Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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, 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.
I feel creeping evil
from all around the rose.
I'd thought it long since dead,
but, oh, it grows and grows.
It was only dormant -
just biding its time.
Its suffocating burden
weighs on all sound minds.
Oh, when will it reach here?
One can never know.
It will sneak up on us
on silent tippy-toes.
The dogs of war are slipping.
The ropes they are a ripping.
The palms they are a bleeding,
as citizens are reading
of risks that led to slippage:
of quips and of equipage,
and how it wasn't expected,
and courses were corrected,
but still it all goes wrong.
Climbing a mountain, I feel like
I've escaped Plato's cave.
My senses reel as though they're a
crew of newly freed slaves.
The sky is bluer, rivers green,
each grit granule is clear.
And even at the very edge,
there's ease in feeling fear.
By "ease" I mean not frozen stiff,
but like a friend so dear
that one can take one's grand peril,
a gift received with cheer.
Take me to the mountains, I say,
where it's serene and real,
and I can open up my sight
to a world that's ideal.