From The Gettysburg Address - Abraham Lincoln

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.


But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Meditation of the Old Fisherman - W. B. Yeats

"You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,
Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;
In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart."

We Shall Find Peace - Anton Chekhov

"We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds."

From Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan

I fell in loe with my brother-in-law the way you fall asleepin the car when someone you trust is driving--gradually, by imperceptible degrees, letting the motion lull your eyes closed. Letting, that's the keyword.

Look to the Day - Sanskrit

Yesterday is already a dream, tomorrow is only a vision, but today ,well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, every tomorrow a vision of hope.

- Contributed by Don Warner

So Small A Thing - Matthew Arnold

It is so small a thing
to have enjoyed the sun
to have lived with the light
to have loved, to have felt and thought,
to have done.

- Contributed by Don Warner

Time is the Mercy of Eternity- Kenneth Rexroth

The long sunlight is golden
On the deep green grass and bright
Red flowers of the meadow.
I stop where I meander,
The brook forms a deep pool.
The water is greenish brown
But perfectly transparent
A small dense cloud of hundreds
Of midges, no bigger than my head,
hovers over it,
On the bank two small frogs.
In the water are beetles
Hydras, waterbugs, larvae
of several insects
It is like peering into an inkspot
and finding yourself staring
Out into the Milky Way
The deep vibration of my identity
With all this plentitude of life
Leaves me shaken and giddy.
I step softly across the meadow.

Little Gidding- by T.S.Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown , remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning,
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall.

The Sea- By Donald Hall

The drunken waves argue
the same sentences
over and over, as if
no one will understand them.

Splendour in the Grass -William Wordsworth

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.

From: "A Few Figs from Thistles" -Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light.


1920US poet (1892 - 1950)

From: A Ship Made of Paper

“The sky is dark blue and the autumn sun is warm and steady, as if promising that winter will never arrive. A slow breeze moves down the street, carrying the perfume of the slowly dying leaves, a nearby field’s last mowing, the river. What can the world do to you with its beauty? Can it lift you up on its shoulders, as if you were a hero, can it whoopsie-daisy you up in to its arms as if you were a child? Can it goad your timid heart, urge you on to finally seize what you most shamefully desire? Yes, yes, all that and more. The world can crush you with its beauty.”

- A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer