) | | While you are away
my heart come undone
slowly unravels
in a ball of yarn
the devil collects it
with a grin—
our love
in a ball of yarn—
he’ll never return it
he’ll never return it
he’ll never return it
so when you come back
we’ll have to make
new love.
Bjørk’s theodicy.
Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Matt. 10:8
Edited by - Electra on 02/06/2003 10:27:42 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/6/2003 6:00 AM (GMT -6) | | I love it! Keep ‘em coming! Beautiful stuff. I liked Doc's Spider poem. But what's a "heal-all"?
How ‘bout we risk exposure and share our own stuff as well. Here, I’ll venture out first!
Vision
by TGB
Without a vision
I perish;
Wasting, wandering away
Aching, foundering display
Of all I claim to cherish.
What of re-vision?
And second sight?
What of hope and hope’s historic might?
Lifting my view, gazing for more
(Sifting review that razes the floor)—
Two directions but one plight.
For a new mission
I do implore,
And beg that God would redesign the floor;
Inventing a plan, enchanting my heart,
Repenting man, revealing new start;
For this I wish and nothing more.
Time for decision—
But I’m not sure;
Launching, stepping off the ledge,
Or watching. Trembling fear’s a wedge
Twixt the ledge and me secure.
And so derision
I expect;
Loud, haunting remarks
Proud, daunting remarks;
I know them now and so reflect.
Love never ends | | Back to Top | | |
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Electra
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611
| Posted 2/6/2003 6:22 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
I love it! Keep ‘em coming! Beautiful stuff. I liked Doc's Spider poem. But what's a "heal-all"?
It’s a kind of flower.
Thanks for your poem, Tom! Have you written music for it as well?
Electra
Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Matt. 10:8 | | Back to Top | | |
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BJS
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587
| Posted 2/6/2003 6:24 AM (GMT -6) | | A Way To Love God
Robert Penn Warren
Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.
I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan. Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.
I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.
Everything seems an echo of something else.
And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound. The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.
But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind, mist gathers, and once on the Sarré at midnight,
I watched the sheep huddling. Their eyes
Stared into nothingness. In that mist-diffused light their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.
Their jaws did not move. Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in the gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.
You would think that nothing would ever again happen.
That may be a way to love God.
Brett
"Siste viator et memento mori." | | Back to Top | | |
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Springs
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636
| Posted 2/6/2003 9:21 AM (GMT -6) | | Nice thread Tom. This is awesome. Thanks for posting one of your own. I like it. It's very expressive.
Here's my contribution, from Charles Wright and the Watts 103 Street Rythm Band
EXPRESS YOURSELF
Express yourself (boop, bomp, da, da, da, da, dada, da,da da, da)
Express yourself
You don't never need help
from nobody else
all you've got to do now
'xpress yourself
whatever you do
Uh
Do it good
Uh
What ever you dooo do do Lord, Lawd
Do it good
aw right
It's not what you look like
when you're doin' what you're doin'
It's what you're doin' when you doin'
what cha look like you're doin'
Express yourself
Express yourself
Some people have everything
but other people don't
but everything don't mean a thing
if it ain't the thing you want
'xpress yourself
'xpress youself
aw do it
aww do it
do it to it
go on and do it
y'all do it
yeeaaah
'spresh yase'f
'spresh yase'f
uh
woah Lawd
aww lawd
do it
uh
"When all was over, and the last key turned, I sought my pillow, thankful that God had appointed a season of rest for the weary." Harriet Jacobs
Edited by - Springs on 02/07/2003 09:43:40 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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BJS
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587
| Posted 2/6/2003 9:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Learn To Be Still
Don Henley
It's just another day in paradise
As you stumble to your bed
You'd give anything to silence
Those voices ringing in your head
You thought you could find happiness
Just over that green hill
You thought you would be satisfied
But you never will-
Learn to be still
We are like sheep without a shepherd
We don't know how to be alone
So we wander 'round this desert
And wind up following the wrong gods home
But the flock cries out for another
And they keep answering that bell
And one more starry-eyed messiah
Meets a violent farewell-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still
Now the flowers in your garden
They don't smell so sweet
Maybe you've forgotten
The heaven lying at your feet
-Solo-
There are so many contradictions
In all these messages we send
(We keep asking)
How do I get out of here
Where do I fit in?
Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin'
It's waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still
You just keep on runnin'
Keep on runnin'
Brett
"Siste viator et memento mori." | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/6/2003 7:52 PM (GMT -6) | | There once was a lady from Ryde
Who ate some green apples and died;
The apples, fermented inside the lamented,
Made cider inside her inside.
Tom
Love never ends
Edited by - TGB on 02/07/2003 12:53:26 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Springs
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636
| Posted 2/7/2003 4:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
What is it of Eve in you? It is in us all! -SS | | Back to Top | | |
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BJS
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 587
| Posted 2/7/2003 5:13 AM (GMT -6) | | Apparently, lots of Robert Frost fans in here! Good stuff.
Brett
"Siste viator et memento mori." | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/7/2003 5:32 AM (GMT -6) | | Electra: Thanks for your poem, Tom! Have you written music for it as well?
Tom: Naw, no music. Just words. Can't do the music.
Tom
Love never ends | | Back to Top | | |
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Springs
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636
| Posted 2/13/2003 4:35 PM (GMT -6) | | This is a great thread. Leave it to Doc to find a poem that combines beauty, death and the problem of evil all in one.
I shared this thread with my sister when she was visiting. Then we had to dig out all my poetry books. I read the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Cooleridge to her, and she read me parts of Romeo and Juliet. (She’s an incurable romantic) That’s where I got my new signature line.
Here’s an excerpt you might enjoy.
Romeo son of Montague and Juliet daughter to Capulet were from houses at variance with each other.
Abraham ( servant to Montague)
Sampson (servant to Capulet)
Gregory (servant to Capulet)
Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sam. I do bite my thumb, sir.
Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sam. [Aside to Gregory] Is the law of our side, if I say ay?
Gre. No.
Sam. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
Gre. Do you quarrel, sir?
Sam. If you do, sir, I am for you; I serve as a good man to you.
Abr. No better.
Sam. Well, sir.
Gre. Say “better”: here comes one of my master’s kinsmen.
Sam. Yes, better, sir.
Abr. You lie.
Sam. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow. [They fight]
Enter Benvolio (nephew to Montague, a friend to Romeo)
Ben. Part, fools!
Put up your swords; you know not what you do.
Thy love did read by rote and could not spell. - Friar Laurence. - Shakespeare | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 2/14/2003 2:26 AM (GMT -6) | |
When voices, harps, angels, and glory are the only sound
Keep your faith what you choose,
In the richest part of your dreams
And you shall never lose,
Though what it ever seems
Keep these bonds, through ever what comes,
And keep sacred, whatever you have found,
When listening to those beating drums,
On whatever song spins you round
Dance softly, to your voices love,
Together forever, a special song
For the dying of a gentle lamb,
Lifts many up, to be strong
And this shall keep, whatever you have found,
Till the day of dancing, upon His sacred ground
-A poem, I wrote for my sisters wedding
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S.B.G.
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 143
| Posted 2/14/2003 3:49 PM (GMT -6) | | WORSHIP
Oh Jesus, to imagine your glory
to picture your eyes, your sound, your scent
Can it be that you really see me here
see my hands reaching up to touch you?
Can it be that you really know my heart
my weakness and failings and love me still?
One day I will feel the very breath
that once breathed life into me!
One day I will hear the precious voice
that so early called my name
Will you hold me and kiss the top of my head?
Will you cup my face in both hands?
Even now, right here where I search for you
At this moment Lord, what will you do?
Can you see me? Please see me standing here!
Take my offering, I dance unashamed!
Take me, empty me, make me your own
My worship, my life; it's only for you
I enter your presence with abandon
Your Spirit intoxicates my soul
I am empowered by peace and motion
I am yeilding to your instruction
Communing with the One who loves me
Unfolding the mysteries of God.
---A poem I wrote celebrating my Lord
S.B.G.
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/14/2003 5:23 PM (GMT -6) | | Thank you Tim and SBG! I enjoyed those!
Tom
Love never ends | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 2/15/2003 1:42 AM (GMT -6) | | Risk exposure TGB, and share more of your own stuff and keep celebrating my Lord S.B.G.
I would enjoy it…
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fyodor
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 179
| Posted 2/18/2003 8:08 PM (GMT -6) | | Ladybird By Brad Baron
In your garden
I’ll creep through
Your pardon,
soft girl
and ask your
name
By the Mississippi’s
Slow winter drawl
I will brush against
Your puffing
Red vest, not taking
Your hand
In my poems
I will record your
Name, age,
Shoe-size and height
What hands should do
So might backs,
Pacing apart from one
Another in sure steps
This wood, your land
Tree burial, no roots
to branch
www.bradbaron.com
†††"To have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession, an infinite concession, given to man, but it is also eternity's claim upon him." – S. Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/23/2003 1:18 AM (GMT -6) | | A True Friend
A friend will tell you to your face
When you’ve gotten out of place,
Without fear he will confront
When others think it far too blunt,
Address the sin which quietly lies
Beneath the notice of your eyes,
Will not refuse to bare the load
When in your anger you explode,
So whether few or many be your crimes
A true friend loveth at all times.
TGB
Love never ends
Edited by - TGB on 02/23/2003 06:28:35 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 2/23/2003 1:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Trophy of Grace
Will there ever come a day
When what I do and what I say
Will be one? Then I will be
A trophy of your love to me;
Into my Father’s very eyes
Look, and find there no surprise,
But only him I’ve known so long,
The subject of my every song;
And with repose to sweet to tell,
Plucked from the gaping maw of Hell;
But why if all of this be true,
Cannot I be true to you?
I have naught to plead my case
Save the merits of your grace,
Save your blood’s atoning force
Which from a more worthy source
Than all my hands could ‘ere achieve
Or from judgment gain reprieve,
Has placed me in a gracious way—
Oh how I love your gracious way.
TGB
Love never ends
Edited by - TGB on 02/23/2003 10:25:10 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 2/23/2003 6:20 AM (GMT -6) | | Very beautiful TGB, I admire the talent God is given you, Amen.
Tim | | Back to Top | | |
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S.B.G.
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 143
| Posted 2/24/2003 6:39 AM (GMT -6) | | TGB,
What lovely, yet candid, heartfelt words. You are gifted, what beautiful offerings!
S.B.G.
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Springs
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636
| Posted 2/24/2003 6:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Nice.
Here's a Haiku I wrote years ago,
The forest deep green
holds a silence, cushioned by
a carpet of moss.
And a couple from today,
Christ’s dare, bright glare
Find your heart and free your mind
I will meet you there
In that trying time
When peace jitters of out rhyme
Love becomes sublime
Springs
Thy love did read by rote and could not spell. - Friar Laurence. - Shakespeare | | Back to Top | | |
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