April 30th
literature and opera are full of
characters who die for love:
i stay alive for her.
— Gerald Locklin, "No Longer a Teenager"
April 29th
In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
— Alexander Smith, "City Poem: The Fear of Dying"
April 28th
Marvelous Truth, confront us
at every turn,
in every guise
— Denise Levertov, "Matins"
April 27th
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
— T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
April 26th
Shed no tear-O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more-O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
— John Keats, "Faery Songs"
April 25th
Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
— Philip Larkin, "I Remember, I Remember"
April 24th
Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Stanzas-April 1814" (l. 29-32)
April 23rd
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.
— George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Don Juan," cto. 8, st. 3
April 22nd
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
April 21st
To be in love
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, "To Be in Love"
April 20th
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.
— John Milton, PARADISE LOST, bk. 1, l. 190-1
April 19th
We don't have to know,
only to be:
let go the jumble of worn words,
reason and vanity.
— Hilda Doolittle, "Star by Day"
April 18th
Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark
That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.
— Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar"
April 17th
Too low they build, who build beneath the stars.
— Edward Young, "Night Thoughts"
April 16th
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
— Kahlil Gibran,"The Prophet"
April 15th
Why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
— Robert Frost, "The Black Cottage"
April 14th
I am two fools, I know
For loving, and for saying so
In Whining poetry.
— John Donne, "The Triple Fool"
April 13th
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
— Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"
April 12th
Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.
— Ezra Pound, "An immortality"
April 11th
Sometimes when I'm lonely,
Don't know why,
Keep thinkin' I won't be lonely
By and by.
— Langston Hughes, "Hope"
April 10th
Errors like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
— John Dryden, "All For Love"
April 9th
STRANGER! if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you
not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?
— Walt Whitman, "To You"
April 8th
Bliss was it that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.
— William Wordsworth, "French Revolution"
April 7th
Forever nameless
Forever unknown
Forever unconceived
Forever unrepresented
yet forever felt in the soul.
— D. H. Lawrence, "Belief"
April 6th
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Love"
April 5th
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.
— Alexander Pope, "Moral Essays, I"
April 4th
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— Theodore Roethke, "The Waking"
April 3rd
O Learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
— William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XXIII"
April 2nd
ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i'd kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter
— Nikki Giovanni, "kidnap poem"
April 1st
To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee -
— Emily Dickinson, "To See the Summer Sky"
