Random Bits of Poetry

This is just a collection of bits of poetry that have popped up lately in various places in my life.

The poetry is coming back to me, I feel it coming…

I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit. On I walked
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

— William Wordsworth

And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim,
like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are;
nor love them less,
because to thee they are not what they were.
-– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Why then, have to be human?
Oh not because happiness exists,
Not out of curiosity…
But because being here means so much;
because everything here,
vanishing so quickly, seems to need us,
and strangely keeps calling to us… To have been
here, once, completely, even if only once,
to have been at one with the earth –
this is beyond undoing.

– Rainer Maria Rilke (different translation)