The following poems that I’ve enjoyed over the course 30+ years. I’ve attributed them were possible.

Die Welt ist so schön

Ich laufe langsam im farbigem Wald
Der Winter, der kommt bald
Das Bächlein sprudelt und singt
Und es meinem Herzen sehr viel freude bringt

Ist die Menschheit auch dumm
Und die Politicker sind auch alle stumm
Irgendwan einmal werden wir sehen
Der Wald wird nicht mehr da stehen

Jetzt sind die Wiesen noch grün und kräftig
Und alle sind noch sehr duftig
Bald giebt es auch dies nicht mehr
Wir wissen nur noch wie umgehen mit dem Gewehr

– Unkown (possibly myself)

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft throught footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

– John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

The Beginning and the End

here is the beginning of the story
here is the end
all there is is nothing
that’s how it began
and that’s how it will end
what shall I put in the middle
but life itself
for it is the greatest story
that there is to tell
always at our doorstep
never leaving sight
life is like a mighty fight
to get to where we began
but the beginning is just the end

– Xisra Winder, Bethel #6

Hamlet

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

– Shakespeare