Archive for the ‘poetry’ Category

I used to Shun My Companion

I used to shun my companion
if his religion was not like mine;
but not my heart accepts every form.
It is a pasturage for gazelles, a monastery for monkss,
a temple of idols, a Ka'ba for the pilgrim,
the tables of the Torah, the holy book of the Qur'an.
Love alone is my religion, and whichever way
its horses turn, that is my faith and creed.

Anonymous

From Music of a Distant Drum, Bernard Lewis – Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew Poems

God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

poem

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.

 

 

By: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Photo from: Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

 

As Once the Winged Elergy

 

As Once The Winged Energy

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions…For the god
wants to know himself in you.

 

By: Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke Poetry

Photo by Kamalika Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

Quote: Enlightened people know Themselves

flower

Intelligent people know others.

Enlightened people know themselves.

You can conquer others with power,

But it takes true strength to conquer yourself.

Lao Tzu

Photo by Tejvan, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

T’is So Much Joy

 

poem

‘T is so Much Joy

 

’T is so much joy! ’T is so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I
Have ventured all upon a throw;
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so
This side the victory!

Life is but life, and death but death!
Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!
And if, indeed, I fail,
At least to know the worst is sweet.
Defeat means nothing but defeat,
No drearier can prevail!

And if I gain,—oh, gun at sea,
Oh, bells that in the steeples be,
At first repeat it slow!
For heaven is a different thing
Conjectured, and waked sudden in,
And might o’erwhelm me so!

By: Emily Dickinson

Photo by Tejvan Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

 

Love Poems from God

 

THE SANCTUARY

 

It could be said that God’s foot is so vast
That this entire earth is but a
field on His
toe,

and all the forests in this world
came from the same root of just
a single hair
of His.

What then is not a sanctuary?
Where can I not kneel
and pray at a shrine
made holy by His
presence?

 

By: St Catherine of Siena

From “Love Poems From God” by Daniel Ladinsky.
Copyright © 1999 by Daniel Ladinsky. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Photo by Sharani Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

 

Poem by Kabir – The Moon Shines

 

The Moon Shines

 

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf  ears cannot hear it. 

So long as man clamours for the "I" and the "Mine",  his works are as naught:
When all love of the "I" and the "Mine" is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.

For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away. 

The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass. 

 

 

By: Kabir

Translated: Rabindranath Tagore

 

Love’s Philosophy – Shelley

 

Love’s Philosophy

 

THE fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

 

By: Percy B. Shelley