If by Rudyard Kipling

 

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Copied from poetry foundation

 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

Beyond the Road by Troydon Wainwright

 A poem by Troydon Wainwright 1st March 2015

While going through some papers, I found this gem. A poem written for me whilst I was living in Cape Town, South Africa.

Beyond the Road

I walked as far as the road goes
Then beyond the road
To who knows where

It was easy to get lost there
With no path or signs anywhere

I had no map or stars for guide
All I had were vistas wide
And the open air

And being the first to travel that way
I had no one to follow
But destiny

The Invitation

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk
looking like a fool for love for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own without moving to hide it
or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful
to be realistic to remember the limitations
of being human. 

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another
to be true to yourself. If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day.

And if you can source your own life
from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied. 

I want to know what sustains you
from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself and if you truly like
the company you keep in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco,
1999 All rights reserved

Albert Camus - Freedom

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/albertcamu391590.html

Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan

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BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 

A stately pleasure-dome decree: 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 

Through caverns measureless to man 

   Down to a sunless sea. 

So twice five miles of fertile ground 

With walls and towers were girdled round; 

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, 

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; 

And here were forests ancient as the hills, 

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! 

A savage place! as holy and enchanted 

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted 

By woman wailing for her demon-lover! 

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, 

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 

A mighty fountain momently was forced: 

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: 

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever 

It flung up momently the sacred river. 

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, 

Then reached the caverns measureless to man, 

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; 

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 

Ancestral voices prophesying war! 

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure 

   Floated midway on the waves; 

   Where was heard the mingled measure 

   From the fountain and the caves. 

It was a miracle of rare device, 

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! 

   A damsel with a dulcimer 

   In a vision once I saw: 

   It was an Abyssinian maid 

   And on her dulcimer she played, 

   Singing of Mount Abora. 

   Could I revive within me 

   Her symphony and song, 

   To such a deep delight ’twould win me, 

That with music loud and long, 

I would build that dome in air, 

That sunny dome! those caves of ice! 

And all who heard should see them there, 

And all should cry, Beware! Beware! 

His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 

Weave a circle round him thrice, 

And close your eyes with holy dread 

For he on honey-dew hath fed, 

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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