I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I know not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I know not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterwards, in an … Continue reading The Arrow and the Song | Longfellow
from: LEONARD WOOLF: A BIOGRAPHY by Victoria Glendinning There was a poem called “Luriana Lurilee” which meant something to them both – Leonard quoted a stanza from it in Growing, and Virginia in To the Lighthouse. It conveys the spirit of the private Garden of Eden inhabited by Leonard and Virginia when all was well. Luriana, Lurilee by Charles Isaac Elton Come out and climb … Continue reading Luriana, Lurilee
The Enkindled Spring by D. H. Lawrence This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and … Continue reading Poets on Sunday: D.H. Lawrence
Tolkien was heavily influenced by the Viking Sagas, and Old Norse, and both these excerpts from his poems speak to that heritage within the words. [ Photo’s: August 9th, 2009, Grey County ] GOBLIN FEET I am off down the road Where the fairy lanterns glowed And the little pretty flittermice are flying: A slender band of grey It runs creepily away And the hedges … Continue reading Poets on Sunday: TOLKIEN
IN TIME OF SILVER RAIN by Langston Hughes In time of silver rain The earth puts forth new life again, Green grasses grow And flowers lift their heads, And over all the plain The wonder spreads Of Life, Of Life, Of life! In time of silver rain The butterflies lift silken wings To catch a rainbow cry, And trees put forth new leaves to sing … Continue reading Poets on Sunday | Langston Hughes
from ‘Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher’s Tragi-Comedy ‘The Fair Maid of the Inn’ ‘ by John Keats Thus ye live on high, and then On the earth ye live again; And the souls ye left behind you Teach us, here, the way to find you, Where your other souls are joying, Never slumber’d, never cloying. … Continue reading Poets on Sunday: Keats
“The poet is an anomaly in our culture. The goal of our culture is money and power. And that’s not exactly what poetry is about. What is it about? That’s a hard question. It’s about anything the human mind and unconscious can produce. And that’s infinite.” [Stanley Kunitz] And living life within the confines set by our society is certainly not what writing is about, … Continue reading A Poetic Vocation
“Does It Pay” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox If one poor burdened toiler o’er life’s road, Who meets us by the way, Goes on less conscious of his galling load, Then life indeed, does pay. If we can show one troubled heart the gain, That lies alway in loss, Why, then, we too, are paid for all the pain Of bearing life’s hard cross. If some … Continue reading A Blessing for Sunday
Interior Portrait by Rainer Maria Rilke You don’t survive in me because of memories; nor are you mine because of a lovely longing’s strength. What does make you present is the ardent detour that a slow tenderness traces in my blood. I do not need to see you appear; being born sufficed for me to lose you a little less. Continue reading A Blessing a Sunday
THE ROUND by Stanley Kunitz Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy A curious gladness shook me. So I have shut the door of … Continue reading A Blessing for Sunday
If Ever I’m A Money’d Man, I Mean, Please God, To Cast My Golden Anchor In the Place Where Youthful Years Were Pass’d Though Heads That Bow Are Black and Brown Must Meanwhile Gather Grey New Faces Rise By Every Hearth, And Old Ones Drop Away — Yet Dearer Still That Irish Hill Than All the World Beside; It’s Home, Sweet Home, Where’er I Roam, … Continue reading Blessing For Sunday
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core. W.B. Yeats [Irish writer and statesman (1865-1939)] CITATION Irish Blessings Continue reading Blessing for Sunday
Lov’d land of the bards and saints! To me There’s nought so dear as thy minstrelsy; Bright is Nature’s every dress, Rich in unborrowed loveliness; Winning is every shape she wears, Winning is she in thy own sweet airs… Thomas Furlong Irish Poet ( 1794-1827) CITATION Irish Blessings Continue reading Blessing for Sunday
by PaulaB 