Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Carpe Diem / Seize the Day

   “I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dropped it carelessly. Ah! I didn’t know I held opportunity.” — Hazel Lee

“I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…..to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Henry David Thoreau in Walden, quoted by the character Neil in the movie “Dead Poets Society”

Midweek Motif ~ Carpe Diem / Seize the Day

Today’s motif prompts to write about cherishing each moment, making most of the golden chance, seizing the day, living as best and fully as possible.

Remembering Jean-Paul Sartre in this connection: ‘There is only one day left, always starting over; it is given to us at dawn, and taken away from us at dusk’.

It could be the seizing of a moment of beauty or anything precious. It’s a “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May” theme telling one to have the courage to say a complete, burning ‘yes’ to life.

Have a Carpe Diem mindset for today’s theme and write your poem of ‘now’.

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love would grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vaults, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball,
And tear our pleasure with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

This living hand, now warm and capable

by John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thy own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

When I Was One-and-Twenty

by A.E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

      But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

      But keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty,

       No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard him say again,

The heart out of the bosom

       Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

       And sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty,

       And ’tis true, ’tis true.

Figs from Thistles: First Fig

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

   It gives a lovely light!

One Heart

by Li-Young Lee

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Money)