Poetry

The following poem is by Sam Rix. Apparently he was born in New Zealand and grew up in a very small farming hamlet in Te Aroha in the North Island. I am informed that he also wrote some short stories and was brilliant artistically. If you know anything more about the Author or just other poems that you enjoy please drop me an email.

The Last Journey Sam Rix
This creature man, who in his genesis First stood, then gazed upon the molten stars With dim perception, knew their mystery. Now through the spanning years his tread has gone Over wide oceans, continents and plains, Vaulted the encompassing atmosphere that clings About the rounded cradle of his world, And hurled himself headlong in valient flight Upon the arid, harsh and cratered moon, And claimed its bitter majesty as his. Beyond the moon his voyaging will go Until his footprints mark the Jovian moons; Then outward yet, to Saturn's lonely path, And far beyond, into the stellar night.		Man seeks in outer space what lies within; For this is true, that if he will but sit And gaze into the still abyssmal deep That is himself, the woven threads that shape The barriers of distance, time and form Will fade, as dreams upon awakening, And be no more than their dimmed memory. In this last journey, floating free at last Upon the faceless glory of that sea Whose foam is stars, and spindrift galaxies Man knows the whole wide universe as home.

Other really good poems can be found in the works of Samual Taylor Coleridge, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe. Some poems by Samual Taylor Coleridge can be found at the Samual Taylor Coleridge Archive. This site also has the text of an epitaph for Coleridge written by Charles Lamb in 1834.

Poe's greatest poem is of course "The Raven". Just to whet your curiosity here is the first of the 18 verses;

The Raven Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping, at my chamber door, `` 'Tis some visitor,'' I muttered, ``tapping at my chanber door- Only this and nothing more.''

Surely have to go and lookup the remaining verses.

and now something just for fun...

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)!

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

(Lem's Web site is at: http://www.lem.pl)