On Human Flourishing

D.J. Moores is an associate professor of literature at National University in San Diego, California. James O. Pawelski, a University of Pennsylvania senior scholar, is the founder of its Master of Applied Positive Psychology program. Adam Potkay is the William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Emma Mason is a professor of English and comparative literary studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. Susan J. Wolfson is a professor of English at Princeton and former president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. James Engell is the Gurney Professor of English and a professor of comparative literature at Harvard and former president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsAbout the EditorsxiiiIntroduction by D.J. MooresCycle 1. Wisdom William Blake—Eternity 29 • William Wordsworth—Expostulation and Reply 29; The Tables Turned 30 • Alexander S. Pushkin—God, Don’t Let Me Lose My Mind 31 • Walt Whitman—When I Read the Book 32; That Shadow My Likeness 32; The Base of All Metaphysics 32; Me Imperturbe 33 • Emily Dickinson—Water, is taught by thirst 33 • A.E. Housman—XXXVIII 33; Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now 34 • Stephen Crane—The Impact of a Dollar upon the Heart 34; A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky 35; Once There Came a Man 35 • E.E. Cummings—XXIX 36 • Chinmoy Kumar Ghose—The Answer 36; Not word, but work 37 • Joyce Snyder—Change 37 • Adele Kenny—This Living 38 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—Safety Harbor 38Cycle 2. Pride, ­Self-Love and Resilience Thomas Traherne—The Rapture 40 • Walt Whitman—One’s-Self I Sing 41; Laws for Creations 41; O Me! O Life! 41 • Sara Teasdale—The Answer 42 • Langston Hughes—Mother to Son 42; The Negro Speaks of Rivers 43; Negro 43 • Charles Bukowski—Mind and Heart 44 • Maya Angelou—Woman Me 45 • Chinmoy Kumar Ghose—Aspiration 46; Obstructions 46 • Joyce Snyder—I Came Here to Fly 46 • Adele Kenny—Like I Said 47; Survivor 47; Somehow the Angel 47Cycle 3. Ecstasy, Elevation and Rapture Jalâl al–Din Rumi—Top of the morning, you’re already smashed 50; With each new breath the sound of love 50 • Juan de la Cruz—In pursuit of an amorous encounter 52 • Henry Vaughan—The Morning Watch 53 • Baba Bulleh Shah—He who is stricken by love 53 • Percy Bysshe Shelley—To Constantia 54 • Ralph Waldo Emerson—Bacchus 55 • Walt Whitman—One Hour to Madness and Joy 57 • Anne Brontë—In a Wood on a Windy Day 58 • Dante Gabriel Rossetti—Love’s Testament 58 • Emily Dickinson—Exultation is the Going 59; Wild Nights—Wild Nights! 59 • Gerard Manley Hopkins—The Windhover 59 • George Marion McClellan—A September Night 60 • Andrei Biely (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev)—On the Mountains 61 • William Carlos Williams—Dawn 62 • Siegfried Sassoon—Everyone Sang 62 • Edna St. Vincent Millay—God’s World 63 • Sharon Olds—Full Summer 63 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—Daintree 64 • J.C. Augustine Wetta—Running Down Straight Street 64 • Rachel Jamison Webster—Through Hooded Clouds Untranslatable, Once 66Cycle 4. Consciousness Expansion, Growth and Engagement with Unconscious DepthsFariduddin ’Attar—I Shall Be Drunk Tonight 67 • Kabir—XVI 68 • Giacomo Leopardi—The Infinite 68; Here the Waves Murmur 69 • Alexander S. Pushkin—To … 69 • Elizabeth Barrett Browning—VII 70; X 70 • Walt Whitman—That Music Always Round Me 71; To You 71 • Matthew Arnold—The Buried Life 73 • Emily Dickinson—Dare you see a soul at the white heat? 76; The brain is wider than the sky 76 • Rabindranath Tagore—20 76; 31 77 • C.D. Balmont—With my aspiration I caught the disappearing shadows 77 • V.Y. Bryusov—My spirit did not break in the darkness of contradictions 78 • Edward Field—A Journey 79 • Wendell Berry—I go among trees and sit still 79 • Joyce Snyder—Balance 80 • Joy Harjo—I Give You Back 81 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—I Just Want to Be Happy… 82; The Play 82 • Daniel Weeks—A Tenderness Has Come 82Cycle 5. Romantic Love and Lust Hebrew Bible—You Are Beautiful 84 • Dante Alighieri—So kind and so honest she seems 85 • Robert Herrick—Upon Julia’s Breasts 85; Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breasts 86; To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 86 • Thomas Caraw—Boldness in Love 86 • Andrew Marvell—To His Coy Mistress 87 • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—The Bridegroom 88; Secret Understanding 89 • Robert Burns—A Red, Red Rose  89 • Thomas Moore—Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms 90 • Alexander S. Pushkin—Oh My Maiden-Rose, I Am in Shackles 90 • Elizabeth Barrett Browning—XXII 90 • Robert Browning—Meeting at Night 91 • Walt Whitman—I Am He That Aches with Love 91; We Two Boys Together Clinging 92 • Dante Gabriel Rossetti—Heart’s Compass 92 • James Thomson—The Bridge 92 • Oscar Wilde—In the Gold Room 93 • V.Y. Bryusov—Pompeian Woman 94 • D.H. Lawrence—Gloire de Dijon 94; Mystery 95 • E.E. Cummings—45: I Love You Much(Most Beautiful Darling) 96 • Conrad Aiken—Music I Heard with You 96 • Pablo Neruda—Full Woman, Flesh Apple, Hot Moon 97 • Kevin Clark—“Le Secret” 97 • Dorianne Laux—The Thief 98 • Allison Joseph—Learning to Laugh 99 • Rachel Jamison Webster—Nebula 101 • Brian Thornton—Paradox of Peripheral Vision 101 Cycle 6. Language, Inspiration and the Imagination Jane Colman Turell—To My Muse, December 29, 1725 103 • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—Beloved, just look 104 • William Wordsworth—Tintern Abbey 104; I wandered lonely as a cloud 108 • Percy Bysshe Shelley—To a ­Sky-Lark 109; Ode to the West Wind  111 • Elizabeth Barrett Browning—To George Sand 113 • Alfred, Lord Tennyson—The Poet’s Mind 114 • Walt Whitman—Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone 115 • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper—Learning to Read 115 • Dante Gabriel Rossetti—A Sonnet 117 • Authur Rimbaud—My Bohemia 117 • Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov—Alpine Horn 118 • James Weldon Johnson—O Black and Unknown Bards 118 • Paul Lawrence Dunbar—A Choice 120 • Hilda Doolittle—Holy Satyr 120; Moonrise 121 • Pablo Neruda—The Word 121 • Stephen Spender—I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great 123 • Allen Ginsberg—Vision 1948 124 • Daniel Weeks—He Lay down in Green Timothy 124Cycle 7. Relatedness to the Environment, Flora and Fauna Thomas Gray—Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes 126 • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—To the Rising Full Moon 127; May Song 127; At Midnight 129; On the Lake 129 • Philip Freneau—On the Religion of Nature 130 • William Wordsworth—My Heart Leaps Up 130 • Samuel Taylor Coleridge—To Nature 131; This ­Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Addressed to Charles Lamb, of the India House, London 131 • George Gordon, Lord Byron—XIII 133; LXXV 134; LXXXVIII 134; XCIII 134 • Ralph Waldo Emerson—The Rhodora 134 • Elizabeth Barrett Browning—To Flush, My Dog 135 • John Greenleaf Whittier—The Worship of Nature 136 • Alfred, Lord Tennyson—Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height 137 • Henry David Thoreau—Nature 138 • Walt Whitman—We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d 139; A Song of the Rolling Earth 139 • Gerard Manley Hopkins—Binsey Poplars 144 • W.B. Yeats—The Lake Isle of Innisfree 145 • Robert Frost—The Tuft of Flowers 145 • E.E. Cummings—O sweet spontaneous 147; Spring Omnipotent Goddess Thou 147 • Pablo Neruda—Horses 149 • Dylan Thomas—The force that through the green fuse drives the flower 150 • Nikki Giovanni—Winter Poem 150 • Adele Kenny—Of Other 151 • Susanna Rich—Winter Trees 151; Laurels on the Appalachian Trail 152; Walking Holly down a Wooded Lane 152 • Dorianne Laux—The Orgasms of Organisms 153 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—Spring Again 154Cycle 8. Hope, Optimism and IdealismHebrew Bible—Psalm 23 155 • John Donne—Death, Be Not Proud 156 • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—Phenomenon 156 • Samuel Taylor Coleridge—Pantisocracy 157 • John Clare—Song: Love Lives beyond the Tomb 157 • George Moses Horton—Imploring to Be Resigned at Death 158 • Alfred, Lord Tennyson—Nothing Will Die 159 • Charlotte Brontë—Life 160 • Walt Whitman—A Clear Midnight 160; Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice 160 • Emily Dickinson—Hope is the thing with feathers 161 • Thomas Hardy—The Darkling Thrush 162 • Oscar Wilde—Vita Nuova 163 • Stephen Crane—I walked in a desert 163 • Paul Lawrence Dunbar—He Had His Dream 163 • Daniel Webster Davis—I Can Trust 164 • Claude McKay—America 165 • Chinmoy Kumar Ghose—Start a New Beginning 165; There Was a Time 165 • Emily Lewis Penn—Nachtmusik Sonnet 166Cycle 9. Childhood, Innocence, Wonder and Awe Andrew Marvell—The Garden 167 • Thomas Traherne—Wonder 169; To the Same Purpose 170 • Ann Eliza Bleecker—On the Immensity of Creation 171 • William Blake—Infant Joy 172; The Echoing Green 172 • William Wordsworth—Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 173; Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood  173 • Walt Whitman—Miracles 178; Sparkles from the Wheel 179; When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer 180 • Gerard Manley Hopkins—Spring and Fall 180; Spring 181 • Rabindranath Tagore—95 181 • D.H. Lawrence—Piano 181 • Dylan Thomas—Fern Hill 182 • Rachel Jamison Webster—Kauai 183Cycle 10. Sensory Delights, Vitality and Mindfulness Robert Herrick—Upon Jack and Jill. Epigram 185 • Thomas Carew—Persuasions to Enjoy 185 • Alexander S. Pushkin—Bacchic Song 186 • Emily Brontë—A little while, a little while 186 • Walt Whitman—I Sing the Body Electric 187 • Rabindranath Tagore—57 194 • W.B. Yeats—The Fiddler of Dooney 195 • C.D. Balmont—The Sunbeam 195; The Law of Life 196 • Edwin Arlington Robinson—Mr. Flood’s Party 196 • Robert Frost—Pan With Us 198 • Trumbull Stickney—Live Blindly 199 • James Joyce—X 199; XX 199 • Mina Loy—There is no life or death 200 • William Carlos Williams—Danse Russe 201; Love Song 201 • Edna St. Vincent Millay—Mariposa 202 • E.E. Cummings—22 202; when god lets my body be 202; 65: I Thank You God For Most This Amazing 203 • Aldous Huxley—Scenes of the Mind 203 • Pablo Neruda—Ode to Laziness 205 • Stanley Kunitz—Touch Me 207 • Charles Bukowski—The Shower 207 • Kevin Clark—Sixties Noir 209 • Susanna Rich—Finding Raspberries by the Road 209 • Jane Hirshfield—The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead 210 • Daniel Weeks—Long Branch 210 • Susannah Spanton—Moments 211Cycle 11. Love, Gratitude, Compassion and Relatedness to OthersYunus Emre—The Fleeting Life 212 • Anonymous Nahuatl—Poem to Ease Birth 213 • Thomas Carew—A Song 213 • Anne Bradstreet—To My Dear and Loving Husband 214; Before the Birth of One of Her Children  214 • William Blake—The Divine Image 215; A Cradle Song 216 • William Wordsworth—Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman 217 • Samuel Taylor Coleridge—Frost at Midnight 219; On Receiving a Letter Informing Me of the Birth of a Son 221; To a Friend who Asked, How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me 221 • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—The Bridge 222 • Walt Whitman—To You 224; Mother and Babe 224; To a Common Prostitute  224; Beautiful Women 224; To One Shortly to Die 224; There Was a Child Went Forth 225 • A.E. Housman—XXXII 226 • W.B. Yeats—A Prayer for My Daughter 227; A Prayer for My Son 228 • Stephen Crane—Behold, the Grave of a Wicked Man 229 • Amy Lowell—A Decade 229 • Rupert Brooke—The Soldier 229 • Galway Kinnell—After Making Love We Hear Footsteps 230 • Chinmoy Kumar Ghose—Eternal Happiness 230 • Joyce Snyder—A Perfect Poem 231 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—Autumnal Revival 231 • Rachel Jamison Webster—Late Sep­tember 232; Dance, Baby 233Cycle 12. Relatedness to the Sacred Hebrew Bible—Psalm 150 234 • Fariduddin ’Attar—How can sober reason understand 234 • Sa’di of Shirazi—The Throne of the Heart 235 • Jalâl al–Din Rumi—Once more we come like dust adance in air 236; Heart 236 • Kabir—IV 237; XLVI 237; LVI 238; LXX 239 • Juan de la Cruz—Without a Place and with a Place 239 • George Herbert—Man 240 • Thomas Traherne—Love 242 • Joseph Addison—Ode 243 • Ralph Waldo Emerson—Give All to Love  244 • Emily Dickinson—Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church 245 • Gerard Manley Hopkins—God’s Grandeur  245 • Edmund Gosse—The Tide of Love 246 • Rabindranath Tagore—59 246; 72 247 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—The Nature of LightCycle 13. Justice, Righteous Anger and ­Self-DeterminationRichard Lovelace—To Lucasta, Going to the Wars 248 • Anonymous Negro Spiritual—Go Down, Moses 248 • Anna Laetitia Barbauld—The Rights of Woman 249 • George Gordon, Lord Byron—When a Man Hath No Freedom to Fight for at Home 250 • John Greenleaf Whittier—For Righteousness’ Sake 250 • Henry David Thoreau—Independence 251 • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper—Bury Me in a Free Land 252 • William Ernest Henley—Invictus 253 • Ella Wheeler Wilcox—The Winds of Fate 254 • Paul Lawrence Dunbar—Sympathy  254 • John McCrae—In Flanders Fields 255 • Fenton Johnson—Children of the Sun 255 • Claude McKay—If We Must Die 256 • Wilfred Owen—Dulce et Decorum Est 256; Anthem for a Doomed Youth  257 • Harold Norse—Let Go and Feel Your Nakedness 258 • Charles Bukowski—No Leaders, Please 258 • Denise Levertov—Variation on a Theme by Rilke 259 • Jack Micheline—Poem to the Freaks 259 • Brian Thornton—Erbil Libre–Erbil, Iraq 260Cycle 14. Unity, Meaning, Serenity and EnchantmentJalâl al–Din Rumi—Bliss 262 • Kabir—XIV 263; XXVIII 263 • Torquato Tasso—The Woods and the Rivers Fall Silent 264 • Henry Vaughan—Peace 264 • William Wordsworth—It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free 265 • Ugo Foscolo—To Evening 265 • John Greenleaf Whittier—What the Birds Said 266 • Emily Brontë—A Daydream 267 • Walt Whitman—On the Beach at Night Alone 26; A Glimpse 269 • Dante Gabriel Rossetti—Nuptial Sleep 270; Silent Noon 270 • Emily Dickinson—Exhilaration Is the Breeze 271 • Gerard Manley Hopkins—The Starlight Night 271 • Paul Verlaine—Listen to the Song So Sweet 271 • Rabindranath Tagore—78 272 • W.B. Yeats—The Song of Wandering Aengus 273 • Paul Lawrence Dunbar—Dawn 273 • James Joyce—III 274 • Sara Teasdale—Peace 274 • Stephen Spender—VI 275 • Bhikshuni Weisbrot—Meditation 275 • Jane Hirshfield—Against Certainty 276 • Susannah Spanton—Solitude 276 • Rachel Jamison Webster—Cream of the Pour is the Cream of Skin Thickening 277Notes and BibliographyIndex of First LinesIndex of Poets