please pinpoint a pleasant poem

August 2, 2008 2:34 AM

Please help me find a fitting poem for my yearbook writeup.

Because we're all in the middle of a crazy semester, I decided to not bug anyone to write me something for the (undergrad) yearbook; I'm putting a poem in instead. My first choice was ee cummings' i thank You God for most this amazing day. While friends have conceded that it is "me", it's a tad too long for the fifteen-line limit of my writeup, and I'd hate to cut it short. Also, with its overtones of rebirth, etc -- I don't think that's very fitting for a yearbook writeup though I could justify that I'm graduating; new stages and all that.

Is anyone here at AskMeFi reminded of any poem in particular when they read i thank You God? Something hopeful, childlike, head-in-the-clouds, and just fifteen lines or less? Any help is much appreciated.

posted by drea to writing & language (4 comments total)

One that came to mind:

A selection from Christopher Marlowe:
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;

You could go on a little further, for that "wow this is the day, let it last forever" thing:
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day, ...

but, um, don't keep going on further, because of course after that comes the bit about that hour ending and Faustus being damn'd perpetually and all that. I guess it is rather fitting, and perhaps the best inside joke to people who've actually read Marlowe, and are also entering the real world. I like it more the more I think about it!
posted by whatzit at 7:04 AM on August 2

If I were you, I would go with an edited version of i thank You God for most this amazing day. I think you could cut out either the second stanza or the third stanza and still get the meaning across.
posted by gudrun at 9:34 AM on August 2

Ellen Fargeon's 1922 poem Morning Has Broken, a standard of Christian hymnals, and most famously sung by Cat Stevens, brings tears every time I read it:

Morning has broken like the first morning;
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word!

Sweet the rain's new fall sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play!
Praise with elation; praise ev'ry morning,
God's recreation of the new day!

The language may lack the fillip of twisting sophistication-- peerlessly cummings'-- that you may consider indispensable in any representation of your tastes (and your Faith?) to your fellows, however.

Thanks for showing me cummings' poem, by the way.
posted by jamjam at 11:04 AM on August 2

Another Sarah (for Christopher Smart)
by anne porter

When winter was half over
God sent three angels to the apple-tree
Who said to her
"Be glad, you little rack
Of empty sticks,
Because you have been chosen.

In May you will become
A wave of living sweetness
A nation of white petals
A dynasty of apples."
posted by liketitanic at 2:36 PM on August 2 [1 favorite]