From Sonnets from the Portuguese V11 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The face of all the world is changed I think
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still"oh still" beside me as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death,where I who thought to sink
Was caught up into love&taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm ,The cup of dole
God gave for baptism,I am fain to drink
And praise its sweetness,sweet with thee anear!-
The names of country,Heaven,are changed away
For where thou art or shalt be,there or here=
And this...this lute and song... loved yesterday.
(The singing angels know!)...are only dear,
Because thy name moves right in what they say.

A Lament by PB.Shelley.

O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I
had stood before:
When will return the glory of
your prime?
No more--O never more!

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring,and summer,
and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief,
but with delight
No more-O never more!

I would like to acknowledge Gerry Te Kapa Coates (Ngai Tahu) poetry and writings. Born in Oamaru.Waihao is his home turf.but has lived in Wellington almost all of his working life.

The Knowledge.

You
gave me
best of all
the knowledge that
pleasing me also
pleased you
thanks

The Man In The Glass (Dale Wimbrow, 1895-1954)

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
and the World makes you king for a day;
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself,
and see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father or mother or wife
whose judgment upon you must pass;
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people might think you're a straight-shootin' chum
and call you a wonderful guy;
But the Man in the Glass says you're only a bum
if you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please -- never mind all the rest! --
for he's with you all the way to the end;
And you've already passed your most dangerous test
if the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole World down the pathway of years
and get pats on-the-back as you pass;
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
... if you've cheated the Man in the Glass

The Knowledge by Gerry Te Kapa Coates

You
gave me
best of all
the knowledge that
pleasing me also
pleased you
thanks

Walking the Land by Kevin Ireland.

The hardest move on the worst journey
is the first step you place inside
an earlier footprint in the mind.

and the useless baggage you have to dump
along the way is always the burden
you thought you had left behind.

The marks that you intend to leave to blaze
the route,in case you need to double back,
signal neither place nor stage;

they are simply new daubs on the old signs
of journeys taken down worn tracks
of some earlier age.

There is no other way but to go tapping along
with a twisted stick,stumbling on rut
and stone,as you walk the land,

with your sole guide the stars,and the map
etched in the creases of the calluses
cupped in the palms of your hands.

The Listeners by Walter De La Mare.

Is there anybody there.? said the Traveller
Knocking on the moonlit door:
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forests ferny floor
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Travellers head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time:
Is there anybody there.? he said..

William,
Butler Yeats poem I appreciate.

He Wishes for the Cloth of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I,being poor,have only my dreams:
I have spread my dreams under your feet:
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Part of "Little Gidding by TS.Eliot.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning
The end is where we start from.And every phase
And sentence that is right(where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commence of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.

One of the words of Wisdom I try to live by is immortalised by Robert Frost in his poem "Carpe Diem"

The age long theme is Ages and ends the poem with his own sentiment,that one should seize tomorrow. not today.

But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
than in the past.The present
is too much for the senses,
Too crowding,too confusing-
Too present to imagine.

For those GUPs who do not get the NZ Herald, this appeared in the Saturday edition as part of an Obituary to Margaret Mahy

GHOSTS
Two ghosts are walking out today
and one I cannot see.
The ghost of what I was before
and what I am to be.
The ghost of what I was before
is still a friend to me.
The other ghost, the one I fear
is what I am to be.
If I could draw the veil aside
perhaps then I could see
the face of this, the stranger ghost
the one I am to be.
Yet I am blessed in this I feel
the future's hid from me
and I must wait to meet the ghost
of what I am to be.
There are two ghosts abroad today
and one I cannot see.
The first a wraith of what I was,
the other is to be