Tag: yeats

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! (I apologize for not publishing a post yesterday. Distractions abounded!) Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I am going to feature some poems by Irish writers. The Irish have a way with melancholic writing like no others . . . .

“The Last Rose of Summer”

’Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh …

-Thomas Moore

“The Lost Land: Poems”

This is what language is:
a habitual grief. A turn of speech
for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses such as this:
which hurts
just enough to be a scar
And heals just enough to be a nation.

-Eavan Boland

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

-W.B. Yeats

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2552. What’s your favorite cereal? (Especially in honor of today, I am going to say, “Lucky Charms.”)

Soul Sunday

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
– W. B. Yeats

Good morning, friends and readers. I hope that you have slept soundly and are enjoying a lovely Sunday. Here at Adulting – Second Half, Sundays are devoted to poetry. Why is poetry important? Alice Osborn says it best, I think: “Poetry is so important because it helps us understand and appreciate the world around us. Poetry’s strength lies in its ability to shed a “sideways” light on the world, so the truth sneaks up on you. No question about it. Poetry teaches us how to live.” I think that as the Yeats quote from above says, the world is full of magic things. Poetry helps us to sharpen our sensitivities to all of the magic surrounding us.

The inaugural poem this year will be written and read by a 22-year-old poet named Amanda Gorman. She is the youngest poet to ever write and recite an inaugural poem. I cannot wait to read it. This is the poem that Robert Frost recited at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration:

“The Gift Outright”

Poem recited at John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration
by Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land’s 
She was our land more than a hundred years 
Before we were her people. She was ours 
In Massachusetts, in Virginia, 
But we were England’s, still colonials, 
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, 
Possessed by what we now no more possessed. 
Something we were withholding made us weak 
Until we found out that it was ourselves 
We were withholding from our land of living, 
And forthwith found salvation in surrender. 
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright 
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war) 
To the land vaguely realizing westward, 
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, 
Such as she was, such as she will become.

I would like to suggest that we all take some time today to play around with our own words, and to write our own inaugural poems. It would be an excellent way to express and to discharge all of the tumultuous thoughts and feelings that we may be having, about what is going on in our country, during these turbulent times. If you are so inclined, I would love to see your poems in my Comments section. You, my readers, are a blessing to me, to all of those who love you, and to yourselves, if you are doing a good job of self care. Do a good job of being the blessing that you are to the world!! Do a good job of just being “you”! That is your greatest offering to the world.

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.