#100happy today - Kickarse Poetry and Prose: "Desiderata"

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

~ Max Ehrmann, 1927

#100happy - Love Is Not All

Love Is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;  Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink  And rise and sink and rise and sink again;  Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,  Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;  Yet many a man is making friends with death  Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.  It well may be that in a difficult hour,  Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,  Or nagged by want past resolution's power,  I might be driven to sell your love for peace,  Or trade the memory of this night for food.  It well may be. I do not think I would.  Edna St. Vincent Millay

Kickarse Poetry: "Invictus"

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

 ~ William Ernest Henley 

Stoic Henley suffered bone tuberculosis and had to have most of his leg amputated aged 17 but wrote ^ this in 1875 to defy melancholy and encourage determination within himself. What a dude.


Credit for introducing me to this poem goes to Front magazine, by the way (if you're reading this at work, be warned that if you click the link for the mag there will be bare boobies, ohnoes!) as model Emily has the final verse tattooed on her arm which is kinda cool.