Category: Poetry

  • The Path That Leads Nowhere

    The Path That Leads Nowhere

    **THE PATH THAT LEADS
    NOWHERE**

    THERE’S a path that leads to Nowhere
    In a meadow that I know,
    Where an inland island rises
    And the stream is still and slow;
    There it wanders under willows,
    And beneath the silver green
    Of the birches’ silent shadows
    Where the early violets lean.

    Other pathways lead to Somewhere,
    But the one I love so well
    Has no end and no beginning—
    Just the beauty of the dell,
    Just the wind-flowers and the lilies
    Yellow-striped as adder’s tongue,
    Seem to satisfy my pathway
    As it winds their scents among.

    There I go to meet the Springtime,
    When the meadow is aglow,
    Marigolds amid the marshes,—
    And the stream is still and slow.
    There I find my fair oasis,
    And with care-free feet I tread
    For the pathway leads to Nowhere,
    And the blue is overhead!

    All the ways that lead to Somewhere
    Echo with the hurrying feet
    Of the Struggling and the Striving,
    But the way I find so sweet
    Bids me dream and bids me linger,
    Joy and Beauty are its goal,—
    On the path that leads to Nowhere
    I have sometimes found my soul!

    By: Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (1861-1933)

    Corinne Roosevelt Robinson was the sister of United States President Theodore Roosevelt. The Path That Leads Nowhere can be found in:

    • Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt. The Poems of Corinne Roosevelt Robinson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921.
    • Felleman, Hazel, ed. The Best Loved Poems of the American People. Garden City, NY: Garden City Books, 1936.

    Found on Poem of the Week PotW.org

  • God’s Grandeur

    Beauty in nature

    God’s Grandeur

    THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
    Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
    From Bartelby.com

    I don’t know where I saved this link from but I had it in my bookmarks from a while back.