The Life List: Memorize 25 Poems (#2)

For Christmas my grandparents gave me Good Poems, an anthology of poetry edited by Garrison Keillor. I've been reading a poem a day, and this one made me laugh.



Routine 
By Arthur Guiterman

No matter what we are and who,
Some duties everyone must do. 

A Poet puts aside his wreath
To wash his face and brush his teeth,

    And even Earls
    Must comb their curls,

   And even Kings
   Have underthings.

The House of Christmas

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.


-G.K. Chesterton

The Life List: Memorize 25 poems (#1)

My first encounter with Emily Dickinson, at least that I remember, was in ninth grade English. Our old, strange, awesome teacher, Mr. Colonell, had us explicate a bunch of poems, including several by Dickinson, and in most cases, I only remember the first few lines.  But this one stuck with me.


1129
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —


*In the interest of full disclosure, I did have to look up capitalizations and the poem number.