Poetry

Arriving daily in my email inbox is a classic poem of the day courtesy of about.com. I enjoy them, and they make me think that poetry is more to be savored by adults who have lived a bit rather than for the students who labor over their style and meaning in English class. I had probably not read Poe's sad Annabel Lee since seventh grade nor Elizabeth Barrett Browning's love sonnet since college. The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll is a masterpiece of originality and in modern vernacular a "hoot" with all of its made up, onomatopoeic words such as vorpal, bandersnatch, uffish. It was taught to me by my daddy when I was a little girl. I suppose he liked it quite a bit and knew I would too.

Here are a few lines from another in the mailbox, the midsection of Rudyard Kipling's oft quoted poem If:

. . . . If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
if you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop to build 'em up with worn out tools . . . .
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son.