Where is Green in winter?
Green darkens, shrinks,
stiffens into needles.
Green waits
in the hearts of trees,
feeling
the earth
turn.
--Joyce Sidman, Red Sings from Treetops
Showing posts with label 4 - Feature Artist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4 - Feature Artist. Show all posts
My Childhood Home I See Again
--by Abraham Lincoln
[I]
My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.
O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,
And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.
As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;
As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.
Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.
Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.
The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.
I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.
I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.
[II]
But here's an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.
Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,
A fortune-favored child--
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man wild.
Poor Matthew! I have ne'er forgot,
When first, with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
And mother strove to kill;
When terror spread, and neighbors ran,
Your dange'rous strength to bind;
And soon, a howling crazy man
Your limbs were fast confined.
How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd,
With burning eye-balls glared--
And begged, and swore, and wept and prayed
With maniac laught joined--
How fearful were those signs displayed
By pangs that killed thy mind!
And when at length, tho' drear and long,
Time smoothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose.
I've heard it oft, as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet, and lone--
The funeral dirge, it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.
To drink it's strains, I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.
Air held his breath; trees, with the spell,
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the listening ground.
But this is past; and nought remains,
That raised thee o'er the brute.
Thy piercing shrieks, and soothing strains,
Are like, forever mute.
Now fare thee well--more thou the cause,
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs, by time's kind laws,
Hast lost the power to know.
O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince,
That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost thos tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him ling'ring here?
--by Abraham Lincoln
[I]
My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.
O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,
And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.
As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-tones that, passing by,
In distance die away;
As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.
Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.
Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.
The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.
I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.
I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I'm living in the tombs.
[II]
But here's an object more of dread
Than ought the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.
Poor Matthew! Once of genius bright,
A fortune-favored child--
Now locked for aye, in mental night,
A haggard mad-man wild.
Poor Matthew! I have ne'er forgot,
When first, with maddened will,
Yourself you maimed, your father fought,
And mother strove to kill;
When terror spread, and neighbors ran,
Your dange'rous strength to bind;
And soon, a howling crazy man
Your limbs were fast confined.
How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd,
With burning eye-balls glared--
And begged, and swore, and wept and prayed
With maniac laught joined--
How fearful were those signs displayed
By pangs that killed thy mind!
And when at length, tho' drear and long,
Time smoothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose.
I've heard it oft, as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet, and lone--
The funeral dirge, it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.
To drink it's strains, I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising God of day
Had streaked the Eastern hill.
Air held his breath; trees, with the spell,
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dew-drops fell
Upon the listening ground.
But this is past; and nought remains,
That raised thee o'er the brute.
Thy piercing shrieks, and soothing strains,
Are like, forever mute.
Now fare thee well--more thou the cause,
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs, by time's kind laws,
Hast lost the power to know.
O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince,
That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost thos tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him ling'ring here?
The Road Not Taken
.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost
The Fish
.
Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.
--William Butler Yeats
Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.
--William Butler Yeats
Dickinson Encore for Easter
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
--Emily Dikinson
One must first taste nectar to thirst for it; first be victorious to crave its company. Whether now or from another life, we all have felt success.
Eventually, we all will find reason to feel like the dying solder on the abandoned battlefield of a meaningless war. But this Easter we celebrate because we all will be victorious. We all will wear purple, fly our flag, and march in the parade.
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
--Emily Dikinson
One must first taste nectar to thirst for it; first be victorious to crave its company. Whether now or from another life, we all have felt success.
Eventually, we all will find reason to feel like the dying solder on the abandoned battlefield of a meaningless war. But this Easter we celebrate because we all will be victorious. We all will wear purple, fly our flag, and march in the parade.
April #1, HDT-Venom
I have always held a lower-than-average opinion of Henry David Thoreau, so when I discovered that a nameless Wikipedia contributor had giving him credit for inspiring and influencing the political thoughts and actions of Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi, I decided to reevaluate him.
At first glance, Thoreau appears to be the only person in history to successfully beat Martin Harris in the World’s Ugliest Beard contest. Being an intellectual and philosophical man, he would resent my shallow judgments almost as much as I resent his work being called intellectual. Standing in the worthy shadow of Emerson, Thoreau graced our planet with Walden Pond, a book as deep as a dry puddle on the flat pavement.
Apparently unemployable, Thoreau scavenged off the mercies of Emerson by living in Emerson’s dilapidated spare house on Walden Pond. From here Thoreau teaches the human race some important lessons:
#1 To decrease the complexities of life, try Simplifying! things
#2 When Thoreau gets hungry, really hungry, he wants to eats stuff, even animals
#3 Words should be read with as much care as the writer gives when writing
Personally, I started with #3 by reading his book with the level of care he used while writing it, which led me to accomplish #1 because I Simplified! my personal library by donating the book to a local thrift store. (The publisher further Simplified! the process by including Civil Disobedience in the same volume, Simplifying! my disposal process.)
But placing my heartless Venom aside, our culture's extravagance has created an economic mess. If instead simplification was the mantra of our generation we might have avoided the hunger that poor Thoreau had to face.
His words whisper from the past like the annoying brat in school that always claimed "I told you so." I imagine this trait earned Thoreau a few black eyes in his schooling days, which probably explains the real reason he went off to live by himself.
At first glance, Thoreau appears to be the only person in history to successfully beat Martin Harris in the World’s Ugliest Beard contest. Being an intellectual and philosophical man, he would resent my shallow judgments almost as much as I resent his work being called intellectual. Standing in the worthy shadow of Emerson, Thoreau graced our planet with Walden Pond, a book as deep as a dry puddle on the flat pavement.
Apparently unemployable, Thoreau scavenged off the mercies of Emerson by living in Emerson’s dilapidated spare house on Walden Pond. From here Thoreau teaches the human race some important lessons:
#1 To decrease the complexities of life, try Simplifying! things
#2 When Thoreau gets hungry, really hungry, he wants to eats stuff, even animals
#3 Words should be read with as much care as the writer gives when writing
Personally, I started with #3 by reading his book with the level of care he used while writing it, which led me to accomplish #1 because I Simplified! my personal library by donating the book to a local thrift store. (The publisher further Simplified! the process by including Civil Disobedience in the same volume, Simplifying! my disposal process.)
But placing my heartless Venom aside, our culture's extravagance has created an economic mess. If instead simplification was the mantra of our generation we might have avoided the hunger that poor Thoreau had to face.
His words whisper from the past like the annoying brat in school that always claimed "I told you so." I imagine this trait earned Thoreau a few black eyes in his schooling days, which probably explains the real reason he went off to live by himself.
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