My favorite Lenten poem

HOLY SONNETS.XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ;for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me,
and bendYour force, to break,
blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.



Poems of John Donne.
vol I.E. K. Chambers,
ed.London: Lawrence & Bullen,
1896. 165.

My friend Elizabeth Gerold Miller's poem on pregnancy

is up on Mom-writers literary magazine. She is THE most gorgeous pregnant lady I have ever seen! She just glows; and so do her beautiful lines of poetry. They just make you miss those precious days.
Nice work, Elizabeth! Time for another baby, you look so lovely pregnant!

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

1920

Time for "Gathering Leaves"

This poem can downloaded in black and white as a coloring page here.

Happy first day of winter, and shortest day of the year.

Here's one of the first poems I helped Gaby memorize. It was wonderful spending so much time in those snowy woods with Frost. I was told in college that the last stanza has to do with death. Perhaps, but I am reminded of sitting in Adoration, soaking in the Lord's presence, fighting the urgency of my daily duties.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there's some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.