DPF / Collins

And, birthdays remind me of this one by former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.

from On Turning Ten / by Billy Collins

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

DPF / Lincoln

For President’s Day, from his book, The Poems of Abraham Lincoln.

from My Childhood Home I See Again / by Abraham Lincoln

My childhood home I see again,
        And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
        There’s pleasure in it too.

DPF / Longfellow

Henri to Henry. My 86-year-old father-in-law can recite the first stanza of this poem from memory, a stanza he learned to recite in 5th or 6th grade, around 1938. So today, a memory in celebration of memory and in celebration, a Happy Birthday, to his forever-lovely bride.

from A Psalm of Life / by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;