Poems Week 4

We're going out with a bang! Thanks, everyone, for playing along with me.

"The Buried Life," Matthew Arnold 1852, courtesy of Heather


But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;

A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves--

I hope this excerpt makes you want to read the whole poem. It's a beautiful--albeit lengthy--poem that makes me wonder . . .

• How do you unearth your "buried life" in the midst of daily living?

• What is the price to be paid for just skimming the surface of life instead?

"Dancing Through Life" Wicked, Stephen Schwartz 2004, courtesy of Kate


Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The only reason I know this quote is Fiyero mangles it in his song:

But I say, why invite stress in?
Stop studying strife
And learn to live "the unexamined life"...
Dancing through life
Skimming the surface
Gliding where turf is smooth
Life's more painless
For the brainless
Why think too hard?
When it's so soothing
Dancing through life
No need to tough it
When you can sluff it off as I do
Nothing matters
But knowing nothing matters
It's just life
So keep dancing through..."

I think that like Fiyero, when we skim the surface, we miss out on deeper growing experiences--unpleasant as they may seem.

"Sonnet 116," William Shakespeare 1609, Courtesy of Megan



Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

My eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Minson, did the role call in class to a poem. Instead of calling out "here" we took turns reciting a line from an assigned poem that we were working to memorize. If a line wasn't recited, she knew someone was absent. Pretty clever idea. I remember some of the poems we did, including part of "The Bells," and "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley. She said that the lines of a poem helped her friend climb some great mountain (maybe Everest, I don't recall). She talked about the power of poetry to help you overcome great physical feats. I memorized this poem awhile back, along with other things in hopes that it would help me through childbirth. I thought about its meaning a little at the time. However, it wasn't until some time later, that I had an experience where the words really came to mean so much to me. We are imperfect people and yet our love, devotion, commitment, faithfulness and actions must remain constant as we recognize the imperfections that lie within others and ourselves. That, to me, is love. How would you define it? What do you remember about your eighth grade English class? anything about poetry? and, finally, what has poetry done to help you?