In Salutation To The Eternal Peace
Men say the world is full of fear and hate,
And all life’s ripening harvest-fields await
The restless sickle of relentless fate.
But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born,
When from the climbing terraces of corn
I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.
What care I for the world’s desire and pride,
Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide,
The homing pigeons of Thine eventide?
What care I for the world’s loud weariness,
Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless
With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?
Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?
For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,
O inmost wind of living ecstasy!
O intimate essence of eternity!
– Sarojini Naidu
My Soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And (O my Soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flow’r of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure,
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.
By Henry Vaughan
I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away—
As Wrecked Men—deem they sight the Land—
At Centre of the Sea—
And struggle slacker—but to prove
As hopelessly as I—
How many the fictitious Shores—
Before the Harbor be—
– Emily Dickinson
The Lake Isle Of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
– William Butler Yeats
The Peace Of Wild Things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
– Wendell Berry
Give me the pulse of the tide again
And the slow lapse of the leaves,
The rustling gold of a field of grain
And a bird in the nested eaves;
And a fishing-smack in the old harbour
Where all was happy and young;
And an echo or two of the songs I knew
When songs could still be sung.
For I would empty my heart of all
This world’s implacable roar,
And I would turn to my home, and fall
Asleep in my home once more;
And I would forget what the cities say,
And the folly of all the wise,
And turn to my own true folk this day,
And the love in their constant eyes.
There is peace, peace, where the sea-birds wheel,
And peace in the breaking wave;
And I have a broken heart to heal,
And a broken soul to save.
– Alfred Noyes
War and Peace
Man invents war. Man discovers peace.
He invents war from without.
He discovers peace from within.
War man throws. Peace man sows.
The smile of war is the flood of human blood.
The smile of peace is the love, below, above.
Peace is the whole truth that wishes to enrapture humanity.
War is the whole falsehood that wants to capture humanity.
Peace begins in the soul and ends in the heart.
War begins in the mind and ends in the body.
War forgets peace. Peace forgives war.
War is the death of the life human. Peace is the birth of the Life Divine.
Our vital passions want war.
Our psychic emotions desire peace.
War is clear futility in dire spear-stupidity.
Peace is flowing infinity in glowing eternity.
Man seeks war when he thinks that the world is not his.
Man invites war when he feels that he can conquer the world.
Man proclaims war when he dreams
That the world has already surrendered to him.
Man seeks peace because his earthly existence desperately needs it.
Man welcomes peace because he feels
that in peace alone is his life of achievement and fulfilment.
Man spreads peace because he wants to transcend death.
The animal in man wars against peace in the outer world,
in the world of conflicting ideas.
The divine in man wars against ignorance in the inner world,
in the world of mounting ideals.
The animal in man wants war for the sake of war,
war to devour the snoring world.
The divine in man wants peace for the sake of peace,
peace to feed the hungry world.
– Sri Chinmoy
Behold, it comes in might,
The power that is not power,
The light that is in darkness,
The shade in dazzling light.
It is joy that never spoke,
And grief unfelt, profound,
Immortal life unlived,
Eternal death unmourned.
It is not joy nor sorrow,
But that which is between,
It is not noght nor morrow,
But that which joins them in.
It is sweet rest in music;
And pause in sacred art;
The silence between speaking;
Between two fits of passion –
It is the calm of heart.
It is beauty never seen,
And love that stands alone,
It is song that lives un-sung,
And knowledge never known.
It is death between two lives,
And lull between two storms,
The void whence rose creation,
And that where it returns.
To it the tear-drop goes,
To spread the smiling form
It is the Goal of Life,
And Peace — its only home!
– Swami Vivekananda
Related
- Poems on inner peace by Sri Chinmoy