Peace by Edith Matilda Thomas

Peace
Edith Matilda Thomas

Much I desired when Youth did fire my veins,
To join fair combat with some foe august;
And more I dreaded sloth and creeping rust
Than any meed of martyr scorns and pains.
How would my heart beat quick at clarion strains;
All to the God of battle would I trust--
As one who, midst the hissing barbs and dust,
From some swift Argive chariot flung the reins!

But now my pulse is slowed, my veins are cold,
O Spirit of the leafage silver-green--
Now let thy cool sweet shadow intervene,
That I no more the strenuous day behold;
So fold me, as the flocks that rest in fold,
While Hesper makes the darkening sky serene.

Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! by John Keats

Edmund Blair Leighton Art

Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl!
John Keats

ASLEEP! O sleep a little while, white pearl!
And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,
And let me call Heaven’s blessing on thine eyes,
And let me breathe into the happy air,
That doth enfold and touch thee all about,
Vows of my slavery, my giving up,
My sudden adoration, my great love!

Beauty by G.O.Warren

Beauty
G. O. Warren

NOT flesh alone am I, when I can be
So swiftly caught in Beauty’s shimmering thread
Whose slender fibres, woven, held by me,
With their frail strength my following heart have led.

Yea, not all mortal, not all death my mind,
When, watching by lone twilight waters’ brim
I tremblingly decipher, as they wind,
Her deathless hieroglyphs, though strange and dim.

So for this faith, when Thou my dust shalt bring
To dust, remember well, Great Alchemist,
Yearly to change my wintry earth to spring,
That I with Beauty still may keep my tryst.

Grounding by Alison Stormwolf

Grounding
Alison Stormwolf

I yearn for pebbles on the beach
Each telling me their tale of
Endless wearing away by incessant waves
So they become more rounded
Lose their sharp edges
Display their colours more fully
Deeply connected
To those stratas
Where they were formed over millennia
Rising like providence to be shaped

I am half alive
And need smoothing off
And smelling them
They are authentic and real
Oh God
I thirst
For that.

Inspirational Understanding Friendship Poetry :Lines to an Old Sweetheart by Robert Burns*Friendship by William Wilsey Martin*The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow*Stanzas to a Friend byMary Darby Robinson*

Music:
Nicolas de Angelis - La Esperanza

Friendship
William Wilsey Martin

Some Friendships are like leaves;when skies are fair
Their green flags flutter,making glad the day;
But when the chill winds blow,they fall away
And leave the quiv'ring branches cold and bare.

Break not an ancient friendship; keep it hale;
Stir round its roots, that it be green of heart;
Let not the spirit of its growth depart:
It is a power to brave the strongest gale.

Leonid Afremov Art

The Arrow and the Song
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Stanzas to a Friend
Mary Darby Robinson

And as the varying seasons glide away,
This moral lesson shall my bosom learn,
How TIME steals on, while blissful hours decay
Like fleeting shadows;­NEVER to return.

And when I see thy warm unspotted mind,
Torn with the wound of broken FRIENDSHIP'S dart;
When sickness chills thy breast with pangs unkind,
Or ruthless sorrow preys upon thy heart;

The task be MINE to soothe thee to repose,
To check the sigh, and wipe the trickling tear,
Or with soft SYMPATHY to share thy woes;
O, proudest rapture of the soul sincere !

And ye who flutter thro' the vacant hour,
Where tasteless Apathy's empoison'd wand
Arrests the vagrant sense with numbing pow'r,
While vanquish'd REASON bows at her command.

O say, what bliss can transient Life bestow,
What balm so grateful to the social mind,
As FRIENDSHIP'S voice­where gentle precepts flow
From the blest source of sentiment refin'd?

When FATE'S stern hand shall close my weeping eye,
And seal, at length, my wand'ring spirit's doom;
Oh! may kind FRIENDSHIP catch my parting sigh,
And cheer with HOPE the terrors of the TOMB.

Vladimir Volegov Art

Portrait of a Friend
Unknown

I can't give solutions to all of life's problems, doubts,
or fears. But I can listen to you, and together we will
search for answers.

I can't change your past with all it's heartache and pain,
nor the future with its untold stories.
But I can be there now when you need me to care.

I can't keep your feet from stumbling.
I can only offer my hand that you may grasp it and not fall.
Your joys,triumphs,successes,and happiness are not mine;
Yet I can share in your laughter.

Your decisions in life are not mine to make, nor to judge;
I can only support you, encourage you,
and help you when you ask.

I can't prevent you from falling away from friendship,
from your values, from me.
I can only pray for you, talk to you and wait for you.

I can't give you boundaries which I have determined for you,
But I can give you the room to change, room to grow,
room to be yourself.

I can't keep your heart from breaking and hurting,
But I can cry with you and help you pick up the pieces
and put them back in place.

I can't tell you who you are.
I can only love you and be your friend.

THE WEAVER by Mack Lyon

THE WEAVER
From a sermon by Mack Lyon

My life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.

Ofttimes He weaveth sorrow,
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper
And I, the underside.

Not till the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver's skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.

A Thought of Summer by Mary T. Lathrap

Pino Daeni Art

A Thought of Summer
Mary T. Lathrap

The year is fair, the year is sweet,
And Nature's ministry complete.
The graceful tree-tops idly swing,
The summer birds are on the wing;
And ladened with a rare perfume
Is every wandering breeze of June.

The far-off stable hills abide,
And guard the valleys cool and wide.
Across the green the rivers run,
Like silver ribbons in the sun;
With low wish-wash they onward flee,
Swift-footed seekers for the sea.

Fair skies of June with radiant glow,
Bend over all their blue and snow
With clouds that sweep the upper air
Like angels, winged to answer prayer.
And yet the tender summer skies
Keep close their secret from our eyes,
And never open any door
Into the land we would explore.

Ah! fields of summer, sweet with balm!
Ah! skies of summer, far and calm!
Across your beauty yet doth break
The cry of hearts that long and ache.
O! give the world some perfect strain,
To heal its discord and its pain;
For though the year is fair and sweet
Your ministry is not complete.

Proportion by Ben Jonson

Proportion
Ben Jonson

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night--
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

In Nature's Realm by Andrew Downing

In Nature's Realm
Andrew Downing

The earth is bright and dewy-fresh
As Dian, risen from her bath,
While, just released from slumber's mesh,
I fare me down a flowery path.
I pass between the clover fields
Where sleek, slow-moving cattle graze;
I seek the joys which Nature yields
To him who knows her pleasant ways.

I go where honeysuckles blow,
And climb with them the rocks I love;
A world of green spreads out below,
A wider world of blue above.

And many a sturdy, stately elm,
And many a proud, ancestral oak,
Deep in the forest's shady realm,
Hold tuneful choirs of feathered folk.

I gaze, and all is fair to see--
I listen, and the songs are good;
My singers are of high degree,
The prima donnas of the wood.

Here, then, I find my concert-hall,
My columned temple and my shrine,
God's perfect handiwork--and all
To draw me nearer the divine.

Evening by Walter de la Mare

Evening
Walter de la Mare

When twilight darkens, and one by one,
The sweet birds to their nests have gone;
When to green banks the glow-worms bring
Pale lamps to brighten evening;
Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl
Through the dewy air to prowl.

Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits,
While the small mouse atrembling sits
With tiny eye of fear upcast
Until his brooding shape be past,
Hiding her where the moonbeams beat,
Casting black shadows in the wheat.

Now all is still: the field-man is
Lapped deep in slumbering silentness.
Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high
Pass in dim flocks across the sky,
Puffed by a breeze too light to move
Aught but these wakeful sheep above.

O what an arch of light now spans
These fields by night no longer Man's!
Their ancient Master is abroad,
Walking beneath the moonlight cold:
His presence is the stillness, He

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth

Music:
Lindsey Stirling What Child is This

Excerpts from
"Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
William Wordsworth

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Emile Vernon Art

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—

Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

I Am Vertical BY Sylvia Plath

Hanz Zatska Art

I Am Vertical
BY Sylvia Plath

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Universal love:The poetry of Ella wheller Wilcox:Solitude poem *The World's Need poem*The Need of the World poem*One Sad Truth poem

Music:
Nicos Hadzopoulos-Beginning(Belalim)

Solitude
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850-1919)

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau Art

The World's Need
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

So many gods
So many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind
While just the art of being kind
is all this sad world needs.

I am the voice of the voiceless
Through me the mute shall speak
'til the deaf world's ear
be made to hear
the cry of the wordless weak.

From lab, from cage, from kennel,
from slaughterhouses, comes the wail
of my tortured kin
who proclaim the sin
of the mighty against the frail.

For love is the true religion
And love is the law sublime
And all that is wrought
where love is not
will die with the touch of time.

Oh, shame on the mothers of mortals
Who have not stopped to teach
of the sorrow that lies
in an animal's eyes;
the sorrow that has no speech.

The same power formed the sparrow
that fashioned man; the king
The god of the whole
gave a living soul
to furred and to feathered thing.

And I am my brother's keeper
And I will fight his fight
and speak the word
for beast and bird
til the world shall set things right.

THE NEED OF THE WORLD
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I know the need of the world,
Though it would not have me know.
It would hide its sorrow deep,
Where only God may go.
Yet its secret it can not keep;
It tells it awake, or asleep,
It tells it to all who will heed,
And he who runs may read.
The need of the world I know.

I know the need of the world,
When it boasts of its wealth the loudest,
When it flaunts it in all men's eyes,
When its mien is the gayest and proudest.
Oh! ever it lies--it lies,
For the sound of its laughter dies
In a sob and a smothered moan,
And it weeps when it sits alone.
The need of the world I know.

I know the need of the world.
When the earth shakes under the tread
Of men who march to the fight,
When rivers with blood are red
And there is no law but might,
And the wrong way seems the right;
When he who slaughters the most
Is all men's pride and boast,
The need of the world I know.

I know the need of the world.
When it babbles of gold and fame,
It is only to lead us astray
From the thing that it dare not name,
For this is the sad world's way.
Oh! poor blind world grown grey
With the need of a thing so near,
With the want of a thing so dear.
The need of the world I know.

The need of the world is love.
Deep under the pride of power,
Down under its lust of greed,
For the joys that last but an hour,
There lies forever its need.
For love is the law and the creed
And love is the unnamed goal
Of life, from man to the mole.
Love is the need of the world.

Vidan Art

One Sad Truth
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west-
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.