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Archives - April 2009

April 1, 2009

April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!

– William Watson, "Song"

April 2, 2009

The mind --- is not the heart.
I may yet live, as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind ---
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart.

– Robert Frost, "Wild Grapes"

April 3, 2009

We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies

– Emily Dickinson, "We Never Know How High We Are"

April 4, 2009

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

– Maya Angelou, "Touched by An Angel"

April 5, 2009

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.

– Ogden Nash, "A Word to Husbands"

April 6, 2009

Ironically, you thrill
Me not with goodness, but with thundering verse.

– Allen Tate, "John Milton"

April 7, 2009

A still small voice spake unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?"

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Two Voices"

April 8, 2009

The loss of love is a terrible thing;
They lie who say that death is worse.

– Countee Cullen, "The Loss of Love"

April 9, 2009

The poet and the dreamer are distinct,
Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.
The one pours out a balm upon the world,
The other vexes it.

– John Keats, "The Fall of Hyperion"

April 10, 2009

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.

– Nizar Qabanni, "Light is More Important than the Lantern"

April 11, 2009

But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

– Pablo Neruda, "Your Feet"

April 12, 2009

For us, there is only trying. The rest is not our business.

– T. S. Eliot, "East Coker"

April 13, 2009

'Twas the apple that in Eden
Caused our father's primal fall;
And the Trojan War, remember ---
'Twas an apple caused it all.
So for weeks I've hesitated,
You can guess the reason why,
For I want to tell my darling
She's the apple of my eye.

– Paul Laurence Dunbar, "The Unlucky Apple"

April 14, 2009

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers
And cuddle
near

– Nikki Giovanni, "Quilts"

April 15, 2009

Oh how I once loved tuna salad
Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too
'Til I stopped and looked at dinner
From the dinner's point of view.

– Shel Silverstein, "Point of View"

April 16, 2009

All that he did was to remember
Like the old and be honest like children.

– W. H. Auden, "In Memory of Sigmund Freud"

April 17, 2009

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.

– Jack Prelutzky, "Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face"

April 18, 2009

I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

– Langston Hughes, "Quiet Girl"

April 19, 2009

It's in her nature
to fear failure
but not to let that fear
blot out
her lines.

– Erica Jong, "The Poet Fears Failure"

April 20, 2009

I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold, ---
His eyes are in his mind.

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation"

April 21, 2009

I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move
With all that move me

– John Berryman, "The Ball Poem

April 22, 2009

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.

– Wendell Berry, "Like the Water"

April 23, 2009

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

– Arnold Lobel, from WHISKERS & RHYMES

April 24, 2009

I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before:
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.

– John Clare, "First Love"

April 25, 2009

Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay

– Sylvia Plath, "Never Try To Trick Me With A Kiss"

April 26, 2009

When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

– William Butler Yeats, "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" II, st. 4

April 27, 2009

If soul may look and body touch,
Which is the more blest?

– Wallace Stevens, "The Lady's Second Song," st. 3

April 28, 2009

I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine to-night.

– Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci, Act I, sc. iii, l. 88

April 29, 2009

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

– John Donne, "Verse Letter to Sir Henry Wotton"

April 30, 2009

O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.

– William Wordsworth, "Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman"