Ahh, poetry!

LK Ludwig has issued a challenge for today on her blog Poetic Words. This challenge, Day of Sharing Words is to post some poetry that moves you on your blog, and link it to hers so that others might share in it. So I am moving ahead with the challenge...and hoping it is only the first of many related to poetry... something that I love.

I am always awed by how the sentiments of a few words have the power to move one to joy or tears. Poetry has always pulled at my heartstrings and I have dabbled at it since I was a child. When I was just a little girl beginning to learn to read my teacher recognized my love of poetry and gave me a book that had become too tattered to keep on the school library shelves. It was "The Best Loved Poems of the American People." I still have that sad old book, even though I was given a new edition of it several years ago. It is an old friend that has seen me through many personal trials, triumphs, and heartaches. I can always find words there that speak to my soul. Next to the scriptures I think there is little else that has more more power to move one than poetry.

For this challenge I have chosen a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It seems fitting at this time of national turmoil that we remember what makes a strong nation is really dependant on the character of its citizens.


A Nation's Strength

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

What makes a nation's pillars high
And it's foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

You can find more of his poetry on Poets.org.