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  • Optimism & Happiness
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Mood: Optimism & Happiness

Bairn - by Imtiaz Dharker

{ Poem }

There is no way to explainthe light that rises into a roomfrom the early morning bloom of snow;through closed lids, the slow dawningof white. The body is quick to knowthe pace of the day has changed, the spacewiped clean to make way for the first bird, first song.There is no way to explainhow, even when […]

Hope - by Kathleen Jamie

{ Poem }

1Hope feels like a cold glass of Coke on a hot day, dancing in a field, sun shining off my bottle. Walking in the sun after a hard day’s graft,headphones on, drinking beer. Nostalgia as I walk past the club. People stumbling and laughing.Fresh cut grass under bare feet. Those smells: fresh cut hedges and […]

Spoken Song - by Liz Lochhead

{ Poem }

These are the shortened daysand the endless nights. Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time (1993) Gloomy December.The doldrum days of the dead of winter.These are the shortest daysand the endless nights.So wish for the moonand long for the light. Chill winds. Relentless rain.Dark to go to work in, darkness home again.But, given just one fine […]

My Heart Leaps Up - by William Wordsworth

{ Poem }

The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

The Masque of Anarchy - by Percy Bysshe Shelley

{ Poem }

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

Before the ice is in the pools - by Emily Dickinson

{ Poem }

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

Happiness - by Stuart A. Paterson

{ Poem }

I’ve made my own Museum of / Happiness, which isn’t built of brick / or stone or wood…

A Birthday - by Edwin Muir

{ Poem }

I never felt so much
/ Since I have felt at all
/ The tingling smell and touch
/ Of dogrose and sweet briar,
/ Nettles against the…

The Release - by Edwin Morgan

{ Poem }

The scaffolding has gone. The sky is there! hard cold high clear and blue.
/ Clanking poles and thudding planks were the…

On Being Eighty - by Helen Cruickshank

{ Poem }

Broad in the beam? More broad in sympathy.
/ Stiff in the joints? More flexible in mind.
/ Deaf on the right? New voices…

Avoiding the gods - by Ian Abbot

{ Poem }

They have come
/ to scald our blood, to call us out
/ from our bright houses to the twisted shadows under trees.
/ Let us…

Yesterday in Laggan - by Gordon Jarvie

{ Poem }

It was such a day
of sunshine wall to wall,
of heat haze and the year’s first frogs,
of blue hills stretching yonder.

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Scottish Poetry Library
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