Life Owes Me Nothing

Life owes me nothing. Let the years
Bring clouds or azure, joy or tears,
Already a full cup I’ve quaffed;
Already wept and loved and laughed,
And seen, in ever endless ways,
New beauties overwhelm the days.
Life owes me naught. No pain that waits
Can steal the wealth from memories gates;
No aftermath of anguish slow
Can quench the soul-fires early glow.
I breathe, exulting, each new breath,
Embracing Life, ignoring Death.
Life owes me nothing. One clear morn
Is boon enough for being born;
And be it ninety years or ten
No need for me to question when.
While life is mine, I’ll find it good,
And greet each hour with gratitude.
(unknown)

The Survivor

When the last day is ended,
And the nights are through;
When the sun is buried
In its grave of blue;

When the stars are snuffed like candles,
And the seas no longer fret;
When the winds unlearn their cunning,
and the storms forget;

When the last lip is palsied,
And the last prayer said;
Love shall reign immortal,
While the worlds lie dead!
Frederick Lawrence Knowles

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Beware the Man
Beware the man who tries to fit you outIn his idea of a hat.
Dictating the colour and the shape of it.
He takes your head and carefully measures it
Says of course "black's out"
He sees himself in the big black hat.
So you may be a member of the act
He makes for you your special coloured hat.
Beware!
He's fitting you for more than that.

Sam Hunt

In No Strange Land

In No Strange Land

The kingdom of God is within you

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson