ODE
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers & shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kindom down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that's dying,
Or one that's coming to birth.

Arthur William O'Shaughnessy

Hyacinths

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left
Sell one and with the dole
Buy Hyacinths to feed thy soul.

  The Gulistan of Moslih Eddin Saadi

From Rabbi Ben Ezra

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The least of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
     Robert Browning

Remember
Remember me when I am gone away, 
Gone far away into the silent land; 
When you can no more hold me by the hand, 
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. 
Remember me when no more day by day 
You tell me of our future that you plann'd: 
Only remember me; you understand 
It will be late to counsel then or pray. 
Yet if you should forget me for a while 
And afterwards remember, do not grieve: 
For if the darkness and corruption leave 
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, 
Better by far you should forget and smile 
Than that you should remember and be sad. 

          Christina Georgina Rossetti

Fate

Two shall be born the whole wide world apart
And speak in different tongues and have no thought
Each of the other's being, and no heed;
And these, o'er unknown seas to unknown lands
 Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death;
And all unconsciously shape each act
 And bend each wandering step to this one end -
That one day out of darkness they shall meet
And read life's meaning in each other's eyes.

And two shall walk some narrow way of life
So nearly side by side that should one turn 
Ever so little space left or right
They needs must stand acknowledged, face to face,
And yet, with wistful eyes that never meet,
With groping hands that never clasp, and lips
Calling in vain to ears that never hear,
They seek each other all their weary days
And die unsatisfied - and this is Fate! 

          Susan Marr Spalding

The Rainy Day
The day is cold, and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all.
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

          Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Pity me not that the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky.
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by.
Pity me not the waning of the moon 
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea.
Nor that a man's desire can be hushed so soon
And you no longer look with love on me.

These things 
I have always known, that love is no more
Than the wide blossom that the wind assails.
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered by the gales.
Pity me the heart so slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

          Edna St Vincent Millay

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops - at all

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of Me.

          Emily Dickinson