If the universe were a play or a poem, and you were to contribute only one verse (your own or your favorite), what would it be?
‘O me! O life!…
of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless—
of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’
Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?”
Walt Whitman
Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams
And I’ll show you a happy man
Tennyson
But only in their dreams can men be truly free
It was always thus and always thus will be.
Keating - Dead Poet’s Society
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately,
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived.
Thoreau
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.
We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.
And the human race is filled with passion.
And medicine, law, business, engineering,
these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.
But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
Dead Poet’s Society
O Captain! My Captain!
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately,
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived.
Thoreau
The Prophet
Teach me to Love? go teach thyself more wit;
I chief Professor am of it….
The God of Love, if such a thing there be,
May learn to love from Me.
He who does boast that he has been
In every Heart since Adamòs sin,
I’ll lay my Life, nay Mistress on’t that’s more;
I teach him thing he never knew before;
Cowley
Ulysses
…Come, my friends,
`Tis not too late to seek a newer world…
for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset,…
and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately,
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived.
Thoreau
