Fin du Jour
Death is not the greatest loss in life.
The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.
~Norman Cousins
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
— John Dryden
"Granny... it's time to upload now"
When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Sleeping in the Forest
by Mary Oliver
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
When I can look life in the eyes,
grown calm and very coldly wise,
life will have given me the truth,
and taken in exchange — my youth.
— Sara Teasdale
...Grieve not,
nor speak of me with tears,
but laugh and talk of me
as if I were beside you...
I loved you so --
'twas Heaven here with you.
— Isla Pascal Richardson
Long life or short life,
it's amazement
we ought to feel.
~ Mary Oliver
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
(The last page of the first draft)
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...
— John Gillespie Magee
I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible.
— Georges Simenon
The things we now esteem shall detach themselves like ripe fruit from our experience and fall. — Maxine Chernoff
Live your life in such a way that when you die,
all those who found value in who you were would immediately notice the empty spot where you once stood. Do it in such a way that, like the scent of the lilacs in spring, you will never be forgotten.
More Shoe Box
