Students,
All poems MUST be submitted by eight o'clock on June 6th to be graded.
Please post your poems here. Themes for your poems include Faith, Fate, and the Cosmos. Choose two of the three possible themes, and post a poem for each.
To comment on a poem, begin your comment with "@PoemName".
If the poem has no name, use the first line of the poem as the poem's name.
Thank you!
The Falling Tree by Josh Abbott
ReplyDeleteHe stared out the window at the autumn wind.
A cold silent gust blew leaves from the sky.
Those last remnants of dreams were falling away.
He felt a chill as the sky grew darker.
A day was passing that would never come again.
He was not ready to face the coming night.
The storm raged silently through the night.
The Sun rose again, but nothing was left.
How can a falling tree make a sound...
When nobody was ever there to hear it?
185 - Emily Dickinson
ReplyDelete"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Destiny by Clara Marcelle Farrar Greene
ReplyDeleteI cast a leaf on the flowing tide,
Writing it first upon either side,
With lines that compassed a world for me,
Which way soever ran destiny.
"Go forth," I murmured, "to meet thy fate,
Or yon or hither, or soon or late."
Widely it drifted away, away,
Through many and many an after day.
The tide aye flowing, my leaflet fled;
I dumbly mourned as we mourn the dead,
A little moment and then forgot,
In what I had, what I had not;
Till over the waters a stranger came
Bringing me guerdon too sweet to name.
"The drift of the tide brought me thy leaf,
Thy lines of sorrow have touched my grief
"With healing--pressed in a sacred place
It is mine and thine by love's good grace."
Then he opened the book of his heart to me,
"Behold," he whispered, "'twas Destiny!"
While the Fates Sleep by Lucy Maud Montgomery
ReplyDeleteCome, let us to the sunways of the west,
Hasten, while crystal dews the rose-cups fill,
Let us dream dreams again in our blithe quest
O'er whispering wold and hill.
Castles of air yon wimpling valleys keep
Where milk-white mist steals from the purpling sea,
They shall be ours in the moon's wizardry,
While the fates, wearied, sleep.
The viewless spirit of the wind will sing
In the soft starshine by the reedy mere,
The elfin harps of hemlock boughs will ring
Fitfully far and near;
The fields will yield their trove of spice and musk,
And balsam from the glens of pine will fall,
Till twilight weaves its tangled shadows all
In one dim web of dusk.
Let us put tears and memories away,
While the fates sleep time stops for revelry;
Let us look, speak, and kiss as if no day
Has been or yet will be;
Let us make friends with laughter 'neath the moon,
With music on the immemorial shore,
Yea, let us dance as lovers danced of yore
The fates will waken soon!
Stars by Robert Frost
ReplyDeleteHow countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--
As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--
And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.
Fate and Destiny
ReplyDeleteBy: Robert Grimes
Who can tell us what Fate and Destiny are?
Who can tell us what our Fate is?
Who can tell us what our Destiny is?
Fate. Destiny.
People say we cannot choose our Fate, but we can choose our Destiny.
People say we are Fated or Destined to do/become something.
Fate. Destiny.
Are they different?
Are they the same?
People say we can choose Destiny and we are Fated to do it.
People say that our Destiny is open, but our Fate is sealed.
Are Fate and Destiny the same?
If our Destiny has yet to be chosen but our Fate is sealed, then is not our Destiny already chosen, but unseen to us until the opportune moment?
Fate. Destiny.
When is the opportune moment?
At what point in our life will our Fate and Destiny be revealed?
Or will we realize what our Fate and Destiny are only when it is too late?
Or will we pass our Fate and Destiny without knowing it?
Fate. Destiny.
If someone tells us what our Fate and Destiny are, will we like what we hear?
Or will you strive against the path set before you?
Planet X
BY: Scott Speck
Tombaugh found an icy fleck,
uncatalogued, wandering
past stars upon the plates.
Champagne corks popped
with his announcement --
a ninth planet, Pluto,
God of Darkness
enthroned in ice.
New detectors,
chilled cold as Pluto,
resolved a moon from
the eccentric orb --
Charon, ferryman
across the gulf of space.
Pluto and Charon danced,
whirled together inside
mighty Neptune's path.
After Clyde's passing,
astronomers questioned
the iceball's status,
a coup gained strength
to dethrone a God.
Kuiper Belt orphan,
Trans-Neptunian object --
taxonomies abounded.
While the count of worlds
'round other stars rose,
science debated
Sol's straggling child.
A rift wide as Styx
divided astronomers.
Nine teetered near Eight,
blasphemy to most.
Evidence was weighed,
mortals cast the vote
restoring Pluto's crown.
Last night before bed
I spoke nine planets' names,
drifted off, dreamt we found
a tenth before the dawn.
Present by Jeff Rushton
ReplyDeleteFaith IS success in life
Faith is the catalyst within
Faith is the belief to begin
Faith is the foundation and the frame
Faith is the power that helps you win
Faith is the concentration of your brain
Faith is the power to know and to do
Faith is the cure for 'NO' and those that 'Lose'
Faith is your spirit, your sinews, your soul
Faith is the body that truly has all control
Faith is the beginning and the end
Faith is everything therein
Faith can move mountains and valleys and hills
But faith can do NOTHING...
Unless YOU are there.
Fate by Ralph Waldo Emerson
ReplyDeleteThat you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
There is a melody born of melody,
Which melts the world into a sea.
Toil could never compass it,
Art its height could never hit,
It came never out of wit,
But a music music-born
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty, if it lack the fire
Which drives me mad with sweet desire,
What boots it? what the soldier's mail,
Unless he conquer and prevail?
What all the goods thy pride which lift,
If thou pine for another's gift?
Alas! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight;—
When thou lookest in his face,
Thy heart saith, Brother! go thy ways!
None shall ask thee what thou doest,
Or care a rush for what thou knowest,
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden,—
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten.
Surely he carries a talisman
Under his tongue;
Broad are his shoulders, and strong,
And his eye is scornful,
Threatening, and young.
I hold it of little matter,
Whether your jewel be of pure water,
A rose diamond or a white,—
But whether it dazzle me with light.
I care not how you are drest,
In the coarsest, or in the best,
Nor whether your name is base or brave,
Nor tor the fashion of your behavior,—
But whether you charm me,
Bid my bread feed, and my fire warm me,
And dress up nature in your favor.
One thing is forever good,
That one thing is success,—
Dear to the Eumenides,
And to all the heavenly brood.
Who bides at home, nor looks abroad,
Carries the eagles, and masters the sword.
INTO THE EMPTINESS
By:Frederick Seidel
Into the emptiness that weighs
More than the universe
Another universe begins
Smaller than the last.
Begins to smaller
Than the last.
Dimensions
Do not yet exist.
My friend, the darkness
Into which the seed
Of all eleven dimensions
Is planted is small.
Travel with me back
Before it grows to more.
The church bell bongs,
Which means it must be noon.
Some are playing hopscotch
Or skipping rope during recess,
And some are swinging on swings,
And seesaws are seesawing.
That she is shy,
Which means it must be May,
Turns into virgin snow
And walking mittened home with laughing friends.
And the small birds singing,
And the sudden silence,
And the curtains billow,
And the spring thunder will follow—
And the rush of freshness,
And the epileptic fit that foams.
The universe does not exist
Before it does.
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
ReplyDeleteOut of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul
Into The Emptiness by Frederick Seidel
ReplyDeleteInto the emptiness that weighs
More than the universe
Another universe begins
Smaller than the last.
Begins to smaller
Than the last.
Dimensions
Do not yet exist.
My friend, the darkness
Into which the seed
Of all eleven dimensions
Is planted is small.
Travel with me back
Before it grows to more.
The church bell bongs,
Which means it must be noon.
Some are playing hopscotch
Or skipping rope during recess,
And some are swinging on swings,
And seesaws are seesawing.
That she is shy,
Which means it must be May,
Turns into virgin snow
And walking mittened home with laughing friends.
And the small birds singing,
And the sudden silence,
And the curtains billow,
And the spring thunder will follow—
And the rush of freshness,
And the epileptic fit that foams.
The universe does not exist
Before it does.
MIRROR FULL OF STARS By. Frederick Seidel
ReplyDeleteA can of shaving cream inflates
A ping-pong ball of lather,
Thick, hot, smaller than an atom, soon
The size of the world.
This does take time to happen.
Back at the start
Again, a pinprick swells so violently
It shoots out
Hallways to other worlds,
But keeps expanding
Till it is all
There is. The universe is all there is.
Don't play with matches.
The candle flame follows her
With its eyes. The night sky is a mirror
On a wall.
What she stands in front of are the roaring afterburners
Of the distant stars a foot away
Leaving for another world. They have been summoned
To leave her
For another girl
In another world who stands there looking
In a mirror full of stars
At herself in her room.
The room is not really,
But it might be. If there is
Something else as beautiful
As this snow softly falling outside, say.
The universe begins
With a hot ball of lather expanding
In a hand
That should be in her bed asleep.
Destiny by George William Russell
ReplyDeleteLIKE winds or waters were her ways:
The flowing tides, the airy streams,
Are troubled not by any dreams;
They know the circle of their days.
Like winds or waters were her ways:
They heed not immemorial cries;
They move to their high destinies
Beyond the little voice that prays.
She passed into her secret goal,
And left behind a soul that trod
In darkness, knowing not of God,
But craving for its sister soul.
ReplyDeleteShare |
I Had Faith
I had faith in his word
And it failed me
I had faith in my friends
They left me
I had faith in the mirror
It shattered on me
I had faith in justice
It hurt me
I had faith in the world
It laughed at me
I had faith in my family
They turned their back on me
But I'm not disappointed in them
More of myself
You see I had faith in my strength
It crumbled before me
I had faith in my mind
It stopped working on me
I had faith in me
I failed on myself
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
ReplyDeleteTHE FAITHLESS BOY. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ReplyDeleteTHERE was a wooer blithe and gay,
A son of France was he,--
Who in his arms for many a day,
As though his bride were she,
A poor young maiden had caress'd,
And fondly kiss'd, and fondly press'd,
And then at length deserted.
When this was told the nut-brown maid,
Her senses straightway fled;
She laugh'd and wept, and vow'd and pray'd,
And presently was dead.
The hour her soul its farewell took,
The boy was sad, with terror shook,
Then sprang upon his charger.
He drove his spurs into his side,
And scour'd the country round;
But wheresoever he might ride,
No rest for him was found.
For seven long days and nights he rode,
It storm'd, the waters overflow'd,
It bluster'd, lighten'd, thunder'd.
On rode he through the tempest's din,
Till he a building spied;
In search of shelter crept he in,
When he his steed had tied.
And as he groped his doubtful way,
The ground began to rock and sway,--
He fell a hundred fathoms.
When he recover'd from the blow,
He saw three lights pass by;
He sought in their pursuit to go,
The lights appear'd to fly.
They led his footsteps all astray,
Up, down, through many a narrow way
Through ruin'd desert cellars.
When lo! he stood within a hall,
With hollow eyes. and grinning all;
They bade him taste the fare.
A hundred guests sat there.
He saw his sweetheart 'midst the throng,
Wrapp'd up in grave-clothes white and long;
She turn'd, and----*
1774.
(* This ballad is introduced in Act II. of Claudine
of Villa Bella, where it is suddenly broken off, as it is here.)
Fate slew Him, but He did not drop -- by Emily Dickinson
ReplyDeleteFate slew Him, but He did not drop --
She felled -- He did not fall --
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes --
He neutralized them all --
She stung Him -- sapped His firm Advance --
But when Her Worst was done
And He -- unmoved regarded Her --
Acknowledged Him a Man
@Fate and Destiny
ReplyDeleteI love how this poem questions Fate and Destiny and underlines the fact that nobody really knows much about Fate and Destiny and what we are meant to be or do. It's appropriate that most of the poem is comprised of questions because it reflects how many questions we have towards the subject.
I also noticed how the line "Fate. Destiny." is repeated. That line to me says, "What's the difference between the two?".
@The Falling Tree
ReplyDeleteI enjoy this poem a lot and the imagery and metaphors used. I imagine the leaves that blew from the sky as the remnants of dreams falling away that are mentioned in the line after. I like how the reader can't really know what exactly is going on but you get the feeling something very bad is going to happen or someone is in a bad state of mind and once the storm brewed and the sun rose, nothing was left. The storm blew everything away, even the life of a person maybe.
@185
ReplyDeleteI think this poem says that people use Faith as an explanation when they feel like it, but once it comes to a point where they don't understand something they turn to science to try to explain everything. I feel like the tone is mocking. She puts faith into quotes maybe to say that this is what others call faith.
@Mirror Full of Stars
ReplyDeleteTHIS POEM. I like it. It's fun to read, it's magical. While I was reading it I was thinking that the speaker was kind of making sense of the universe with things she knows like a ball of shaving cream lathering or a swelling pinprick and the night sky being a mirror might say that you can see yourself in the sky if you look the right way. The poem brings you to space and I picture galaxies and space clouds and explosions and stars and sunspots, but by the end it brings us back to this girls room where she is going to sleep.
@While the Fates Sleep
ReplyDeleteI love this poem! All the whimsy and magic is amazing. It paints a really beautiful scene, a wonderful world and idea. It seems like, while the "gods" of a kind are acknowledged, the average human can to some extent take control of his/her destiny without giving up the comfort of "it all happened for a reason". I really really really like this one.
@Invictus
ReplyDeleteI also like this poem. It seems like a battle cry right before the deciding fight. Reminds me of the movie with the same title. The person speaking obviously had a rough time of whatever they went through, but their faith in themselves and their taking charge of their own fate is inspiring.
@Mirror Full of Stars
ReplyDeleteI can sum this poem up in one word. Trippy. Seriously, since it was written with a stream of consciousness, and the speaker is obviously wondering at the marvels of the universe while relating them to ordinary objects (shaving cream and the mirror, for example), I was a bit lost. There's probably a deep meaning I don't understand- though I know the final lines allude to the creation of the universe. It seems like all simplicity can create complexity, like the small ball of shaving cream might be an expanding universe of its own. There's a type of mystery to the poem, as well, especially when describing the girl. She has an air of magic or sadness.
@I Had Faith
ReplyDeleteWow. This poem is depressing, but at the same time, it tells a very interesting story and leaves me wanting more. I want to know exactly what happened to this person (woman?) to make her like this. The poem is simple but gives very few details, just enough to weave a story in your head. The story could be very interesting if you could fill in the gaps. In the end, though, the speaker has nothing, since they have no faith in themselves.
@I Had Faith
ReplyDeleteI think this poem is really depressing and she needs to hear my poem to lift her spirits back up. Sometimes life can screw you over if your put faith in too many other things.
@Invictus
ReplyDeleteI like this poem a lot because the person described in the poem defies fate and chooses his own destiny. He is the captain of his fate and doesn't submit to what he "thinks" life has predestined for his fate.
@THE FAITHLESS BOY. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ReplyDeleteI feel like this poem has to deal with the Faithless boy ending up in hell from a fatal fall of a thousand fathoms. It seems that the person this Boy lost is in hell too with lots of fiendish people trying to bring the boy into the same position the lost lover is in.
@The falling tree
ReplyDeleteI love this poem becasue it makes you think about the famous question "How can a falling tree make a sound.. when nobody was ever to hear it?" Now the answer to this depends on someones definition of a sound. If a sound is a vibration of the air then yes, but if a sound is something people have to hear than no. Now even though this is what the poem is most known for, the rest of the poem is also good.
@Into The Emptiness by Frederick Seidel
ReplyDeleteIt's great how the poet explains how boring and empty the rest of the universe is while there is just so much going on in earth and how earth truly is a universe of it's own.
@Stars
ReplyDeleteThe poet is linking the icy cold abundance of snow to the loss we have for loved ones. In ancient mythology, it was believed that when a loved one passed away, they became a star in the night sky. This relates to the lines, "To white rest, and a place of rest / Invisible at dawn," signifying how the stars are invisible to us the each morning. The last stanza is saying that our loved ones are always watching over us, but indifferently, without love or hate.
@The Faithless Boy
ReplyDeleteI see this more as a poem about fate than a poem about faith, actually. The boy uses a girl to bring himself pleasure, and then leaves her. She, actually loving him, dies of depression. Scared and unsure of what to do, the boy rides off for a week on his horse. When he finally stops to rest, he is extremely exhausted and dehydrated. The ground suddenly opens and he falls a hundred fathoms, which I believe is a play on words. A fathom is an actual unit of measurement, but I believe the poet is hinting at fathom's other meaning, beyond comprehension, thus making a hundred fathoms far beyond human comprehension, possibly another world. In this "new world," the boy comes to realize he is in a room full of dead people, including the girl that loved him so much. He is most likely dead too. As the suspense builds, the dead girl turns her head, and the poem abruptly ends.
@I had faith
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting poem because the protagonist has so much faith in so many things and people, yet in the end each faith fails, even faith in his/her-self. The tone of this poem is very depressing.
@While the Fates Sleep
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part about this poem is the mythological reference to the fates, although the poem also has a very evident "Carpe Diem" theme as well, with the message of: live life to the fullest before the fates end our lives here on Earth.
@ stars
ReplyDeleteI think the poem is basically comparing stars to humans and how we are so great and have so much potential but cannot even open our eyes and see what we are capable of. This poem reminds me of when older people involved in my life give me encouragement and tell me that to reach for the stars and unlock my full potential.
@ while fate sleeps
ReplyDeleteI liked the way this poem personified fate and made it seem like when fate sleeps we can pursue our goals. This seemed childish in a way but still very meaningful because it is basically telling people to go for what ever they are trying to achieve even if the odds are against them because there maight be a chance that fate is sleeping.