National Poetry Month!

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I love poetry, and I read a lot and memorize some.  I especially love 18th and 19th century poetry, although there are some 20th century poets I'm passionate about including Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.  One of my favorite books I own is World Poetry:  An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time.  So, I was especially happy to learn that April is National Poetry Month in the U.S., and has been so since 1996.  For more information click here.

Two of my favorite poems follow:

Solitude
by Alexander Pope, 1688-1744 (English)

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
     In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
     In winter, fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind;
     Quiet by day.

Sounds sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixed, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
     With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
     Tell where I lie.

Native Land
From The Lay of the Last Minstrel
by Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832 (Scottish)

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim--
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

What did you learn today?