When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight, The light in the mind becomes dim. Things you could take in your stride before Now become laborsome events of will. Weariness invades your […]
A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou
When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule … globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace … We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life […]
A Bride Married to Amazement by Mary Oliver
When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, […]
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it […]
A Credo For My Relationships With Others by Thomas Gordon
You and I are in a relationship, which I value and want to keep. Yet each of us is a separate person with unique needs and the right to meet those needs. When you are having problems meeting your needs I will listen with genuine acceptance so as to facilitate your finding your own solutions […]
A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity by Theodore Parker
Delivered at the Ordination of Rev. Charles C. Shackford in the Hawes Place Church, Boston on May 19, 1841 Luke xxi.33. “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my word shall not pass away.” In this sentence we have a very clear indication that Jesus of Nazareth believed the religion he taught would be eternal, […]
A Fatherhood excerpt from The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg
A father sees a son nearing manhood. What shall he tell that son? ‘Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.’ And this might stand him for the storms and serve him for humdrum and monotony and guide him amid sudden betrayals and tighten him for slack moments. ‘Life is a soft loam; be gentle; […]
A Gift by Denise Levertov
Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant […]
A Girl’s Garden by Robert Frost
A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, “Why not?” In casting about for a […]
A Golden Christmas by Rev. Frank Hall
She sat in front of the old black stove, alone, except for the gray cat who slept curled up on the small braided rug. The room was quiet, too, except for the muffled crackling sounds of burning wood. Eighty-five winters had come to her, and gone again, but they were with her still when memories […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 45
- Next Page »