Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
Emily Bronte
I think I may have found a new favorite…I love amphibians and reptiles as you can see from my photos on my Flickr page 🙂 I tried to post a copy of a golden snake for you, but couldn’t…
Anything by Emily Dickinson – spare, beautiful – her work is to poetry what a Japanese room is to interior decorating.
And oh, yes, “Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. . .
Barter
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 the 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
The poem that made me love E. Dickinson:
I ’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody! 5
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog! http://bartleby.com/113/1027.html
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
Emily Bronte
Here’s one of mine by Wallace Stevens – Peter Quince at the Clavier.
http://teabird17.blogspot.com/2009/04/peter-quince-at-clavier-wallace-stevens.html
I think I may have found a new favorite…I love amphibians and reptiles as you can see from my photos on my Flickr page 🙂 I tried to post a copy of a golden snake for you, but couldn’t…
I’ve posted one of mine on my blog. 🙂 It’s actually a Leonard Cohen piece, “Take This Longing”.
Anything by Emily Dickinson – spare, beautiful – her work is to poetry what a Japanese room is to interior decorating.
And oh, yes, “Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. . .
Barter
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 the 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
The poem that made me love E. Dickinson:
I ’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody! 5
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
http://bartleby.com/113/1027.html