The Props Assist The House, Emily Dickinson
The Journey, Mary Oliver
Exultation is the Going, Emily Dickinson
Traveler, There is No Path, Antonio Machado
Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
The Divine Comedy, Dante (first sentence)
Lost, David Wagoner
In a Dark Time, Theodore Roethke
The Opening of Eyes, David Whyte
The Self Slaved, Patrick Kavanaugh
Arrivals, David Whyte
I Am What I Am, Jerry Herman
Sailing to Byzantium, William B. Yeats
Now I Become Myself, May Sarton
Take Me Home, Country Roads, John Denver
* * *
She’s Leaving Home, The Beatles
Doubting Is But The Forefront of Faith, Kenneth Patton
To Fight Aloud, Emily Dickinson
Passing Through, Cisco Houston
Blessed is the Courage, Marge Pierey
All The True Vows, David Whyte
The Invitation, Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Either You Will Go Through This Door, Adrienne Rich
Other Directed, Turner Cassity
Good Citizen, W.H. Auden
Standing In My Own Way, Susan Werner
Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman
I ask For Silence, Pablo Neruda
The Props Assist The House
by Emily Dickinson
The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw,
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter —
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life–
A Past of Plank and Nail
A slowness — then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul –
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
You should get the text from another source.
Exultation is the Going
by Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses — past the headlands —
Into deep Eternity —
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
Traveler, There is No Path
by Antonio Machado
(translated)
Traveller, your footprints
Are the path and nothing more;
Traveller, there is no path,
The path is made by walking.
By walking the path is made
And when you look back
You’ll see a road
Never to be trodden again.
Traveller, there is no path,
only wakes upon the sea . . .
Like a Rolling Stone*
by Bob Dylan
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
* Used with the kind permission of Bob Dylan Music Company.
The Divine Comedy(first sentence)
by Dante
(translated)
In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood,
where the true way was wholly lost.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Lost
by David Wagoner
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In a Dark Time
by Theodore Roethke
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The Opening of Eyes
by David Whyte
You should get the text from another source.
The Self Slaved
by Patrick Kavanaugh
You should get the text from another source.
Arrivals
by David Whyte
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I Am What I Am
by Jerry Herman
You should get the text from another source.
Sailing to Byzantium
by William B. Yeats
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Now I Become Myself*
by May Sarton
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before–”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
* From COLLECTED POEMS 1930-1993 by May Sarton. Copyright © 1974 by May Sarton. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. You can obtain the book from W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. at http://www.wwnorton.com
Take Me Home, Country Roads
by John Denver
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