A Little While, A Little While


A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile,
Alike, while I have holiday.

Why wilt thou go, my harassed heart,
What thought, what scene invites thee now?
What spot, or near or far,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?

There is a spot, mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.

The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight's dome;
But what on earth is half so dear,
So longed for, as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown,
I love them, how I love them all!

Still, as I mused, the naked room,
The alien firelight died away,
And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright unclouded day.

A little and a lone green lane
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain
Of mountains circling every side;

A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And, deepening still the dream-like charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.

That was the scene, I knew it well;
I knew the turfy pathway's sweep
That, winding o'er each billowy swell,
Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep.

Even as I stood with raptured eye,
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear,
My hour of rest had fleeted by,
And back came labour, bondage, care.

Emily Brontë

Life

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily
Enjoy them as they fly!
What though Death at times steps in,
And calls our Best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway?
Yet Hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!

- Charlotte Bronte

I have always been a great fan of William Wordsworth's poems. May be because he was also a nature lover.:) The following poem has been one of my favourites:

FORESIGHT

THAT is work of waste and ruin--
Do as Charles and I are doing!
Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
We must spare them--here are many:
Look at it--the flower is small,
Small and low, though fair as any:
Do not touch it! summers two
I am older, Anne, than you.

Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
Pull as many as you can.
--Here are daisies, take your fill;
Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower:
Of the lofty daffodil
Make your bed, or make your bower;
Fill your lap, and fill your bosom;
Only spare the strawberry-blossom!

Primroses, the Spring may love them--
Summer knows but little of them:
Violets, a barren kind,
Withered on the ground must lie;
Daisies leave no fruit behind
When the pretty flowerets die;
Pluck them, and another year
As many will be blowing here.

God has given a kindlier power
To the favoured strawberry-flower.
Hither soon as spring is fled
You and Charles and I will walk;
Lurking berries, ripe and red,
Then will hang on every stalk,
Each within its leafy bower;
And for that promise spare the flower!

Lift up yourself by yourself
Examine yourself by yourself
Thus self protected and attentive
You will live joyfully
For self is the master of self
Self is the refuge of self
Therefore tame yourself
Like a merchant tames a noble horse

- BUDDHA

Read this in a mail:

Life is a mountain.
Reaching its peak is my aim.
However trails are difficult to go through.

But the important things are-
The lessons that I have learnt,
The challenges that I have experienced,
And the people I am with in my journey.

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
~W.B. Yeats

A song to sing,
A poem to read,
A walk by the river,
A glimpse of the greenery,
And the loved one by my side,
They are all I need to build a heaven.

Things work out

Because it rains when we wish it wouldn't,
Because men do what they often shouldn't,
Because crops fail, and plans go wrong-
Some of us grumble all day long.
But somehow, in spite of the care and doubt,
It seems at last that things work out.


Because we lose where we hoped to gain,
Because we suffer a little pain,
Because we must work when we'd like to play-
Some of us whimper along life's way.
But somehow, as day always follows the night,
Most of our troubles work out all right.


Because we cannot forever smile,
Because we must trudge in the dust awhile,
Because we think that the way is long-
Some of us whimper that life's all wrong.
But somehow we live and our sky grows bright,
And everything seems to work out all right.


So bend to your trouble and meet your care,
For the clouds must break, and the sky grow fair.
Let the rain come down, as it must and will,
But keep on working and hoping still.
For in spite of the grumblers who stand about,
Somehow, it seems, all things work out.

- Edgar. A. Guest

"Twenty years from now
you will be more disappointed by the thing
that you didn't do
than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor
Catch the trade winds in your sails.

"Explore, Dream, Discover"

- Mark Twain

Don't Quit.

Don't quit when the tide is lowest,
For it's just about to turn;
Don't Quit over doubts and questions,
For there's something you may learn.
Don't quit when the night is darkest,
For it's just a while 'til dawn;
Don't quit when you've run the farthest,
For the race is almost won.
Don't quit when the hill is steepest,
For your goal is almost nigh;
Don't quit, for you're not a failure
Until you fail to try.

~ Author unknown~

Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're truding seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit --
Rest if you must, but don't you quit!

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a person turns about
When they might have won had they stuck it out,
Don't give up though the pace seems slow --
You may succeed with another blow,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victors cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown!

Success is failure turned inside out!
So stick to the fight when you are hardest hit!
Its when things seem worst that you mustn't quit!

written by
Author Unknown

Robert Frost's poem

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- From " The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

I have read this poem several times and always wondered about the "sigh" for taking the road less travelled. Finally I found the answer in one of the sites about Robert Frost's poetry:

The inspiration for it (The Road Not Taken) came from Frost’s amusement over a familiar mannerism of his closest friend in England, Edward Thomas. While living in Gloucestershire in 1914, Frost frequently took long walks with Thomas through the countryside. Repeatedly Thomas would choose a route which might enable him to show his American friend a rare plant or a special vista; but it often happened that before the end of such a walk Thomas would regret the choice he had made and would sigh over what he might have shown Frost if they had taken a "better" direction. More than once, on such occasions, the New Englander had teased his Welsh-English friend for those wasted regrets. Disciplined by the austere biblical notion that a man, having put his hand to the plow, should not look back, Frost found something quaintly romantic in sighing over what might have been. Such a course of action was a road never taken by Frost, a road he had been taught to avoid. In a reminiscent mood, not very long after his return to America as a successful, newly discovered poet, Frost pretended to "carry himself" in the manner of Edward Thomas just long enough to write "The Road Not Taken". Immediately, he sent a manuscript copy of the poem to Thomas, without comment, and yet with the expectation that his friend would notice how the poem pivots ironically on the un-Frostian phase, "I shall be telling this with a sign". As it turned out Frost’s expectations were disappointed. Thomas missed the gentle jest because the irony had been handled too slyly, too subtly.

A short time later, when "The Road Not Taken" was published in the Atlantic Monthly for August 1915, Frost hoped that some of his American readers would recognize the pivotal irony of the poem; but again he was disappointed. Self-defensively he began to drop hints as he read "The Road Not Taken" before public audiences. On one occasion he told of receiving a letter from a grammar-school girl who asked a good question of him: "Why the sigh?" That letter and that question, he said, had prompted an answer. End of the hint. On another occasion, after another public reading of "The Road Not Taken", he gave more pointed warnings: "You have to be careful of that one; it’s a trick poem – very tricky". Never did he admit that he carried himself and his ironies too subtly in that poem, but the circumstances are worth remembering here as an illustration that Frost repeatedly liked to "carry himself" dramatically, in a poem or letter, by assuming a posture not his own, simply for purposes of mockery – some times gentle and at other times malicious.