酷我-北美枫

[anna]

with a poem of Fear Not, Dear Friend, But Freely Live Your Days by Robert Louis Stevenson.


Fear not, dear friend, but freely live your days
Though lesser lives should suffer. Such am I,
A lesser life, that what is his of sky
Gladly would give for you, and what of praise.
Step, without trouble, down the sunlit ways.
We that have touched your raiment, are made whole
From all the selfish cankers of man's soul,
And we would see you happy, dear, or die.
Therefore be brave, and therefore, dear, be free;
Try all things resolutely, till the best,
Out of all lesser betters, you shall find;
And we, who have learned greatness from you, we,
Your lovers, with a still, contented mind,
See you well anchored in some port of rest.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

with a poem of Fear Not, Dear Friend, But Freely Live Your Days by Robert Louis Stevenson.


Fear not, dear friend, but freely live your days
Though lesser lives should suffer. Such am I,
A lesser life, that what is his of sky
Gladly would give for you, and what of praise.
Step, without trouble, down the sunlit ways.
We that have touched your raiment, are made whole
From all the selfish cankers of man's soul,
And we would see you happy, dear, or die.
Therefore be brave, and therefore, dear, be free;
Try all things resolutely, till the best,
Out of all lesser betters, you shall find;
And we, who have learned greatness from you, we,
Your lovers, with a still, contented mind,
See you well anchored in some port of rest.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[ericcoliu]

Hi! Anna:

It’s very kind of you to share this poem. It’s very helpful. Thank you.

Honestly speaking, I had felt depressed for months, not sure of my future in Canada. Early this year, on a January morning, I had been walking on the snow-covered streets of Toronto for almost an hour with no destination in my mind. All of a sudden, feeling an uncontrollable urge to cry out, I stopped walking and raised my head, screaming towards the sky, “I’m really tired of starting over. It feels like no matter what I do, it gets wiped out and I am left with nothing and need to begin again. I want to build something in my life and have something meaningful left behind. I cannot live a life that it is like walking on a snowy day with no footprints left behind.” Everybody around me at the time was scared away.

About two weeks after my Screaming Incident, I was surfing through the Internet and came across an excerpt of a talk given by Ha Jin. At the request from his audience to offer some words of encouragement to aspiring writers, "In this profession," Ha Jin urged, "the only thing that will wait for you is failure." He also went on to describe his philosophy about the craft of writing, "Writers don’t write for success, and they do it because that’s their way of life. That’s how I confronted failure." I was deeply moved by his unflagging spirit in learning English and unshakable commitment to English writing; all of a sudden, I was enlightened and liberated from my depressed feeling of being afraid of failure and starting over again.


As Robert Louis Stevenson claimed, "Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Hi! Anna:

It’s very kind of you to share this poem. It’s very helpful. Thank you.

Honestly speaking, I had felt depressed for months, not sure of my future in Canada. Early this year, on a January morning, I had been walking on the snow-covered streets of Toronto for almost an hour with no destination in my mind. All of a sudden, feeling an uncontrollable urge to cry out, I stopped walking and raised my head, screaming towards the sky, “I’m really tired of starting over. It feels like no matter what I do, it gets wiped out and I am left with nothing and need to begin again. I want to build something in my life and have something meaningful left behind. I cannot live a life that it is like walking on a snowy day with no footprints left behind.” Everybody around me at the time was scared away.

About two weeks after my Screaming Incident, I was surfing through the Internet and came across an excerpt of a talk given by Ha Jin. At the request from his audience to offer some words of encouragement to aspiring writers, "In this profession," Ha Jin urged, "the only thing that will wait for you is failure." He also went on to describe his philosophy about the craft of writing, "Writers don’t write for success, and they do it because that’s their way of life. That’s how I confronted failure." I was deeply moved by his unflagging spirit in learning English and unshakable commitment to English writing; all of a sudden, I was enlightened and liberated from my depressed feeling of being afraid of failure and starting over again.


As Robert Louis Stevenson claimed, "Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[星子]

I totally understand...

I am reading "A student's guide to Robert Frost" . He had also suffered from depression...
_________________

[[ANNA]]

I totally understand...

I am reading "A student's guide to Robert Frost" . He had also suffered from depression...
_________________

[ericcoliu]

Thank you for your empathetic understanding. It's very helpful.

I oftentimes think writing in general, poetry writing in particular, is an outcry of pain in textual forms.

For the time being, writing, for me, is a way of sorting out my tangled feelings, expressing my wounded self, and thus, hopefully, healing.

To write about the difficulties I've encountered since my emigration to Canada is to revisit these tormenting experiences, the darkest tunnel of memory. It needs not only courage and determination but also faith -- faith that there will be light at other end of the tunnel. The hope of writing as healing is such a light, and the hope of being read is another; the two are inextricably linked.

What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born in the moment
When we accumulated silent things within us.

-- Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Thank you for your empathetic understanding. It's very helpful.

I oftentimes think writing in general, poetry writing in particular, is an outcry of pain in textual forms.

For the time being, writing, for me, is a way of sorting out my tangled feelings, expressing my wounded self, and thus, hopefully, healing.

To write about the difficulties I've encountered since my emigration to Canada is to revisit these tormenting experiences, the darkest tunnel of memory. It needs not only courage and determination but also faith -- faith that there will be light at other end of the tunnel. The hope of writing as healing is such a light, and the hope of being read is another; the two are inextricably linked.

What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born in the moment
When we accumulated silent things within us.

-- Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul