A Poem in Your Pocket...

School Days by Jesse Wilcox

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.


The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.


He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!


One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

by Robert Louis Stevens

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When I was a first grader under the kind and expert tutelage of my teacher, I so loved this poem she read to our class that I had to make myself a copy and keep it on my dresser at home. I guess that was my earliest effort at having a poem of my own, or a poem in my pocket. As all of you poets and lovers of poetry know, April is national poetry month, and today is national "Poem in your Pocket Day." (For more details, click on the title of this post.)

The poem in my pocket today is by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;

Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)

With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

Práise hím.

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Which poem is in your pocket today?