April 30th
Such simple things,
And we make of them something so complex it defeats us,
Almost. Why can't everything be simple again?...
— John Ashbery, "Business Personals"
April 29th
Through love, through home, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel we are greater than we know.
— William Wordsworth, "Valedictory Sonnett to the River Duddon"
April 28th
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
— Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time"
April 27th
I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?
— Alexander Pope, "Engraved on the Collar of a Dog, Which I Gave to His Royal Highness"
April 26th
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
— Edgar Allan Poe, "A Dream Within A Dream"
April 25th
Listen here. I've never played it safe
in spite of what the critics say.
— Anne Sexton, "August 8th"
April 24th
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.
— William Ernest Henley, "Invictus"
April 23rd
Young blood must have its course, lad,
and every dog its day.
— Charles Kingsley, "Young and Old"
April 22nd
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
Ane even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
— Emily Bronte, "Remembrance"
April 21st
But now I only know I am --- that's all.
— John Clare, "Sonnet: 'I Am'"
April 20th
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
— John Donne, "The Anagram"
April 19th
The loss
of the dream
Leaves nothing
the same.
— Langston Hughes, "Beale Street"
April 18th
The soul would have no rainbow
Had the eyes no tears.
— John Vance Cheney, "Tears"
April 17th
Why! Who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles.
— Walt Whitman, "Miracles"
April 16th
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
— Robert Frost, "A Prayer in Spring"
April 15th
Long is the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
— John Milton, "Paradise Lost" Book ii, Line 432
April 14th
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Locksley Hall"
April 13th
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Mutability"
April 12th
Words add to the senses. The words for the dazzle
Of mica, the dithering of grass,
The Arache integument of dead trees,
Are the eye grown larger, more intense.
— Wallace Stevens, "Variations on a Summer Day"
April 11th
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
— ee cummings, "i carry your heart"
April 10th
We are liars, because
the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,
whereas letters are fixed,
and we live by the letter of truth.
— D. H. Lawrence, "Lies About Love"
April 9th
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
— W. H. Auden, "The More Loving One"
April 8th
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
— John Greenleaf Whittier, "Maud Muller"
April 7th
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footsteps on the sands of time.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life"
April 6th
A hair perhaps divides the False and True.
— Edward Fitzgerald, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"
April 5th
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
— William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
April 4th
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
— Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"
April 3rd
If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
— Emily Dickinson, "If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking"
April 2nd
He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
— John Keats, "O Thou Whose Face Hath Felt the Winter's Wind"
April 1st
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
— William Butler Yeats, "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
