Poem-A-Day: This is My Life by William Stanley Braithwaite

October 20, 2013 This is My Life by William Stanley Braithwaite     To feed my soul with beauty till I die;  To give my hands a pleasant task to do;  To keep my heart forever filled anew  With dreams and wonders which the days supply;  To love all conscious living, and thereby  Respect the brute who renders up its due,  And know the world as planned is good and true-  And thus -because there chanced to be an I!    This is my life since things are as they are:  One half akin to flowers and the grass:  The rest a law unto the changeless star.  And I believe when I shall come to pass  Within the Door His hand shall hold ajar  I'll leave no echoing whisper of Alas!        Today's poem is in the public domain.  About This Poem Over the course of his career, Braithwaite founded a publishing company and taught creative writing at Atlanta University. His poetic style was influenced by English Romantic poets John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth. Poetry by Braithwaite The House of Falling Leaves, With Other Poems (Forgotten Books, 2012)   Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.     William Stanley Braithwaite was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Braithwaite was 12 when his father died, forcing the poet to quit school to support his family. At 15, he was hired as an apprentice at a publishing company, where he learned typesetting, discovered his love of poetry, and began to write his own poems. In his lifetime, Braithwaite published three books of poems and edited many poetry anthologies. He died in Harlem in 1962.    Related Poems How to Uproot a Tree by Jennifer K. Sweeney Life is Fine by Langston Hughes Yellow Beak by Stephen Dobyns __________________________ Join us at the Poets Forum in NYC, October 24-26.  Purchase Tickets     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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