Two Poems

I've always been inwardly insecure about my self-perceived inability to appreciate poetry. I just never felt like I got it, and that that fact somehow said something crucial about who I am as a person. But, I'm fed up with feeling that way! Here are two poems that I appreciate at face-value. Upon reading them once through, I felt like I was able to connect with the sentiment personally, and without extensive interpretation or analysis. Then I wanted to re-read them. Maybe people just like poems because they are pleasant to read, and that's enough? Or maybe I really just don't get it, but am finally ok with that aspect of my being:


Ah! how harshly the youth of the student passes,
While all around her, with passions ever fresh,
Other youths search eagerly for easy pleasures!
And yet in solitude
She lives, obscure and blessed,
For in her cell she finds the ardor
That makes her heart immense.

But the blessed time is effaced.
She must leave the land of Science
To go out and struggle for her bread
On the grey roads of life.
Often and often then, her weary spirit
Returns beneath the roofs
To the corner ever dear to her heart
Where silent labor dwelled
And where a world of memory has rested.

-Marie Curie, ca. 1893-1894

and:

One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted -
One need not be a House;-
The Brain has Corridors - surpassing -
Material Place -
...
Ourself, behind ourself concealed -
Should startle most -
Assassin, hid in our Apartment
Be Horror’s least...

-Emily Dickinson, c. 1863