Poem a Day

A light heart lives long.

-William Shakespeare

Give me a land of boughs in leaf
A land of trees that stand;
Where trees are fallen there is grief;
I love no leafless land.

-A.E. Housman

Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much the heart can hold.

-Zelda Fitzgerald

Sometimes I go about pitying myself,
and all the time
I am being carried on great winds across the sky.

-Ojibway

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

-Dorothy Parker

EDIT: I have received a request to remove this Robert Frost poem as it is still under copyright.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.

-Dante Alighieri

As a child I drew like Raphael, it took the rest of my life to draw like a child.

-Picasso

O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—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.

-Walt Whitman

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes

(Happy New Year, everybody!)