Sunday, March 9, 2008

i thank You God for most this amazing

I can't have a poetry website without having e.e. cummings on it. This is a most appropriate poem for a Sunday. The title alone should be enough. My favorite stanza is the third. I don't comprehend it, but that's part of what makes it beautiful. I comprehend so little of the ways of God and yet I find it all so breathtaking.

i thank You God for most this amazing
e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
And one more poem to wrap up an ode to the greatness of God... Though I will only post my favorite, check out "The Windhover" and "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins as well. Just read it aloud. Don't try to comprehend it. Just let yourself be immersed by the richness of his words

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 10
Praise him.

So frustrating! The original format of Hopkins poem is not aligned to the left like this. He uses spacing to create a more beautiful poem. But tragically the blogsite will NOT let me keep it indented (any suggestions?), so you'll just have to Google this to see it as it should be.

Any suggestions of similar poems or opinions of posted poems?

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