Kaleidoscope

Mary Oliver's poems are very simple and heart touching. "The Journey" is no exception.

Tribute to Mary Oliver for this wonderful piece of work. Thanks to www.allspirit.co.uk for the online version. 

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.

Thanks to George Bernard Shaw & www.thinkexist.com

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."

- One of the last notes left behind by Gandhi in 1948, expressing his deepest social thought.

Tribute to Gandhiji and thanks to www.mkgandhi.org. 

      CALM is all nature as a resting wheel.
      The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
      The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
      Is cropping audibly his later meal:
      Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
      O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.
      Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
      Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
      That grief for which the senses still supply
      Fresh food; for only then, when memory
      Is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! restrain
      Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
      Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
      The officious touch that makes me droop again.

Tribute to Wordsworth for a thoughtful poem. Thanks to www.poetseers.org for the image. Thanks to www.betleby.com for the online version of the poem.

“Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state. There is as little reason to deplore the one as there is to be pleased over the other."

            - Thanks to Mahatma Gandhi and to www.thinkexist.com

“Be the change you want to see in the world."

                                          - Mahatma Gandhi
 

A wonderfully magnificent poem....Tribute to William Wordsworth. Thanks to www.online-literature.com for the electronic version of the poem.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

“But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good."

Thanks to Oscar Wilde and to www.thinkexist.com

 

Life is given to us,
we earn it by giving it.

Thanks to Rabindranath Tagore and to www.poetseers.org 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Thanks to Winston Churchill and to www.wisdomquotes.com

 “You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

Thanks to Kahlil Gibran. Thanks to www.thinkexist.com for the online version of the quote.

What a refreshing poem it is by none other than Mary Oliver. Tribute to Mary for such an excellent, heart touching poem.

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

Thanks to www.bridgewater.edu for the image of Mary Oliver.

Thanks to http://www.english.uiuc.edu for the online version of the poem.

The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become.

Thanks to Harold Taylor and http://about.quotations.com

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