Poems

It’s been a very long time since I posted some of my favourite poems here (in fact I have done it only once before; see 'Fafaia'.) 

Here are three at one go.The first, by Robert Frost. It’s called Fire and Ice, and goes like this:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I have known of desire,
I hold with those who favour fire.
But – if it had to perish twice –
I think I know enough of hate
To think that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And should suffice.

The second, by Walter S. Landor:

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and next to nature, Art.
I warmed my hands before the fire of life:
It sinks,
And I am ready to depart.

Only the most supremely self-possessed of men can close their accounts so quietly; the worst that life and fate and the fear of death can do cannot break their spirits.

The last one, by Francis Bourdillon:

The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one,
But the light of a whole world dies
When the sun is gone.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one,
But the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

One test of genuine goodness is that its appeal never palls, never fades. I read all three poems in my teenage, and I adore them quite as much still. The only thing that has changed is the quality and depth of my appreciation: in connection with the third poem, for instance, I realize now (though I had suspicions even when I was very young) that the romantic affection between two young people is the commonest, cheapest, most evanescent variety of love; a higher love is that of parent for child, higher even is the love that keeps a true scientist going through adverse and discouraging circumstances, vastly higher still is the kind of love that makes patriotic martyrs and Florence Nightingales, and most sublime of all is the love of God.