Friday, March 2, 2012

Hope


Each Friday we provide the link to the blog that is hosting a celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. At that site you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books.

Enjoy the festivities!

The host this week is Dori. You can visit her here at Dori Reads.


(Bird and Vine, tapestry fabric by William Morris, 1834-
1896, English textile designer, artist, and writer)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor, a pacifist who was arrested by the Nazis for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

“The essence of optimism is not its view of the present,” Bonhoeffer wrote while in prison awaiting his execution, “but the fact that it is the inspiration of life and hope when others give in; it enables a man to hold his head high when everything seems to be going wrong; it gives him strength to sustain reverses and yet to claim the future for himself instead of abandoning it to his opponent.”

He was hanged in particularly cruel and painful circumstances on April 9, 1945.


“Hope” is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

I've heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of Me.

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet

7 comments:

  1. This is one of the poems that my ten year old daughter has memorized - she loved the idea of "Hope" being a thing with feathers. Never grows old, doesn't it?

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  2. This is a source poem for me. The folk musician Ted Jacobs has a beautiful version of it on his CD -- The Days Gone By. All American poets set to music for kids. It's truly lovely.

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  3. I love this poem, too. Hope. It's one of those things that never fails. Thanks for sharing on Bonhoeffer, too. What an amazing writer, thinker, he was.

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  4. Nice collage of art, quote, and poem, Maria.

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  5. I usually don't "get" Dickinson, but this one I liked. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. Wow.
    The art.
    The quote.
    The single sentence telling about his death.
    The poem.

    Perfect.

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  7. Love the way you share a story and a related poem. This is one of my favorites of Emily's:>)

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