I need a 3-5 minute long poem.?

Canto on the Statistical Improbability of Happiness

by Peter Benoit

It’s far from evenly distributed

This cherished thing I’ve come here to describe

And if my research has contributed

One little bit to insight in your tribe

I’ll have improved the little life of man

So take a moment, if you will, subscribe

To what I tell you and my master plan:

The thing that we’ll henceforth call happiness

Is rare indeed and in the finite span

Of life is felt perhaps ten times or less ―

And maybe most of them in younger years.

It does not understand the numberless

And suffocating presence of the fears

That come to choke our crippled conscious hours.

This wondrous thing, a rarity, appears

In newborn baby’s cry, and nuptial flowers,

When we are recognized for what we do

And love the best, but just as soon it sours

And disappears, and it is only through

The miracle of memory and dreams

We take our starveling world and fill it new.

When we examine closer still it seems

That happiness is merely an oasis,

Or like the little bubbles on a stream

Where breathless minnows come to press their faces;

Each thing that’s ever born must pant and live

Before it swims away to other places.

Why would a loving Providence not give

A greater quota of this precious thing?

Or better yet, why not let it outlive

The much more common daily scorns and slings?

Instead, it comes unheralded and swells

The breast of life itself, but only clings

The barest moment. It must live in wells

That we redrill because they have run dry;

It seems so long between the rainy spells.

A practiced statistician might apply

The apt analogy of Benford’s law

And I will not, as one of them, deny

There is some truth in it, but there’s a flaw:

Although the greater measure’s laid in youth

Before we find that we must strive and claw

Our way sometimes, when we are long in tooth;

It still may like some hooded cobra rise

From depths whence it is piped and charmed, and sooth,

Thrust out its tongue and hiss with ancient eyes

That pierce the very pillar of our soul

Before it disappears again and dies.

And yet these ten encounters make us whole.

So I conclude that happiness is rare

And yet at that it plays a vital role

In which more common sadness has its share.

We bottle not; we drink it from a stream

And though we’re thirsty it is everywhere.

Why we can even find it in a dream

But it has fled before we’re woken up.

Sometimes it’s there for us to drink it seems

But fools we are, forget to bring a cup.

This Site Might Help You.

RE:

I need a 3-5 minute long poem.?

I have to say a poem in class and I thought I found the perfect poem but it was to short. So I need help finding a 3 to 5 minute long poem. Preferably something that is happy or funny, but it doesn't have to be. Can anyone help?

The Pig by Roald Dahl

The Pig

In England once there lived a big

A wonderfully clever pig.

To everybody it was plain

That Piggy had a massive brain.

He worked out sums inside his head,

There was no book he hadn't read.

He knew what made an airplane fly,

He knew how engines worked and why.

He knew all this, but in the end

One question drove him round the bend:

He simply couldn't puzzle out

What LIFE was really all about.

What was the reason for his birth?

Why was he placed upon this earth?

His giant brain went round and round.

Alas, no answer could be found.

Till suddenly one wondrous night.

All in a flash he saw the light.

He jumped up like a ballet dancer

And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"

"They want my bacon slice by slice

"To sell at a tremendous price!

"They want my tender juicy chops

"To put in all the butcher's shops!

"They want my pork to make a roast

"And that's the part'll cost the most!

"They want my sausages in strings!

"They even want my chitterlings!

"The butcher's shop! The carving knife!

"That is the reason for my life!"

Such thoughts as these are not designed

To give a pig great peace of mind.

Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,

A pail of pigswill in his hand,

And piggy with a mighty roar,

Bashes the farmer to the floor…

Now comes the rather grizzly bit

So let's not make too much of it,

Except that you must understand

That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,

He ate him up from head to toe,

Chewing the pieces nice and slow.

It took an hour to reach the feet,

Because there was so much to eat,

And when he finished, Pig, of course,

Felt absolutely no remorse.

Slowly he scratched his brainy head

And with a little smile he said,

"I had a fairly powerful hunch

"That he might have me for his lunch.

"And so, because I feared the worst,

"I thought I'd better eat him first."