Wonder (poems)
Happy Thought
Robert Louis Stevenson
The world is so full of a number of thing
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
It is with awe
Matsuo Basho
It is with awe
That I beheld
Fresh leaves, green leaves,
Bright in the sun
Gazing at Mount Lu’s Waterfall
Li Bai
Sunlight shines on Lushan, in a purple haze,
From afar, like a veil, a waterfall hangs.
Water cascading three thousand feet from the sky,
Is the Celestial River falling from heaven on high?
Sometimes
Mary Oliver
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Oliver Wilde
It takes great courage
To see the world
In all its tainted glory
And still love it
Felicity
Mary Oliver
Do you bow your head
when you pray or do you
look up into that blue space?
Take your choice,
prayers fly from all directions
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Path
Sylvia Path
Remember, remember,
this is now,
and now,
and now.
Live it, feel it, cling to it.
I want to become
acutely aware
of all I’ve taken
for granted.
To see the world in a grain of sand
William Blake
To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
My heart leaps up
William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Christy Ann Martine
Dance beneath the stars
As you drink in the night.
Let the thunder overtake you
As lightening fills the sky.
Feel the force of nature
Penetrate your skin,
Spin with the world
As the magic sinks in.
Small Ones
Jet Widick
What makes me happy?
Little things
They light the way
Brighten everything
Small ones are sweet surprises
Simple prayers with wings
Bring goodness
This moment is everything.
Wakin’ Up
Jet Widick
Every morning
Full of wonder
Anticipation
New day creation
Curiosity celebration
Kindness donation
Patience, love, elation
Wonder
Jet Widick
There is so much wonder that wouldn’t exist
Without kindness
So simple right?
Angels in flight
Incredibly huge to me
Grateful for eternity
Concerning That Book That is the Body of the Beloved
Gregory Orr
.. I see each object
gilded and glowing in the sun,
know the sum of them
is the beautiful body
of the beloved,
which is the world.
Miracles
Walt Whitman
To me,
Every hour
Of the day
And night
Is an
Unspeakably
Perfect
Miracle.
I like to Wander Off Alone
Annette Wynne
I like to wander off alone
And climb upon a great tall stone,
And wonder.
Kathleen Raine
I’ve read all the books but one
Only remains sacred: this
Volume of wonders, open
Always before my eyes.
You Can Measure The Steeple
Annette Wynne
You can measure the steeple that’s close to the sky,
You can burrow to where the gold grains lie,
But a little girl’s wonder is very big—
Too high to climb and too deep to dig.
Bright Star
John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors …
Christy Ann Martine
She lost herself in the trees
Among the ever-changing leaves.
She wept beneath the wild sky
As stars told stories of ancient times.
The flowers grew towards her light,
The river called her name at night.
She could not live an ordinary life
With the mysteries of the universe
Hidden in her eyes.
Wonder – is not precisely Knowing
Emily Dickinson
Wonder — is not precisely Knowing
And not precisely Knowing not —
A beautiful but bleak condition
He has not lived who has not felt —
Suspense — is his maturer Sister —
Whether Adult Delight is Pain
Or of itself a new misgiving —
This is the Gnat that mangles men
My Heart Soars
Chief Dan George
The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass,
speaks to me.
The summit of the mountain,
the thunder of the sky,
speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars,
the trail of the sun,
the strength of fire,
and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me.
And my heart soars.
Firekeeper
Pattiann Rogers
Straight up from this road
Away from the fitted particles of frost
Coating the hull of each chick pea,
And the stiff archer bug making its way
In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
Up the stem of the trillim,
Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
I try to remember that.
The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free
Holy Now
Peter Mayer
This morning outside I stood
I saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is Holy Now
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand me down
But I walk it with a reverent air
Cause everything is Holy Now’
Everything, Everything, Everything is Holy Now
When Death Comes
Mary Oliver
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
House Of Light
Mary Oliver
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.
John Moffitt
To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
“I have seen spring in these
Woods,” will not do – you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.
Open Your Eyes
Emma Boge Whisenand
Open your eye that you may see
The beauty that around you lies,
The misty loveliness of the dawn,
The glowing colors of the skies;
The Child’s bright eager eyes of blue,
The gnarled and wrinkled face of age,
The bird with crimson on his wing
Whose spirit never knew a cage;
The roadsides blooming goldenrod
So brave through summer’s wind and heat,
The brook that rushes to the sea
With courage that naught may defeat.
Open your eyes that you may see
The wonder that around you lies;
It will enrich your every day
And make you glad and kind and wise.
Young Angel
Aimee Davies
A young girl came to me today
And asked me if fairies are to stay?
I said what do you mean little one?
She said her parents could see none.
I told her all things magical and real
Stop being true when you no longer feel.
She asked me with a little voice of purity,
“Does the moon speak?
Do the trees wave hello?
Do the stars sparkle on show?
Because adults have told me no.”
I told her in gentleness and care,
The heart speaks on the midnight air
But those that listen are few and rare.
Her wonder-filled eyes began to glow,
And she whispered,
“I know, I know”
Sunday Morning
Wallace Stevens
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wonder
Thomas Traherne
How like an angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
When first among his works I did appear
O how their glory me did crown!
The world resembled his eternity,
In which my soul did walk;
And ev’ry thing that I did see
Did with me talk.
The skies in their magnificence,
The lively, lovely air;
Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!
The stars did entertain my sense,
And all the works of God, so bright and pure,
So rich and great did seem,
As if they ever must endure
In my esteem.
A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all spirit. I within did flow
With seas of life, like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ’twas divine.
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.