Poetry

"Forever" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dunbar's poem begins: "I had not known before Forever was so long a word. The slow stroke of the clock of time I had not heard."

Though the sun sets and finalizes another day,
It leaves us with an array of color and hope,
Hope that a new day will come,
Hope that life with you will continue to be as beautiful
As it is now.
It fills my heart with gladness knowing that
Though the sun is being replaced with night,
When I lay my head to rest,
You will be by my side,
Comforting me tonight.
— Aaron Stone

What sound was that?
I turn away, into the shaking room.
What was that sound that came in on the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?
It was the breath we took when we first met.
Listen. It is here.
— Harold Pinter

We have our most illustrious playwright to thank for one of the most famous quotations in the English language. William Shakespeare wrote these immortal lines in Hamlet, and to make better sense of them, let’s look at a few more lines:

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.”

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. -Nelson Mandela

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose –
But were always a rose.

Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war
lie stretching into dawn
unasked and unheeded.