I try in vain to stem the tide
To see in stillness beauty untold
I try in vain to slow the ride
Not knowing
Beauty lies in how things unfold!
If the striker thinks he scores
Or the keeper cries in shame
They understand not the crowd’s applause
I make, and hear and earn again
For I am the crowd and I am the ball
I am the triumph and the blame
I am the turf, the pies, the All
Always and ever, I am the Game.
It matters not who won or lost
Nothing is the score you made
Fame is a petal that curls in the frost
But I will remember how you played.
–Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
–P.B. Shelley
A lovely poem by James Kavanaugh. I don’t know its title.
Some people do not have to search
they find their niche early in life and rest there,
seemingly contented and resigned.
They do not seem to ask much of life,
sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously.
At times I envy them,
but usually I do not understand them
seldom do they understand me.
Another lovely poem by James Kavanaugh.
I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
As 007 walked by
He heard a wee spider say, “Hi.”
But shaken, he shot
It right there on the spot
As it tried to explain, “I’m a spi …”