Marvellousness of single knowledge

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T h e   P a n e   o f   L o n g i n g

Bull Street Lunatic Asylum (Abandoned)

Columbia, South Carolina

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Yea, here the end
Of love’s astonishment! Now know we Spirit,
And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit.
Now all life’s loveliness and power we have
Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning
Carries all shining upward, till in us
Life is not life, but the desire of God,
Himself desiring and himself accepting.
Now what was prophecy in us is made
Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy,
We in our marvellousness of single knowledge,
Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate
And drawing into his light the greeting fire
Of God, -- God known in ecstasy of love
Wedding himself to utterance of himself.

from Emblems of Love

= Lascelles Abercrombie =

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Happy Tuesday

Filled with fascination

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T w i g g e d   O u t

Howling Late-Winter Day 2016

Columbia, South Carolina

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it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed
with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds
the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;
moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination,when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:
one pierced moment whiter than the rest
-- turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

= e.e. cummings =

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Happy Friday

Ever best and fairest now

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B a b y   F i n e

Anshai Sfard Cemetery

Rossford, Ohio

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True Love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty’s law of plainness and content;
A simple, fire-side thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth’s poorest hovel to a home;
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,
Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth
In bleak November, and, with thankful heart,
Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit,
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes
As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring.
Such is true Love, which steals into the heart
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn
That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,
And hath its will through blissful gentleness, --
Not like a rocket, which, with savage glare,
Whirrs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night
Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes;
A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,
Now with flaw-seeking eyes like needle-points,
But, loving kindly, ever looks them down
With the o’ercoming faith of meek forgiveness;
A love that shall be new and fresh each hour,
As is the golden mystery of sunset,
Or the sweet coming of the evening-star,
Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,
But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer,
Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness,
A love that in its object findeth not
All grace and beauty, and enough to sate
Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good
Found there, it sees but Heaven-granted types
Of good and beauty in the soul of man,
And traces, in the simplest heart that beats,
A family-likeness to its chosen one,
That claims of it the rights of brotherhood.
For Love is blind but with the fleshly eye,
That so its inner sight may be more clear;
And outward shows of beauty only so
Are needful at the first, as is a hand
To guide and to uphold an infant’s steps:
Great spirits need them not; their earnest look
Pierces the body’s mask of thin disguise,
And beauty ever is to them revealed,
Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay,
With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze,
Yearning to be but understood and loved.

= James Russell Lowell =

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Happy Thursday

A kingdom in the sky

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T h e y   T e a c h   W h e n   T h e y   R e a c h

From the Passenger Seat

Columbia, South Carolina

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THE LOST FOLLOWER

As I have known them passionate and fine,

The gold for which they leave the golden line

Of lyric is a golden light divine,

Never the gold of darkness from a mine.

The spirit plays us strange religious pranks

To whatsoever god we owe the thanks.

No one has ever failed the poet ranks

To link a chain of money-metal banks.

The loss to song, the danger of defection

Is always in the opposite direction.

Some turn in sheer, in Shelleyan dejection

To try if one more popular election

Will give us by shortcut the final stage

That poetry with all its golden rage

For beauty on the illuminated page

Has failed to bring -- I mean the Golden Age.

And if this may not be (and nothing's sure),

At least to live ungolden with the poor,

Enduring what the ungolden must endure.

This has been poetry's great anti-lure.

The Muse mourns one who went to his retreat

Long since in some abysmal city street,

The bride who shared the crust he broke to eat,

As grave as he about the world's defeat.

With such it has proved dangerous as friend

Even in a playful moment to contend

That the millennium to which you bend

In longing is not at a progress-end

By grace of state-manipulated pelf,

Or politics of Ghibelline or Guelph,

But right beside you booklike on a shelf,

Or even better godlike in yourself.

He trusts my love too well to deign reply,

But there is in the sadness of his eye

Something about a kingdom in the sky

(As yet unbrought to earth) he means to try.

= Robert Frost =

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Happy Wednesday

In open conversation

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I t ' s   P o l i t e   T o   S t a r e

Daffodil 2014

Columbia, South Carolina

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Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

= Sylvia Plath =

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Happy Tuesday