My Own Heart

My own heart let me have more pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
’s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.



--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), English poet, mystic and Catholic priest, located at Hopkins Poetry. This is one of his "dark sonnets" written in 1885.

Study Guide for this poem found here.

Scripture reference and lectionary link: Easter 3C, John 21:1-19

Image: "Christ's Charge to Peter," Raphael, 1515

The Sirens

I never knew the road
From which the whole earth didn't call away,
With wild birds rounding the hill crowns,
Haling out of the heart an old dismay,
Or the shore somewhere pounding out its slow code,
Or low-lighted towns
Seeming to tell me, stay.

Lands I have never seen
And shall not see, loves I will not forget,
And I have missed, or slighted, or foregone
Call to me now. And weaken me. And yet
I would not walk a road without a scene.
I listen going on,
The richer for regret.

-- Richard Wilbur (1921-1917), US poet laureate 1987-1988

Rue

For what I did 
And did not do 
And do without 
In my old age
Rue, not rage 
Against that night 
We go into, 
Sets me straight 
On what to do 
Before I die —  
Sit in the shade, 
Look at the sky


--Samuel Menashe (1925-2011) found at http://ghpoetryplace.blogspot.com/2012/03/rue.html

Photo: Peter considers his denial of Jesus, detail from the Passion-side walls of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

When You Are Old

WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 

-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Burns' Supper

Oh you speak the words locked in my breast
But it's late for me, let an old man rest
One more black and tan on the barricade
To keep me safe from loving
When I close my eyes, close my eyes
To the cold flame of the Northern Lights
When I close my eyes, close my eyes
And I see you still in the shuttered night

What a new-found friend is honesty
To see ourselves as others see
To see the shy boy inside the man
Is that all I am? Just starved of loving

When I close my eyes, I close my eyes
To the cold flame of the Northern Lights
When I close my eyes, close my eyes
And I see you still in the shuttered night

--Richard Thompson, from the album "You? Me? Us?" 1996
Cover by Annie Savoy and Linda Ronstadt from the album "Adieu False Heart"