I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

While traveling through this world of woe.

Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I’m going there to see my Father;

I’m going there no more to roam.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

I know dark clouds will gather round me;

I know my way is rough and steep.

But golden fields lie out before me

Where God’s redeemed shall ever sleep.

I’m going there to see my mother,

She said she’d meet me when I come.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

I’ll soon be free from every trial,

My body sleep in the churchyard;

I’ll drop the cross of self denial

And enter on my great reward.

I’m going there to see my Savior,

To sing His praise forevermore.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

Folk spir­it­u­al by Ri­chard W. Ad­ams

“The interrogator referred to the poem as a ‘document’ and to its writing as a terrorist ‘act.'” Read about the poem which became a sixteen-line death sentence.

You, yes, you can vote for the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Get your votes in by this Sunday.

They’re calling for political haiku over on the World Mag Blog.

Call to me, Obama,

Call to the voters in a voice

Not your own.

Then Mary took her young son

And set him on her knee;

‘I pray thee now, dear child,

Tell how this world shall be.’—

‘O I shall be as dead, mother,

As the stones in the wall;

O the stones in the street, mother,

Shall mourn for me all.

‘And upon a Wednesday

My vow I will make,

And upon Good Friday

My death I will take.

‘Upon Easter-day, mother,

My uprising shall be;

O the sun and the moon, mother,

Shall both rise with me!’

Here’s one you probably haven’t read or heard: The Cherry-Tree Carol.

The Lord Christ as gardner

How sweet and awe-some is the place

With Christ within the doors,

While everlasting love displays

The choicest of her stores.

…

Pity the nations, O our God!

Constrain the earth to come;

Send Thy victorious Word abroad,

And bring the strangers home.

We long to see Thy churches full,

That all the chosen race

May with one voice, and heart and soul,

Sing Thy redeeming grace.

by Issac Watts

“The best poems express something that cannot be expressed in other words. Change a word, a syllable, and you’ve changed the expression. If I can read a poem with the same ease and certainty as I do a billboard or newspaper, it’s probably not a poem, though it may be propaganda.”

Thus spoke Anecdotal Evidence, giving us a good reason for accepting difficulty in poetry and persevering to understand it. The fundamental problem with this is that modern readers don’t know if a poem is worth trying to understand. Are there not plenty of poems written by pretentious post-grads who draw inspirations from personal experiences which outside readers cannot possible understand, like Bilbo riddling with the dragon on his adventures outside the Shire? What helps a reader persevere through a poem? For me, it’s the confidence or hope that I’m reading a great poet. So I will work to enjoy Yeats and Eliot, but P.J. Smithe?

Imagination! who can sing thy force?

Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?

Soaring through air to find the bright abode,

Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,

We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,

And leave the rolling universe behind:

From star to star the mental optics rove,

Measure the skies, and range the realms above.

There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,

Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.

Phillis Wheatley (~1753–1784) was an American poet. She is considered the first important black writer in the United States.