"Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen..."

I felt a cool connection to this poem. It almost feels "clumsy" writing a response to such an eloquent and deep piece of literature...

The picture of the sun going down over all those headstones stuck with me the whole time I read the poem. It really did set the tone and made it feel so much more real, not just black and white on a page.

I think what I got most out of this poem was the sense that anyone can be a great writer, thinker, artist, anything, if they want to. A lot of people overlook their own potential for doing great things because they feel like they are just “average” people, not famous or extremely successful or anything like that. A lot of people think they aren’t smart like the people they read about and study, but that’s not true. It doesn’t take fame to be smart. It doesn’t take writing a successful or popular book to be an intelligent person. Everyone has to start somewhere, and all anyone really needs to do in order to do great things is believe that they can, and have the desire for it. The whole “believe in yourself” phrase seems over-used and because of that, I think people overlook it’s actual blatant truth. That really is the first step. No one is going to take the initiative to do anything if they don’t first believe that it's possible. I loved it when he said “Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen,/ And waste its Sweetness on the desert Air./ Some Village-Hampden that with dauntless Breast/ The little Tyrant of his fields withstood;/ Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest…”. A flower in the desert may spend its entire life never seen or smelled by anyone, however, that doesn't make it any less beautiful than a flower in someones wedding bouquet (for example) that is admired by many. The only difference is other people's knowledge of its existence. In short, I think the only thing holding people back from being brilliant is the false notion that they will forever be a student studying other’s works and believing that they have to know everything in order to write anything worthwhile.

All in all, I got the impression that poetry can be found in so many places but we aren’t seeing it because we are only looking in books to find it. Life is short in the sense that no one can escape the inevitable death that awaits each of us, but it’s long in the sense that we are presented with infinite moments with which to create poetry, to reflect and to learn, and that is something that any human being, regardless of social standing, has the ability to achieve.