Peace

by Sara Teasdale

Peace flows into me
  As the tide to the pool by the shore;
  It is mine forevermore,
It will not ebb like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
  That worships the vivid sky;
  My hopes were heaven-high,
They are fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
  When sunset burns and dies --
  You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold.

O Mistress Mine

by "William Shakespeare"

O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—	5
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,—	10
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

What I Believe

What I Believe
by Michael Blumenthal

I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently,

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.

The Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

More Hitchens . . .

. . . this time on the general desirability of mental / emotional strife:

It's often been observed that the major religions can give no convincing account of Paradise.  They do much better representing Hell; indeed one of the early Christian dogmatists, Tertullian, borrowed the vividness of the latter to lend point to the former.  Among the delights of Heaven, he decided, would be the contemplation of the tortures of the damned.  This anthropomorphism at least had a bite to it; the problem in all other cases [of our attempts to envision a convincing Paradise] is that nobody can seriously desire the dissolution of the intellect.  And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.

Who would want their "Heaven"?  Life without struggle is not life.  It's a coma.  I ask again, who would want that?

Hitchens On Rilke On Eros

"The other positive and affirmative element in Rilke is his approach to Eros.  He had a high intuition about sex, both as a liberating force and also as the best riposte to the foul suggestions of death.  His seven so-called Phallic Poems are among the best non-love verses since the brave days of Marvell and the Metaphysicals; they openly announce that fucking is its own justification."

from Letters to a Young Contrarian, 2001.

Happy Valentine's Day

You are my heart's true desire, my ideal woman, and the real love of my life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghZt2cILcCU

(Sorry about the annoying ads.  It's the "official" video so there's no way around it.)

Frost at Midnight

A poem of eerie calm and isolated contemplation . . .  
I re-read this last night after playing "frost" in Words.
I forgot how much I like it.  Might not be your thing.

Frost at Midnight

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, everywhere
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Be Calm

like a giant tree in a storm.

Quote for the Day

"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."

Horace Walpole

Miles Between Love

We're so close together
Yet so far away
And I miss you more and more
With the passing of each day
I know that you love me
I love you too
And I can't wait for the day
I'll finally be with you
We are forever united
Never to be apart
Your love for me is eternal
And treasured in my heart
I await the day
I'll be in your arms
Sure of myself
And safe from all harm
But until that day comes
No matter where you are
I will forever remain true
Loving you from afar.

I Love You :)

Happy Thanksgiving

The Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving

by Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)

It may be I am getting old and like too much to dwell
Upon the days of bygone years, the days I loved so well;
But thinking of them now I wish somehow that I could know
A simple old Thanksgiving Day, like those of long ago,
When all the family gathered round a table richly spread,
With little Jamie at the foot and grandpa at the head,
The youngest of us all to greet the oldest with a smile,
With mother running in and out and laughing all the while.

It may be I'm old-fashioned, but it seems to me to-day
We're too much bent on having fun to take the time to pray;
Each little family grows up with fashions of its own;
It lives within a world itself and wants to be alone.
It has its special pleasures, its circle, too, of friends;
There are no get-together days; each one his journey wends,
Pursuing what he likes the best in his particular way,
Letting the others do the same upon Thanksgiving Day.

I like the olden way the best, when relatives were glad
To meet the way they used to do when I was but a lad;
The old home was a rendezvous for all our kith and kin,
And whether living far or near they all came trooping in
With shouts of "Hello, daddy!" as they fairly stormed the place
And made a rush for mother, who would stop to wipe her face
Upon her gingham apron before she kissed them all,
Hugging them proudly to her breast, the grownups and the small.

Then laughter rang throughout the home, and, Oh, the jokes they told;
From Boston, Frank brought new ones, but father sprang the old;
All afternoon we chatted, telling what we hoped to do,
The struggles we were making and the hardships we'd gone through;
We gathered round the fireside. How fast the hours would fly--
It seemed before we'd settled down 'twas time to say good-bye.
Those were the glad Thanksgivings, the old-time families knew
When relatives could still be friends and every heart was true.

Good-bye

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I’m going home.

Good-bye to Flattery’s fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth’s averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,—
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird’s roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?

Pics

From my walk this morning.

This is my favorite "Think Spot".  Looks out over Vineyard Sound.

from Pantisocracy

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Eyes that have ach'd with Sorrow! Ye shall weep
Tears of doubt-mingled joy, like theirs who start
From Precipices of distemper'd sleep,
(On which the fierce-eyed Fiends their revels keep),
And see the rising Sun, and feel it dart
New rays of pleasance trembling to the heart.

(see, so it's really like waking from a nightmare -- from "Precipices of distemper'd sleep" -- and seeing a brand new day bringing "new rays of pleasance trembling to the heart.").

The Chances of Rhyme

The Chances of Rhyme
by Charles Tomlinson

[opening couplet]

The chances of rhyme are like the chances of meeting.
In the finding fortuitous, but once found, binding.

From My Heart . . .

On Having A Sense of Place

One wants to have formed one’s value system not just in a place but partly because of it.  One wants to have engaged in romantic play in a landscape that is so essential that it is virtually a character in the drama.  One wants one’s religion to be centered not merely in a text, a doctrine, a creed, or a chapel, but in a locale, a sacred precinct, a circle of land and sky, a place where the wind bloweth where it listeth.  One wants one’s firstborn beloved child to have been born not merely in a hospital in Reno or on an air force base near Munich or Stuttgart, but in the place that matters most of all the places that mean something in one’s life.  One wants a true, deep, rooted home, a refuge to return to – to seek clarity and unconditional love.  One wants landscape in one’s soul, and one’s soul to dwell in a landscape somewhere.

Where would you go if you were diagnosed with cancer or the AIDS virus, if your whole world collapsed around you and only one point on the planet could help to heal? Where would you take the significant other who was hopelessly, boundlessly, endlessly, head-over-heels in love with you and she asked, take me to the place that means more to you than any other place in the cosmos?  There, if anywhere, you will find spirit of place.

from Message on the Wind: A Spiritual Odyssey on the Northern Plains

by Clay Straus Jenkinson

A Good Fine Wine

Seghesio Old Vine Zinfandel perfectly embodies our familys goal of Sharing Uncommon Ground as only the finest lots from our oldest vineyards are selected for this composite blend. These vineyards are rare treasures we have farmed over the course of our familys century as grape growers. Although Old Vine is often loosely interpreted in the wine industry, our benchmark is fifty years. The average age of the vines producing this wine nears 90 years

Weekend in New England

For you . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e2jx4Q0sUs&feature=related
(I especially like the comment that shows under the video).