dual personalities

Tag: poetry

April 1, 2014

For whom the bell tolls

by chuckofish

donne01

Yesterday the poet and Anglican priest John Donne (1572 – 31 March 1631) was commemorated on the Episcopal calendar. He is one of England’s finest poets and was one of the best-known preachers of his day.

When all is done, the hell of hells, the torment of torments, is the everlasting absence of God, and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presence…to fall out of the hands of the living God, is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination…. What Tophet is not Paradise, what Brimstone is not Amber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worme is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?

–From a sermon to the Earl of Carlisle in 1622

He is known equally for his love poetry:

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

and his metaphysical verse:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

I suggest you take some time today and read some John Donne. You’ll be glad you did.

“I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where’s that wiseman, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th’ earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water’s fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme’s vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when ’tis read.
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.”

― John Donne

Almighty God, the root and fountain of all being: Open our eyes to see, with thy servant John Donne, that whatsoever hath any being is a mirror in which we may behold thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

3 Comments
March 18, 2014

For this people’s heart has grown dull*

by chuckofish

God-rays on Lake Champlain

God-rays on Lake Champlain

Do you ever read the blog Humans of New York? Sometimes he asks the question: “If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?”

This is a difficult question to answer on the spur-of-the-moment. I would say: read this poem by e.e. cummings and remember it.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

*For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
–Matthew 13:15–17 (English Standard Version)

3 Comments
March 6, 2014

And the wind shall say

by chuckofish

11th century stained glass Jesus

11th century stained glass Jesus

From “Choruses from the Rock” by T.S. Eliot

The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
O miserable cities of designing men,
O wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver, I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names in print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,
Much is your building, but not the House of GOD,
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”

7 Comments
February 11, 2014

February Days

by chuckofish

photo from Pinterest

photo from Pinterest

Who could tire of the long shadows,
The long shadows of the trees on snow?
Sometimes I stand at the kitchen window
For a timeless time in a long daze
Before these reflected perpendiculars,
Noting how the light has changed,
How tender it is now in February
When the shadows are blue not black.
The crimson cyclamen has opened wide,
A bower of petals drunk on the light,
And in the snow-bright ordered house
I am drowsy as a turtle in winter,
Living on light and shadow
And their changes.

–May Sarton (1912–1995)

I blogged about old May Sarton here. She’s real good, n’est-ce pas?

7 Comments
February 5, 2014

And make rough winter everlastingly*

by chuckofish

N.C. Wyeth, "Snow Platform"

N.C. Wyeth, “Snow Platform”

Well, we are digging out from more snow. Aargh.

So here is a poem for a snowy day. The last verse is rather famous, but perhaps you have forgotten the earlier part.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, 1923

*William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”

4 Comments
January 28, 2014

In the deep heart’s core

by chuckofish

William Butler Yeats, famous Irish poet and playwright, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, was 73 years old when he died on this day in 1939.

yeats

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear 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.

You can read more poems by W.B. Yeats here.

4 Comments
January 8, 2014

The frolic architecture of the snow

by chuckofish

IMGP0883

The Snow-Storm
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

IMGP0886

holly

3 Comments
November 21, 2013

A sonnet for Thursday

by chuckofish

Well, two hundred years ago they also felt out of tune and forlorn! And check out this pensive portrait of Wordsworth.

NPG 1857,William Wordsworth,by Benjamin Robert Haydon

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

― William Wordsworth, The Major Works
1802

1 Comment
November 13, 2013

The moon’s a balloon*

by chuckofish

The lunar phase on November 13, 2013 is Waxing Gibbous. The moon is growing bigger.

Take a look this afternoon. A waxing gibbous moon appears high in the east at sunset. It’s more than half-lighted, but less than full.

waxing_gibbous_featured

When I flew to New York last week, it was at sunset. We flew over the clouds in the dark. The lights of the cities twinkled below. Then I looked out the window and there was the big dipper (Ursa Major)!

BigDipper

The moon was a sliver then. What a beautiful world!

O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Psalm 8 (KJV)

* e.e. cummings

2 Comments
November 6, 2013

Rest and be thankful

by chuckofish

restand be thankful

XIII. “REST AND BE THANKFUL!”
AT THE HEAD OF GLENCROE

Doubling and doubling with laborious walk,
Who, that has gained at length the wished-for Height,
This brief this simple wayside Call can slight,
And rests not thankful? Whether cheered by talk
With some loved friend, or by the unseen hawk
Whistling to clouds and sky-born streams that shine,
At the sun’s outbreak, as with light divine,
Ere they descend to nourish root and stalk
Of valley flowers. Nor, while the limbs repose,
Will we forget that, as the fowl can keep
Absolute stillness, poised aloft in air,
And fishes front, unmoved, the torrent’s sweep,–
So may the Soul, through powers that Faith bestows,
Win rest, and ease, and peace, with bliss that Angels share.

–Composed by William Wordsworth during a tour in Scotland and on the English border in the autumn of 1831

“Rest and be thankful” are the words inscribed on a stone near the junction of the A83 and the B828, placed there by soldiers who built the original military road in 1753, now referred to as the Drovers’ road. The original stone fell into ruin and was replaced by a commemorative stone at the same site.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The section is so named as the climb out of Glen Croe is so long and steep at the end that it was traditional for travellers to rest at the top, and be thankful for having reached the highest point. The current road no longer keeps to the floor of Glen Croe but steadily climbs across the southern slopes of The Cobbler, on the north side of the Glen, to the highest point of the pass. The westward descent to Loch Fyne is through Glen Kinglas, and from here the A815, the main road to Dunoon and the Cowal peninsula, branches off to the south.*

I have not been to this particular corner of Scotland, but I wish I had! Wow. And isn’t it great that they erected a stone inviting people to “rest and be thankful”?

Anyway, I thought this fit in nicely with my effort to be thankful this month–don’t you agree?

*Information and photos via Wikipedia

4 Comments