A great love

      One of the great loves in my life is poetry. (Thought I was going to say Lucy Lawless, didn’t you?) But most people dislike poetry, having been tortured in high school by having to read poems which were drier than a Republican’s heart and as confusing as a Democrat’s budget.
      People need another chance to learn to appreciate what good poetry has to offer. The following excerpts are from some of my favorite poems. They are well worth looking up and reading aloud.
      For example, take the stirring, age-defying words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892) in this excerpt from Ulysses:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

      Or how about this short comment on life lived fast from “The First Fig” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950):

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light!

      An excellent defense of a good day’s work and a life lived in honest labor is found in “The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882):

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

      In “The First Elegy,” Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) confronts the beauty and power of the infinite:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
In that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

      Ever so often, one of my students in my poetry classes will ask me to choose my favorite poem. It’s impossible. Different poems are my favorites at different times as they each have a message to impart, but they have all enriched my life.