Trust poems
/ page 55 of 157 /Life Is A Dream - Act III
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all
Three Songs Of The Enigma
© Robert Nichols
The hopeless rain, a sigh, a shadow
Falters and drifts again, again over the meadow,
It wanders lost, drifts hither . . . thither,
It blows, it goes, it knows not whither.
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
Upon my Son Samuel his goeing for England, Novem. 6, 1657.
© Anne Bradstreet
Thou mighty God of Sea and Land,
I here resigne into thy hand
Emily Hardcastle, Spinster
© John Crowe Ransom
We shall come tomorrow morning, who were not to have her love,
We shall bring no face of envy but a gift of praise and lilies
To the stately ceremonial we are not the heroes of.
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire
© George Gordon Byron
These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;
While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.
My Father Photographed With Friends
© William Bronk
This is my father photographed with friends, when he was young.
Unsettled on the steps of a wooden porch, and the one
Epitaph On A Beloved Friend
© George Gordon Byron
Oh, Friend! for ever loved, for ever dear!
What fruitless tears have bathed thy honour'd bier!
What sighs re'echo'd to thy parting breath,
Wilst thou wast struggling in the pangs of death!
The Amateur Photographer
© Norman Rowland Gale
Beware of those who slyly pilch
In many cunning ways;
Come Si Quando
© Robert Seymour Bridges
How thickly the far fields of heaven are strewn with stars !
Tho* the open eye of day shendeth them with its glare
The Wood-Spring To The Poet
© Duncan Campbell Scott
Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
Give! for 'tis thy joyous doom
To charm, to comfort, to illume.
Try Before You Trust
© Thomas Vaux
To counsel my estate, abandoned to the spoil
Of forged friends, whose grossest fraud is set with finest foil;
To verify true dealing wights, whose trust no treason dreads,
And all too dear th'acquaintance be, of such most harmful heads;
I am advised thus: who so doth friend, friend so,
As though tomorrow next he feared for to become a foe.
As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free
© Walt Whitman
. As a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.
To the Moon [Earlier Version]
© Charles Harpur
WITH silent step behold her steal
Over those envious clouds that hid
Fit The Second - The Bellman's Speech
© Lewis Carroll
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!
Andrew Rykmans Prayer
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Andrew Rykman's dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.
Two Gentlemen That Broke Their Promise
© James Shirley
There is no faith in claret, and it shall
Henceforth with me be held apocryphal.
Face To Face
© Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
Oh, face to face with trouble,
friend, I have often stood,
Written In A Diary
© Frances Anne Kemble
They who go down to the relentless deep,
After long horrible death of cold and drought
The Bakchesarian Fountain
© Alexander Pushkin
Has treason scaled the harem's wall,
Whose height might treason's self appal,
And slavery's daughter fled his power,
To yield her to the daring Giaour?