Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Poems that Will Save Your Life
    Poems that Will Save Your Life
    Poems that Will Save Your Life
    Ebook194 pages1 hour

    Poems that Will Save Your Life

    By John Boyes

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Hope is the thing with feathers
    That perches in the soul,
    And sings the tune without the words,
    And never stops at all.
    - Emily Dickenson

    From time immemorial, poetry has provided its readers with a source of comfort and encouragement in times of need. In this superb anthology can be found the best of the English-speaking world's inspirational and reassuring verse, including such classics as Rudyard Kipling's 'If' and W.H. Davies' 'Leisure'. This collection of over 120 poems is sure to offer solace, hearten the soul and motivate the human spirit.

    Includes works by Emily Brontë, Robert Burns, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, John Keats, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Milton, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, and many more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcturus Publishing
    Release dateJun 30, 2010
    ISBN9781848583863
    Poems that Will Save Your Life

    Read more from John Boyes

    Related to Poems that Will Save Your Life

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Fifteen Poets on Revision

      Feb 27, 2018

      After 17 drafts over two weeks, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” was completed on November 4, 1975. The poem began as notes, and evolved into a villanelle. She changed the title. She deleted words. She reached for possible rhymes. Brett Candlish Mil

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?

      May 28, 2019

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Writing From The Edge

      May 1, 2019

      One outreaches language in poetry when the inseeing elements of consciousness ask the unseen of life to come forward. My aim has been to unseat what we assume about time, about the verities of love and death, of the consciousness of those other senti

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Bird That Sang I Am

      Sep 1, 2021

      The Bird That Sang I Am
      19 min read

    • Article

      TELL ME A Story

      Mar 31, 2023

      TELL ME A Story
      21 min read

    • Article

      A Q&A With Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate Of The United States

      Apr 1, 2020

      The first Native American poet laureate talks about hearing the collective heart of the country, and the importance of listening.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Writing Wisdom of Derek Walcott

      Mar 20, 2017

      “The future happens,” says the philosopher in Derek Walcott’s stage retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, “No matter how much we scream.” Walcott died on Friday at the age of 87—and instead of screaming, I’m feeling grateful towards this great poet, playwrig

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Poetry No. 111

      Sep 6, 2022

      The Art of Poetry No. 111
      26 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      How Leonard Cohen and Emily Dickinson Led Me Through Dark Days

      Mar 7, 2019

      Both writers invite us into their inner lives because they take their inner lives seriously. They never make light, they never turn their heads away, they refuse to change the subject. The post How Leonard Cohen and Emily Dickinson Led Me Through Dar

      7 min read

    • Article

      Falling

      Jul 6, 2021

      Falling
      17 min read

    • Article

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet

      Feb 20, 2019

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet
      6 min read

    • Article

      Whale Of A Poem

      Jun 14, 2021

      Whale Of A Poem
      3 min read

    • Article

      'Devotions' Collects Five Decades Of Poetry By Mary Oliver

      Oct 18, 2017

      The first thing one notices about Devotions, a survey of Mary Oliver’s poems from more than five decades, is how big the book is – unusually so. At more than 400 pages, it registers palpably on the lap, a pleasant anchor through an autumn afternoon.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Martha Anne Toll

      Dec 23, 2020

      The drama! The agony! The misogyny! The biting social commentary! The pathos! The post A Year in Reading: Martha Anne Toll appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: December 2020

      Dec 7, 2020

      Finish out the year strong with notable poetry books by Thulani Davis, James Matthew Wilson, Michael Longley, and Anne Marie Macari. The post Must-Read Poetry: December 2020 appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Flood The World With Beauty

      Nov 1, 2019

      A big literary conference is probably not the best place for a poet dealing with a mental breakdown. But there I was at AWP, skittishly perusing tables at the book fair, under the garish lights of the Minneapolis Convention Center. For two years, par

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Poems that Will Save Your Life

    4/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Poems that Will Save Your Life - John Boyes

      Introduction

      There are poems in this collection that were written by unknown hands. While they may lack the talent and artfulness of the great poets in the English language, their voices are just as legitimate. And so, their work is presented here beside that of names like John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

      It may be argued that these anonymous poems are the most beloved. These are, after all, lines that have been handed down through the generations. Where heavy volumes of verse by Robert Browning and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may have been presented as graduation and Christmas gifts, these less recognized poems have countless times been lovingly transcribed and passed on as having particularly pertinent messages. These are words of encouragement and comfort, written perhaps in reaction, perhaps in anticipation.

      We cannot know what motivation and inspiration brought these anonymously penned poems into being. Of much of the other verse, that written by known figures, including the acclaimed and celebrated, we may still only speculate. There are, however, some poems for which the respective seeds are known. ‘Song of Myself’, which first saw print in 1856 as ‘Poem of Walt Whitman, an American’, was written in part to encourage national unity in the years immediately preceding the advent of civil war in the United States.

      Related to this, we find John Greenleaf Whittier’s ‘Laus Deo!’, written, as the poet says, ‘on hearing the bells ring on the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery’. Reading this poem, nearly fifteen decades after its composition, one shares in the joy felt by a man who had devoted his life to the Abolitionist cause, a man whose strong Quaker faith abhorred what he saw as the sin of slavery.

      Whittier was entering old age when he saw his dream realized. Not all are so lucky. Various poems included in this volume are an address to those who have fallen short of their goals, those whose aspirations have been unfulfilled. It is not at all unusual for the disappointed and distressed to turn to poetry when seeking consolation. Indeed, the earliest verse featured in this anthology, the 23rd Psalm, is a poem of comfort. Found in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, this verse is ascribed by tradition to David, who is thought to have reigned over the Kingdom of Israel roughly three thousand years ago. It holds a strong place in Judaism and has come to have a central presence in Christian funerals.

      The 23rd Psalm is at once a poem of comfort and a poem of faith. This cannot be surprising in that people often seek comfort in faith. The finest poets in the English language have expressed their spirituality in verse. This includes such diverse voices as Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest, and D. H. Lawrence, who will be forever remembered as the writer of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

      Lawrence wrote at a time when the self-help movement was in its infancy. Today, eight decades after his death, it has a significant presence in bookstores, conference centres, and on television. We have motivational speakers – celebrities in their own right – who receive good money for their words of inspiration and encouragement. And yet, their messages aren’t new, nor is their advice. We see this very same wisdom expressed more eloquently by George Eliot, Henry David Thoreau, Alfred, Lord Tennyson ... and, yes, Anonymous.

      John Boyes

      POEMS OF INSPIRATION

      The Road Not Taken

      Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

      And sorry I could not travel both

      And be one traveler, long I stood

      And looked down one as far as I could

      To where it bent in the undergrowth;

      Then took the other, as just as fair,

      And having perhaps the better claim,

      Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

      Though as for that the passing there

      Had worn them really about the same,

      And both that morning equally lay

      In leaves no step had trodden black.

      Oh, I kept the first for another day!

      Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

      I doubted if I should ever come back.

      I shall be telling this with a sigh

      Somewhere ages and ages hence:

      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

      I took the one less traveled by,

      And that has made all the difference.

      — Robert Frost

      If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

      If I can stop one heart from breaking,

      I shall not live in vain;

      If I can ease one life the aching,

      Or cool one pain,

      Or help one fainting robin

      Unto his nest again,

      I shall not live in vain.

      — Emily Dickinson

      The Inner Vision

      Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes

      To pace the ground, if path there be or none,

      While a fair region round the traveller lies

      Which he forbears again to look upon;

      Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,

      The work of Fancy, or some happy tone

      Of meditation, slipping in between

      The beauty coming and the beauty gone.

      —If Thought and Love desert us, from that day

      Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:

      With Thought and Love companions of our way—

      Whate’er the senses take or may refuse,—

      The Mind’s internal heaven shall shed her dews

      Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

      — William Wordsworth

      Inspiration

      Whate’er we leave to God, God does,

      And blesses us;

      The work we choose should be our own,

      God leaves alone.

      If with light head erect I sing,

      Though all the Muses lend their force,

      From my poor love of anything,

      The verse is weak and shallow as its source.

      But if with bended neck I grope,

      Listening behind me for my wit,

      With faith superior to hope,

      More anxious to keep back than forward it,

      Making my soul accomplice there

      Unto the flame my heart hath lit,

      Then will the verse forever wear—

      Time cannot bend the line which God hath writ.

      Always the general show of things

      Floats in review before my mind,

      And such true love and reverence brings,

      That sometimes I forget that I am blind.

      But now there comes unsought, unseen,

      Some clear divine electuary,

      And I, who had but sensual been,

      Grow sensible, and as God is, am wary.

      I hearing get, who had but ears,

      And sight, who had but eyes before,

      I moments live, who lived but years,

      And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.

      I hear beyond the range of sound,

      I see beyond the range of sight,

      New earths and skies and seas around,

      And in my day the sun doth pale his light.

      A clear and ancient harmony

      Pierces my soul through all its din,

      As through its utmost melody—

      Farther behind than they—farther within.

      More swift its bolt than lightning is,

      Its voice than thunder is more loud,

      It doth expand my privacies

      To all, and leave me single in the crowd.

      It speaks with such authority,

      With so serene and lofty tone,

      That idle Time runs gadding by,

      And leaves me with Eternity alone.

      Then chiefly is my natal hour,

      And only now my prime of life,

      Of manhood’s strength it is the flower,

      ’Tis peace’s end and war’s beginning strife.

      ’T hath come in summer’s broadest noon,

      By a gray wall or some chance

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1