Poems
This Is My Rock
by David McCord
This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun;
This is my rock And here come I Before the night has swept the sky;
This is my rock, This is the place I meet the evening face to face.
Afternoon on a Hill
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine, And then start down!
Pippa’s Song
by Robert Browning
The year’s at the spring And day’s at the morn; Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn: God’s in His heaven— All’s right with the
world!
Follow the Gleam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A Word
by Emily Dickinson
A word is dead When it is said, Some say.
I say it just Begins to live That day.
Certainty
by Emily Dickinson
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given.
Not of the sunlight, Not of the moonlight, Not of the starlight! 0 young
Mariner, Down to the haven, Call your companions,
Launch your vessel, And crowd your canvas, And ere it vanishes Over the
margin, After it, follow it, Follow The Gleam.
The Prayer of the Little Bird by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold
translated by Rumer Godden
Dear God,
I don’t know how to pray by myself very well, but will You please
protect my little nest from wind and rain? Put a great deal of dew on
the flowers, many seeds in my way.
Make Your blue very high, Your branches lissom;
let Your kind light stay late in the sky and set my heart brimming with
such music that I must sing, sing, sing. . . . Please, Lord.
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking by Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking I shall not live in vain, If I can
ease one life the aching Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in
vain.
Others by Harry Behn
Even though it’s raining I don’t wish it wouldn’t.
That would be like saying
I think it shouldn’t.
Pd rather be out playing
Than sitting hours and hours Watching rain falling In drips and drops
and showers, But what about the robins? What about the flowers?
Dreams
by Langston Hughes
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.
Auguries of Innocence
by William Blake
To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold
Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.
To Dark Eyes Dreaming
by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Dreams go fast and far these days.
They go by rocket thrust.
They go arrayed
in lights
or in the dust of stars.
Dreams, these days, go fast and far.
Dreams are young, these days,
or very old, They can be black or blue or gold.
They need no special charts, nor any fuel.
It seems, only one rule applies, to all our dreams—
They will not fly except in open sky.
A fenced-in dream will die.
