April 1st
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
— William Butler Yeats, "The Municipal Gallery Re-Visited"
April 2nd
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud.
— Wallace Stevens, "Of the Surface of Things"
April 3rd
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, "Famous"
April 4th
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
It has been eaten by a bear.
— A. E. Houseman, "Infant Innocence"
April 5th
What's the earth
With all its art, verse, music, worth —
Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?
— Robert Browning, "Dis Aliter Visum; Or, Le Byron De Nos Jours"
April 6th
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
— time is a tree (this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough
— ee cummings, "as freedom is a breakfast food"
April 7th
Stop and consider! Life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit.
— John Keats, "Sleep and Poetry"
April 8th
When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?
No, rather smile away despair;
— John Clare, "The Stranger"
April 9th
What is Spring?—
Growth in everything.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The May Magnificat," stanza 4
April 10th
Dreams — are well — but Waking's better,
If One wake at morn —
If One wake at Midnight — better —
Dreaming — of the Dawn —
— Emily Dickinson, "Dreams — are well — but Waking's better"
April 11th
For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.
— John Milton, "Paradise Lost" Book IX, lines 249-250
April 12th
Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "A Child Asleep"
April 13th
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
— T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"
April 14th
You changed the topography.
Where valleys were,
there are now mountains.
Where deserts were,
there now are seas.
— Erica Jong, "After the Earthquake"
April 15th
When Love's delirium haunts the glowing mind,
Limping Decorum lingers far behind.
— George Gordon Noel Byron, "Answer To Some Elegant Verses Sent By A Friend," l. 11—12
April 16th
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls.
For, thus friends absent speak.
— John Donne, "Verse Letter to Sir Henry Wotton"
April 17th
He sang of love, with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith, and inward glee;
That was the song, — the song for me!
— William Wordsworth, "O Nightingale! Thou Surely Art, l. 17 (1807)
April 18th
Thought is a man in his wholeness wholly attending.
— D. H. Lawrence, "Thought"
April 19th
Words are found responsible
all you can do is choose them
or choose
to remain silent.
— Adrienne Rich, "North American Time"
April 20th
Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.
— Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
April 21st
I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's;
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
— William Blake, "Los, in Jerusalem"
April 22nd
There is no going back,
For standing still means death, and life is moving on,
Moving on towards death. But sometimes standing still is also life.
— John Ashbery, "The Bungalows"
April 23rd
There is no news in fear
but in the end it's fear
that drowns you.
— Anne Sexton, "Imitations of Drowning"
April 24th
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
— Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"
April 25th
Each body has its art, its precious prescribed
Pose, that even in passion's droll contortions, waltzes,
Or push of pain or when a grief has stabbed,
Or hatred hacked is its, and nothing else's.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, "Still do I keep my look, my identity..."
April 26th
I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Julian and Maddalo" l. 14-17
April 27th
I have remained resentful to this day
When any but myself presumed to say
That there was anything I couldn't be.
— Robert Frost, "Auspex"
April 28th
Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Epigram"
April 29th
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam," xcvi. Stanza 3.
April 30th
Sweet love of youth, forgive if I forget thee
While the World's tide is bearing me along:
Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong.
— Emily Bronte, "Remembrance"
