AWAKE
by Lawrence Tribble
possibly written during the Great Awakening
One man awake, awakens another.
The second awakens his next-door brother.
The three awake can rouse a town,
By turning the whole place upside down.
The many awake can make such a fuss,
It finally awakens the rest of us.
One man up with dawn in his eyes,
Surely then multiplies.
God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil, And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went,
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
No Place To Go
by Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
The happiest nights I ever know
Are those when I've no place to go,
And the missus says When the day is through: “To-night we haven’t a thing to do.”
Oh, the joy of it, and the peace untold Of sitting ’round in my slippers old, With my pipe and book in my easy chair, Knowing I needn’t go anywhere.
Needn’t hurry my evening meal
Nor force the smiles that I do not feel, But can grab a book from a near-by shelf, And drop all sham and be myself.
Oh, the charm of it and the comfort rare; Nothing on earth with it can compare; And I’m sorry for him who doesn't know The joy of having no place to go.