Last week I wrote about the beginnings of my love affair with poetry.  This week I thought I’d show you 3 poems I love – you can see if you like them too.

The first, written by Emily Dickinson, captures how wonderful hope is.  I delight in the feeling hope creates, this marvelously uplifting eager anticipation of something good on the verge of happening.  I feel the pleasures of hope often and am immensely grateful that it springs eternal.

May the eyes in your face
Survive the green ice
Of envy’s mean gaze;
May you live out your life
Without hate, without grief,
And your hair ever blaze,
In the sun, in the sun …

And the third poem, by  William Butler Yeats of Ireland, is best read out loud (as possibly all poetry is, but this one truly demands it).  I find it unspeakably vulnerable and tender.

Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

In truth, we all spread our dreams under the feet of others and wish them to tread softly.

May others tread softly on your dreams.  I know I certainly will.

Love,

Ingrid