The Man Who Looked Back on His Way to Hell
Jalal al-Din Rumi

The guardian angels who used to walk unseen before and
behind him have now become visible like policemen.
They drag him along, prodding him with goads, and crying,
" Begone, O Dog, to thy kennel!"
He looks back to toward the Holy Presence:
His tears fall like autumn rain.
A mere hope -- what has he but that?
Then from God in the Realm of Light comes the command --
"Say ye to him: 'O ne'er do well, destitute of merit
"Thou hast seen the black scroll of thy misdeeds.
What dost thou expect?
Why art thou tarrying in vain?"
He answers: "Lord thou knowest I am a hundred, hundred
times worse than Thou hast declared.
"But beyond my exertion and action, beyond good and evil
and faith and infidelity, beyond living righteously or
behaving disobediently -- I had a great hope of
thy lovingkindness.
"I turn again to that pure grace, I am not regarding my
own works. Thou gavest me my being as a robe of
honor: I have always relied on that munificence."
When he confesses his sins, God saith to the angels,
"Bring him back, for he never lost hope of Me.
"Like one who recks of naught, I will deliver him and
cancel all this trespasses.
"I will kindle such a fire of grace that the least spark thereof
concumes all sin and necessity and free will.
I will set fire to the tenement of Man and make its
thorns a bower of roses."

Love that poem, Andy!

How about Lewis Carroll's "My Fancy"...seems appropriate in today's world of internet dating:

http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poem=17268

Oh, my, Susan. the ambiguous Rev. Dodgson!

Here's one by a poet safely dead and buried to cool the imagination while you poor dears survive the hot days:

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

What can I tell you -- my appreciation of poetry runs not so deep. But Dorothy Parker taught me how to live and love and laugh. And if THAT's not a scary thought, you haven't read her poems!!! (Almost scared my DH away right at the beginning - came into my study and found him looking VERY pale with a book of D.P. poems on his lap. heh heh. But he stuck around, MUCH to his credit!!)

http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poe...&poem=53086
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poe...&poem=30112
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poe...&poem=31572
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poe...&poem=50924
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poe...&poem=51108


Good night, my lovelies!

William Wordsworth

The World is Too Much with Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.