The road less travelled is sometimes fraught with barricades, bumps and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested. And have the courage to accept that you’re not perfect. Nothing is and no one is - and that’s OK. (Katie Couric)

Thursday, December 3, 2015

A new Poetry Blog 
THE SONGS AND SONNETS OF JOHN DONNE
begins on Sunday 6th December at

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Thursday, July 16, 2015

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A New Poetry Blog begins on Saturday 25th July 2015
POETRY - A PERSONAL CHOICE

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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

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A new Art blog begins on Friday 26th June
V IS FOR VINCENT
will show 72 paintings by Vincent van Gogh

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Thursday, June 18, 2015

TODAY'S POST CONCLUDES THE PRESENT SERIES

It seemed appropriate that the final item should be the poem that inspired the blog - J.J.

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The Poet circa 1910

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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Robert Frost 1874/1963

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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Tuesday, June 16, 2015

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery - Joseph Conrad 1857-1924

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The bright thin new moon appears,
Tipped askew in the heavens.
It no sooner shines over
The ruined fortress than the
Evening clouds overwhelm it.
The Milky Way shines unchanging
Over the freezing mountains
Of the border. White frost covers
The garden. The chrysanthemums
Clot and freeze in the night.
(Tu Fu 712-770, translated by Kenneth Rexroth - "One Hundred Poems from the Chinese")

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-o0o-

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver-feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
- Walter de la Mare 1873-1956

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NEXT POST THURSDAY

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Thursday, June 11, 2015

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
-  Martin Luther King Jr.

-o0o-

THE SONG OF THE WANDERING AENGUS
William Butler Yeats 1865-1939

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.
- Helen Keller 1880-1968

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NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL ART
was updated yesterday
http://nowthatswhaticallart.blogspot.com

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Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something: 
If you have Nothing, then you have Everything, because you have the freedom to do Anything, without the fear of losing Something
Jarod Kintz  b.1982

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PLEASE CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES
Thich Nhat Hanh  b.1926

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow--even today I am still arriving.  

Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. 

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. 

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. 

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. 

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. 

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. 

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labour camp. 

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. 

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. 

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion. 

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Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
- Lao Tzu  (6th cent BC)

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NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL ART
will be updated tomorrow
http://nowthatswhaticallart.blogspot.com

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Thursday, June 4, 2015

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.
 - Paulo Coelho  b.1947

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from the Charles Aznavour song "Hier Encore" (1964)

Yesterday when I was young
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame.

The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand,
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day
And only now I see how the years ran away.

Yesterday when I was young
So many drinking songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wayward pleasures lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see.

I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out,
I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall
Concerned itself with me, me and nothing else at all.

Yesterday the moon was blue
And every crazy day brought something new to do,
I used my magic age as if it were a wand
And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond.

The game of love I played with arrogance and pride
And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died.
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away
And only I am left on stage to end the play.

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay for yesterday 
When I was young.

-o0o-

Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted. 

- Sylvia Plath 1932-63

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Tuesday, June 2, 2015


Luther Standing Bear 1868-1939, 
one-time chief of the Oglaga Sioux

Three Extracts from his Writings

1) The character of the Indian's emotion left little room in his heart for antagonism toward his fellow creatures. For the Lakota (one of the three branches of the Sioux Nation), mountains, lakes, rivers, springs, valleys, and the woods were all in finished beauty. Winds, rain, snow, sunshine, day, night, and change of seasons were endlessly fascinating. Birds, insects, and animals filled the world with knowledge that defied the comprehension of man.

The Lakota was a true naturalist - a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, and the attachment grew with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power.

It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth.

Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth, and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing.

2) We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and winding streams with tangled growth as "wild."

Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people.

To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it "wild" for us.

When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the "Wild West" began.
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3) I left reservation life and my native people, the Oglala Sioux, because I was no longer willing to endure existence under the control of an overseer. For about the same number of years I had tried to live a peaceful and happy life; tried to adapt myself and make re-adjustments to fit the white man’s mode of existence. But I was unsuccessful. I developed into a chronic disturber. I was a bad Indian, and the agent and I never got along. I remained a hostile, even a savage, if you please. And I still am. I am incurable.

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Beginning tomorrow at
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL ART
PAINTINGS BY EUGENE DE BLAAS

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Thursday, May 28, 2015

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
-  Anne Frank 1929-45

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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost 1874-1963

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. 

-o0o-

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-82

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NEXT POST TUESDAY

"Now that's what I call art" begins again next Wednesday with a series of paintings by the Italian artist Eugene de Blaas

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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Photograph by Jonathan Bowen

This beech tree on Castle Hill at Wittenham Champs in Oxfordshire had the following poem carved on it. It's said that Joseph Tubb 1805-79, who had written the poem, spent two weeks one summer in 1844 completing the carving. Sadly "The Poem Tree" died in the 1990s and collapsed in the summer of 2012

As up the hill with labr'ing steps we tread
Where the twin Clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit gain'd at ease reclining lay
And all around the wide spread scene survey
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befell
Where the low bank the country wide surrounds
That ancient earthwork form'd old Mercia's bounds
In misty distance see the barrow heave
There lies forgotten lonely Cwichelm's grave.

Around this hill the ruthless Danes intrenched
And these fair plains with gory slaughter drench'd
While at our feet where stands that stately tower
In days gone by up rose the Roman power
And yonder, there where Thames smooth waters glide
In later days appeared monastic pride.
Within that field where lies the grazing herd
Huge walls were found, some coffins disinter'd
Such is the course of time, the wreck which fate
And awful doom award the earthly great.

-o0o-

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.
- Bessie Anderson Stanley 1879-1952

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Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
- Steve Jobs 1955-2011

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NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL ART
begins a new series on Wednesday 3rd June with 
Paintings by Eugene de Blaas 1843-1932

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Thursday, May 21, 2015

from "The Story of a Life" by Konstantin Paustovsky 1892-1968

“Wait, wait, I want to show you something,” he muttered as he fumbled inside his shirt until he pulled out, at last, a little linen bag turned black with sweat, and slipped a much-creased photograph out of it. He blew on it, and handed it to me. A single electric lamp was flickering high up under the ceiling. I couldn’t see a thing.

Then he cupped his hands together, and lit a match. It burned down to his fingers, but he did not blow it out. I looked at the photograph simply in order not to offend the man. I was sure it would be the usual peasant family photograph, such as I had often seen next to the icon in peasant huts.

The mother always sat in front - a dry, wrinkled old woman with knotty fingers. Whatever she was like in life - gentle and uncomplaining or shrewish and foolish - the picture always showed her with a face of stone and with tight-pressed lips. In the flash of the camera’s lens she always became the inexorable mother, the embodiment of the stern necessity of carrying on the race. And around her there always sat and stood her wooden children and her bulging-eyed grandchildren.

You had to look at these pictures for a long time to see and to recognize in their strained figures the people whom you knew well - the old woman’s consumptive, silent son-in-law - the village shoemaker, his wife, a big-bosomed, shrewish woman in an embroidered blouse and with shoes with tops which flapped against the base calves of her legs, a young fellow with a forelock and with that strange emptiness in the eyes which you find in hooligans, and another fellow, dark and laughing, in whom you eventually recognized the mechanic known throughout the whole region. And the grandchildren - frightened kids with the eyes of little martyrs. These were children who had never known a caress or an affectionate greeting. Or maybe the son-in-law who was the shoemaker sometimes took pity on them quietly and gave them his old boot lasts to play with.

-o0o-

The Journey
Mary Oliver b.1935

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice  - 
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save. 

(In 1983 Mary Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry)

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JOHN'S POETRY PAGE
is updated on Saturdays
http://johnspoetrypage.blogspot.com

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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire. 
-  L. Frank Baum 1856-1919

-o0o-

Minstrel Man
Langston Hughes 1902=67

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?

-o0o-

from "On Visiting Bookshops" by Christopher Morley 1890-1957

It is a curious thing that so many people only go into a bookshop when they happen to need some particular book. Do they never drop in for a little innocent carouse and refreshment? There are some knightly souls who even go so far as to make their visits to bookshops a kind of chivalrous errantry at large. They go in not because they need any certain volume, but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them. Some wistful, little forgotten sheaf of loveliness, long pining away on an upper shelf - why not ride up, fling her across your charger (or your charge account), and gallop away. Be a little knightly, you book-lovers!

The lack of intelligence with which people use bookshops is, one supposes, no more flagrant than the lack of intelligence with which we use all the rest of the machinery of civilization. In this age, and particularly in this city, we haven’t time to be intelligent.

A queer thing about books, if you open your heart to them, is the instant and irresistible way they follow you with their appeal. You know at once, if you are clairvoyant in these matters (libre-voyant, one might say), when you have met your book. You may dally and evade, you may go on about your affairs, but the paragraph of prose your eye fell upon, or the snatch of verses, or perhaps only the spirit and flavour of the volume, more divined than reasonably noted, will follow you. A few lines glimpsed on a page may alter your whole trend of thought for the day, reverse the currents of the mind, change the profile of the city. The other evening, on a subway car, we were reading Walter de la Mare’s interesting little essay about Rupert Brooke. His discussion of children, their dreaming ways, their exalted simplicity and absorption, changed the whole tenor of our voyage by some magical chemistry of thought. It was no longer a wild, barbaric struggle with our fellowmen, but a venture of faith and recompense, taking us home to the bedtime of a child.

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On a Fly drinking out of his Cup
William Oldys 1687-1761

Busy, curious, thirsty Fly,
Gently drink, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my Cup,
Could'st thou sip, and sip it up;
Make the most of Life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

Just alike, both mine and thine,
Hasten quick to their Decline;
Thine's a Summer, mine's no more,
Though repeated to threescore;
Threescore Summers when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one.

-o0o-

And something very different, to conclude today's post . . .

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light!
- Edna St.Vincent Millay 1892-1950

-o0o-

NEXT POST THURSDAY

Now online
JOHN'S POETRY PAGE
http://johnspoetrypage.blogspot.com

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Thursday, May 14, 2015

Home Is the Sailor
 A.E. Housman 1859-1936

Home is the sailor, home from sea:
     Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
     The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:
     Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
     And every fowl of air.

'Tis evening on the moorland free,
     The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
     The hunter from the hill.

-o0o-

from "The Haunting of Hill House"
by Shirley Jackson 1916-65

Her face . . .
The men bent half down in wonder.
Her face was white sand sculpture, with a few water drops shimmering on it like summer rain upon a cream-coloured rose. Her face was that moon which when seen by day is pale and unbelievable in the blue sky. It was milk-marble veined with faint violet in the temples. The eyelids, closed down upon the eyes, were powdered with a faint water colour, as if the eyes beneath gazed through the fragile tissue of the lids and saw them standing there above her, looking down and looking down. The mouth was a pale flushed sea-rose, full and closed upon itself. And her neck was slender and white and her breasts were small and white, now covered, uncovered, covered, uncovered, in the flow of water, the ebb of water, the flow, the ebb, the flow. And the breasts were flushed at their tips, and her body was startlingly white, almost an illumination, a white-green lightning against the sand.

And as the water shifted her, her skin glinted like the surface of a pearl.
The lower half of her body changed itself from white to very pale blue, from very pale blue to very pale green, from pale green to emerald green, to moss and lime green, to scintillas and sequins all dark green, all flowing away in a fount, a curve, a rush of light and dark, to end in a lacy fan, a spread of foam and jewel on the sand. The two halves of this creature were so joined as to reveal no point of fusion where pearl woman, woman of a whiteness made of cream-water and clear sky merged with that half which belonged to the amphibious slide and rush of current that came up on the shore and shelved down the shore, tugging its half toward its proper home.

The woman was the sea, and the sea was woman. There was no flaw or seam, no wrinkle or stitch; the illusion, if illusion it was, held perfectly together and the blood from one moved into and through and mingled with what must have been the ice waters of the other.

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All That's Past
 Walter de la Mare 1873-1956

Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier's boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are -
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.

Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve's nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

-o0o-

The new blog
JOHN'S POETRY PAGE
is now online and will be updated on Saturday
http://johnspoetrypage.blogspot.com

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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

'Tis like the birthday of the world,
When earth was born in bloom;
The light is made of many dyes,
The air is all perfume:
There's crimson buds, and white and blue,
The very rainbow showers
Have turned to blossoms where they fell,
And sown the earth with flowers.
- Thomas Hood 1799-1845

-o0o-

Ryokan a Zen master lived alone in a small hut at the foot of a mountain.
One day, on returning to the hut, he discovered a thief inside.
Ryokan grabbed hold of him and said, “You can see that I have no possessions, in fact all I have are the clothes I’m wearing.”
The thief was astonished when Ryokan took off his clothes and handed them to him saying “Please take them as a gift from me.”
Later that night, as Ryokan sat naked watching the moon, he thought “Poor fellow, I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

-o0o-

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there’s a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story;
There’s a flower that shall be mine,
‘Tis the little Celandine.
- William Wordsworth 1770-1850

-o0o-

The Lesser Celadine

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If we are peaceful.
If we are happy.
We can smile and blossom
Like a flower.

And everyone
In our family,
Our entire society
Will benefit
From our peace.
-Thich Nhat Hanh b.1926

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Now online
JOHN'S POETRY PAGE
at

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Thursday, May 7, 2015

OZYMANDIAS
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear -
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

-o0o-

from "One Day" by David Nicholls b.1966

What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance. 

-o0o-

Untitled

Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941

I want to give you something, my child,
for we are drifting in the stream of the world.
Our lives will be carried apart,
and our love forgotten.
But I am not so foolish as to hope that
I could buy your heart with my gifts.
Young is your life, your path long, and
you drink the love we bring you at one draught
and turn and run away from us.
You have your play and your playmates.
What harm is there if you have no time
or thought for us.
We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age
to count the days that are past,
to cherish in our hearts what our
hands have lost for ever.
The river runs swift with a song,
breaking through all barriers.
But the mountain stays and remembers,
and follows her with his love.

-o0o-

And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.
- Nicholas Sparks

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Next post here Tuesday

NEW - beginning on Saturday - NEW
JOHN'S POETRY PAGE

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Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the light of the 
candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- Buddha

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Out back, behind the yard
in the brush and scrub at the edge
a world unfolds for those willing
to stop and look, crunch and tread
where squirrel and ant, snake and fox
hunt and work, amongst the deadfall
Wonder of nature in the back, beyond
the cut lawn and past the leaf litter
a bend of a branch held by ivy
a curl of birch bark
a spider’s leg showing below the
lip of a fungus on an old trunk
patterns in the ground, beneath the
newness of spring in the woods
before the full greening of the
new shoots and leaves
in between time in early April
in New Hampshire
- Raymond A. Foss b.1960

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The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud, the obstacles of life and its suffering. . . . The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. . . . Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles - sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. 
- Goldie Hawn

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This blog is now being updated on Tuesdays and Thursdays

NEW - starting on Saturday 9th May - NEW
JOHN'S POETRY PAGE
http://johnspoetrypage.blogspot.com

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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Opportunity may knock only once but temptation leans on the door bell
-  Oprah Winfrey b.1954

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As for me - for me, the grass grew longer, and more sorrowful, and the trees were surfaced like flesh, and girls were no longer to be treated lightly but were creatures of commanding sadness, and all journeys through the valley were now made alone, with passion in every bush, and the motions of wind and cloud and stars were suddenly for myself alone, and voices elected me of all men living and called me to deliver the world, and I groaned from solitude, blushed when I stumbled, loved strangers and bread and butter, and made long trips through the rain on my bicycle, stared wretchedly through lighted windows, grinned wryly to think how little I was known, and lived in a state of raging excitement. My mother half knew me, but could not help, I felt doomed, and of all things wonderful. 
It was then I began to sit on my bed and stare out at the nibbling squirrels, and to make up poems from intense abstraction, hour after unmarked hour, imagination scarcely faltering once, rhythm hardly skipping a beat, while sisters called me, suns rose and fell, and the poems I made, which I never remembered, were the first and last of that time  . . . 
from "Cider With Rosie" - Laurie Lee 1914-97

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I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The vioets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday -
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
- Thomas Hood 1799-1845

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thanks to pixabay.com for the image

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This blog will now be updated
on TUESDAYS and THURSDAYS

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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. 
- J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973

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When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things?"

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries?"

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?"
- Thomas Hardy 1840-1928

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. - Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890-1969

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thanks to pixabay.com for the image

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NEXT POST THURSDAY

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Saturday, April 25, 2015

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. 
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. 
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. 
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. 
- Elie Wiesel b.1928

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From "Straw Dogs" by John Gray b.1948
For much of their history and all of prehistory, humans did not see themselves as being any different from the other animals among which they lived. Hunter-gatherers saw their prey as equals, if not superiors, and animals were worshipped as divinities in many traditional cultures. The humanist sense of a gulf between ourselves and other animals is an aberration. Feeble as it is today, the feeling of sharing a common destiny with other living things is embedded in the human psyche. Those who struggle to conserve what is left of the natural environment are moved by the love of living things, biophilia, the frail bond of feeling that ties humankind to the Earth.

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The Lake Isle of Innesfree
W.B. Yeats 1865-1939

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.

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thanks to pixabay.com for the image

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NEXT POST TUESDAY

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Thursday, April 23, 2015

There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it. 
-  Judith McNaught b.1944

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Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.
- Langston Hughes 1902-67

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The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye, produced an equal activity in my mind: my thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery? Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited, were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose, with renewed dignity, above its cares - grasping at immortality - it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me - I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come. - Mary Wollstonecraft  from "A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark"

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I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
 Yet know I how the heather looks,
    And what a wave must be.
             I never spoke with God,         
   Nor visited in heaven;
   Yet certain am I of the spot
  As if the chart were given.
Emily Dickinson 1830-86

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NEXT POST SATURDAY

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Tuesday, April 21, 2015

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. - Mark Twain 1835-1910

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Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
- John Lennon 1940-80

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And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
- Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

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Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say - So what! That's one of my favourite things to say - So what! - Andy Warhol 1928-87


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Thanks to pixabay.com for the image

NEXT POST THURSDAY

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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-82

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Extract from "Absalom, Absalom!"
William Faulkner 1897-1962

"Yes," Judith said. "Or destroy it. As you like. Read it if you like or don't read it if you like. Because you make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it can't matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over, all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they don't even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter."

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Beautiful Old Age
D. H. Lawrence  1885-1930

It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.

The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.

Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.

And a girl should say:
It must be wonderful to live and grow old.
Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -

And a young man should think: By Jove
my father has faced all weathers,
but it's been a life!

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Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. - Marcel Proust 1871-1922

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You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth. 
William W. Purkey b.1929

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NEXT POST TUESDAY

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Thursday, April 16, 2015

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. 
- Malcolm X 

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It is well for a man to be frugal, to abstain from luxury, to possess no treasure nor to covet this world’s goods. Since olden times there has rarely been a sage who was wealthy.

In China there was once a man called Hsu Yu. He had not a single possession in the world. He even scooped up water with his hands, until a friend gave him a gourd. But one day, when he had hung it from a branch, it rattled in the wind; whereupon, disturbed by the noise, he threw it away and once more took to drinking from his clasped hands. How pure and free the heart of such a man.

A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky. - Yoshida Kenko 1283-1350

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I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been,

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door.
-  J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973

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A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that you've ever done. But what's yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it'll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won't have to put it back in the sky again. - C. JoyBell C. 

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NEXT POST SATURDAY

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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever 
loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.
- Vincent van Gogh  1853-90

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Everyone Sang
Siegfried Sassoon 1886-1967

Everyone suddenly burst out singing:
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields: on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun;
My heart was shaken with tears: and horror
Drifted away . . . O, but everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

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Extract from "Blindness"
Jose Saramago 1922-2010

Has everyone told their story about the last time they could see, asked the old man with the black eyepatch, I'll tell you mine, if there's no one else, said the unknown voice, If there is, he can speak after you, so fire away, The last thing I saw was a painting, A painting, repeated the old man with the black eyepatch, and where was this painting, I had gone to the museum, it was a picture of a cornfield with crows and cypress trees and a sun that gave the impression of having been made up of the fragments of other suns, Sounds like a Dutch painter, I think it was, but there was a drowning dog in it, already half submerged, poor creature, In that case it must be by a Spanish painter, before him no one had ever painted a dog in that situation, after him no other painter had the courage to try, Probably, and there was a cart laden with hay, drawn by horses and crossing a stream, Was there a house on the left, Yes, Then it was by an English painter, Could be, but I don't think so, because there was a woman as well with a child in her arms, Mothers and children are all too common in paintings, True, I've noticed, What I don't understand is how in one painting there should be so many pictures and by such different painters, And there were some men eating, There have been so many lunches, afternoon snacks and suppers in the history of art, that this detail in itself is not enough to tell us who was eating, There were thirteen men altogether, Ah, then its easy, go on, There was also a naked woman with fair hair, inside a conch that was floating on the sea, and masses of flowers around her, Obviously Italian, And there was a battle, As in those paintings depicting banquets and mothers with children in their arms, these details are not enough to reveal who painted the picture, There were corpses and wounded men, Its only natural, sooner or later, all children die, and soldiers too, And a horse stricken with terror, With its eyes about to pop out of their sockets, Exactly, Horses are like that, and what other pictures were there in your painting, Alas, I never managed to find out, I went blind just as I was looking at the horse. Fear can cause blindness, said the girl with dark glasses, Never a truer word, that could not be truer, we were already blind the moment we turned blind, fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind, Who is speaking, asked the doctor, A blind man, replied a voice, just a blind man, for that is all we have here. Then the old man with the black eyepatch asked, How many blind persons are needed to make a blindness, No one could provide the answer.

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Life is a treasure-chest of opportunities, choices, and time. 
Unfortunately, the choice many people make is to argue about 
the details of the chest instead of seizing the treasure within it. 
Steve Maraboli  b1975.

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NEXT POST THURSDAY

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Saturday, April 11, 2015

A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken. Fortunately, something else happens to you and me. Pick up your pieces. Then, help me gather mine. - Vera Nazarian b.1966

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I want to give you something, my child,
for we are drifting in the stream of the world.
Our lives will be carried apart,
and our love forgotten.
But I am not so foolish as to hope that
I could buy your heart with my gifts.
Young is your life, your path long, and
you drink the love we bring you at one draught
and turn and run away from us.
You have your play and your playmates.
What harm is there if you have no time
or thought for us.
We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age
to count the days that are past,
to cherish in our hearts what our
hands have lost for ever.
The river runs swift with a song,
breaking through all barriers.
But the mountain stays and remembers,
and follows her with his love.
- Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941

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The leaves streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green; only a few, scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of green so bright and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a colour, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this colour, this green rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, bending over the road, and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the branches, like a conscious caress. The young man hoped he would not have to die.

Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope and the promise like a voice with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world. - from "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

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Life has loveliness to sell,
     All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
     Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
     Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
     Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
     Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
     Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
- Sara Teasdale 1884-1933

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NEXT POST TUESDAY

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Thursday, April 9, 2015

Walk on a rainbow trail, walk on a trail of song 
And all about you will be beauty.
There is a way out of every dark mist 
Over a rainbow trail. 
- Navajo Poem

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My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
- William Wordsworth 1770-1850

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Extract from A Highland Parish by Norman Macleod 1812-72

The Highland churchyard is a spot which seldom betrays any other traces of human art or care than those simple headstones which mark its green graves. In very few instances is it enclosed; its graves generally mingle with the mountain pasture and blooming heather, and afford shelter to the sheep and lamb from the blast of winter and the heat of summer.

But although not consecrated by holy prayer and religious ceremony, these are nevertheless holy spots in the hearts and minds of the peasantry, who never pass them without a subdued look, which betokens a feeling of respect for the silent sleepers. To deck a father or mother's grave would be, in the estimate of the Highlander, to turn it into a flower-garden. He thinks it utter vanity to attempt to express his grief or respect for the departed by any ornament beyond the tombstone, whose inscription is seldom more than a statistical table of birth and death.

Many of those Highland churchyards, so solitary and so far removed from the busy haunts of men, are nevertheless singularly touching and beautiful.

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Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
Christina Georgina Rossetti 1830-94

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The dead ends in life force us to turn round and find another way to our destination. Who knows what treasures we will discover along the way. Detours are an opportunity to reshape our lives. Embrace them! - Tom Hackett

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NEXT POST SATURDAY

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