Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- William H. Davies --
from Art and Nature: An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A very simple poem but a profound thought, I think.
Showing posts with label a summer poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a summer poem. Show all posts
Friday, July 17, 2015
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Paul Laurence Dunbar: In Summer
In Summer
Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.
And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.
I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shinning green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.
He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.
He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heat, without aim or art;
'Tis a song of the merriest.
O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,--
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So. long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.
-- Paul Laurence Dunbar --
from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
The last two stanzas suggest something more is going on here than a simple paean to the joys of summer labor. Singing can do something other than just reflect one's joy at that particular moment:
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,--
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So. long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.
Music bypasses the brain and goes directly to your soul. You can feel the best music in your bones. Martial music and marches and national anthems are far more effective in moving people than any lecture on patriotism. The most rousing speeches and sermons are almost sung or chanted. If you listen carefully you can hear the music underlying the words and that's what moves the listeners.
Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.
And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.
I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shinning green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.
He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.
He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heat, without aim or art;
'Tis a song of the merriest.
O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,--
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So. long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.
-- Paul Laurence Dunbar --
from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
The last two stanzas suggest something more is going on here than a simple paean to the joys of summer labor. Singing can do something other than just reflect one's joy at that particular moment:
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,--
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So. long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.
Music bypasses the brain and goes directly to your soul. You can feel the best music in your bones. Martial music and marches and national anthems are far more effective in moving people than any lecture on patriotism. The most rousing speeches and sermons are almost sung or chanted. If you listen carefully you can hear the music underlying the words and that's what moves the listeners.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
The Summer Solstice
I thought I would post this, the first known poem in English about summer today, since it is the Summer Solstice, or the First Day of Summer. No doubt you have seen it before, as I have, but I enjoy it each time for its simplicity and brevity.
Cuckoo Song
Summer is y-comen in,
Loude sing, cuckoo!
Groweth seed and bloweth meed
And spring'th the woode now--
Sing cuckoo!
Ewe' bleateth after lamb,
Low'th after calfe cow;
Bullock starteth, bucke farteth.
Merry sing cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!
Well sing'st thou, cuckoo:
Ne swike thou never now!
Sing cuckoo, now! Sing cuckoo!
Sing cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo, now!
-- Anon --
swike--cease
from the Wikipedia entry;
"The song is composed in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer's identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264."
Here is one from the other side of the world--China--a poem by T'ao Chien (365-427 AD).
Reading the Book of Hills and Seas
In the month of June the grass grows high
And round my cottage thick-leaved branches sway.
There is not a bird but delights in the place where it rests:
And I too--love my thatched cottage.
I have done my ploughing:
I have sown my seed.
Again I have time to sit and read my books.
In the narrow lane there are no deep ruts:
Often my friends' carriages turn back.
In high spirits I pour out my spring wine
And pluck the lettuce growing in my garden.
A gentle rain comes stealing up from the east
And a sweet wind bears it company.
My thoughts float idly over the Story of King Chou
My eyes wander over the pictures of Hills and Seas.
At a single glance I survey the whole Universe.
He will never be happy whom such pleasures fail to please.
-- T'ai Ch'ien --
from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
Edited by Gary Schmidt and Susan M. Felch
This is a repeat for I had posted this about three years ago, but I thought it captures the sense of summer--paradoxically a time of work and also play or rest or meditation or just being.
#172 Solstice
"The summer solstice is the time of greatest light. It is a day of enormous power. The whole planet is turned fully to the brilliance of the sun.
This great culmination is not static or permanent. Indeed, solstice as a time of culmination is only a barely perceptible point. The sun appears to stand still. Its diurnal motion seems to nearly cease. Yesterday, it was still reaching this point; tomorrow, it will begin a new phase of its cycle.
Those who follow Tao celebrate this day to remind themselves of the cycles of existence. They remember that all cycles have a left and a right, an up side and a down side, a zenith and a nadir. Today, day far surpasses night, and night will gradually begin to reassert itself. All of life is cycles. All of life is balance."
-- Deng Ming-Dao --
from 365 Tao
While the Summer Solstice inevitably brings to mind the Winter Solstice, the time of the longest night, we shouldn't let that thought spoil our enjoyment of the present. Good times will be followed by sad times, but those sad times are no more permanent than are the good times. The wisest know that nothing is permanent: even the mountains will eventually erode away, and then, in some far distant future, will be raised up once again.
Cuckoo Song
Summer is y-comen in,
Loude sing, cuckoo!
Groweth seed and bloweth meed
And spring'th the woode now--
Sing cuckoo!
Ewe' bleateth after lamb,
Low'th after calfe cow;
Bullock starteth, bucke farteth.
Merry sing cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!
Well sing'st thou, cuckoo:
Ne swike thou never now!
Sing cuckoo, now! Sing cuckoo!
Sing cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo, now!
-- Anon --
swike--cease
from the Wikipedia entry;
"The song is composed in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer's identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264."
Here is one from the other side of the world--China--a poem by T'ao Chien (365-427 AD).
Reading the Book of Hills and Seas
In the month of June the grass grows high
And round my cottage thick-leaved branches sway.
There is not a bird but delights in the place where it rests:
And I too--love my thatched cottage.
I have done my ploughing:
I have sown my seed.
Again I have time to sit and read my books.
In the narrow lane there are no deep ruts:
Often my friends' carriages turn back.
In high spirits I pour out my spring wine
And pluck the lettuce growing in my garden.
A gentle rain comes stealing up from the east
And a sweet wind bears it company.
My thoughts float idly over the Story of King Chou
My eyes wander over the pictures of Hills and Seas.
At a single glance I survey the whole Universe.
He will never be happy whom such pleasures fail to please.
-- T'ai Ch'ien --
from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
Edited by Gary Schmidt and Susan M. Felch
This is a repeat for I had posted this about three years ago, but I thought it captures the sense of summer--paradoxically a time of work and also play or rest or meditation or just being.
#172 Solstice
"The summer solstice is the time of greatest light. It is a day of enormous power. The whole planet is turned fully to the brilliance of the sun.
This great culmination is not static or permanent. Indeed, solstice as a time of culmination is only a barely perceptible point. The sun appears to stand still. Its diurnal motion seems to nearly cease. Yesterday, it was still reaching this point; tomorrow, it will begin a new phase of its cycle.
Those who follow Tao celebrate this day to remind themselves of the cycles of existence. They remember that all cycles have a left and a right, an up side and a down side, a zenith and a nadir. Today, day far surpasses night, and night will gradually begin to reassert itself. All of life is cycles. All of life is balance."
-- Deng Ming-Dao --
from 365 Tao
While the Summer Solstice inevitably brings to mind the Winter Solstice, the time of the longest night, we shouldn't let that thought spoil our enjoyment of the present. Good times will be followed by sad times, but those sad times are no more permanent than are the good times. The wisest know that nothing is permanent: even the mountains will eventually erode away, and then, in some far distant future, will be raised up once again.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Tucson Weather Report
Tucson Weather Report
Sunday, August 12, 2012
3:53 PM MST
Temperature: 108 F
Relative Humidity 9%
Such utter silence!
Even the crickets singing . . .
Muffled by hot rocks
-- Basho --
Sunday, August 12, 2012
3:53 PM MST
Temperature: 108 F
Relative Humidity 9%
Such utter silence!
Even the crickets singing . . .
Muffled by hot rocks
-- Basho --
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Robert Frost: Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length
One point to make about this title is that it certainly grabs my attention. Usually I glance over the title, perhaps consider it for a very short time, and then move on to the work. Not this time, for I really stop and contemplate it at length. Why did Frost create such a long and unwieldy title? It almost beats me over the head as it says, "This is the moral, the theme. I don't want you to miss it and, therefore, not understand the poem." The intensity of happiness overcomes its brevity is the meaning, or so it seems to be saying. Anyway, here's the poem.
Enjoy
Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It lacks in Length
O stormy, stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun's brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view--
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day's perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.
I find the syntax of the first seven lines very tangled. Then when "Were days so very few" appeared, I had to stop to go went back to work out just which days those were. Each line is simple and straightforward in itself, but the flow is rather murky at first.
Frost really stresses the point of this being, perhaps, one of those rare clear days in the following lines:
When starting clear at dawn
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
The point seems to be that summer weather isn't quite as perfect as he remembers, and he may have been misled into thinking so because one perfect day overshadows many stormy, cloudy, rainy days. It certainly seems as though that's what the poet is suggesting. But, the problem is that this is Robert Frost and it's seldom as simple and straightforward as that.
"No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude."
As usual with Frost, the last lines of the poem frequently bring up questions or bring into question what appears to be the overall theme. Frost tells us here at the end that there are two of them, something not even hinted at earlier. "No shadow" suggests that it was a clear day and also that they were alone. They did not go into the wood for solitude but for a "change of solitude." They went for a different type of solitude, the kind found in the wood which was different from the kind found in a house. And again, as usual with Frost, he leaves it up to us to discover or even perhaps to create those differences.
Enjoy
Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It lacks in Length
O stormy, stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun's brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view--
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day's perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.
I find the syntax of the first seven lines very tangled. Then when "Were days so very few" appeared, I had to stop to go went back to work out just which days those were. Each line is simple and straightforward in itself, but the flow is rather murky at first.
Frost really stresses the point of this being, perhaps, one of those rare clear days in the following lines:
When starting clear at dawn
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
The point seems to be that summer weather isn't quite as perfect as he remembers, and he may have been misled into thinking so because one perfect day overshadows many stormy, cloudy, rainy days. It certainly seems as though that's what the poet is suggesting. But, the problem is that this is Robert Frost and it's seldom as simple and straightforward as that.
"No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude."
As usual with Frost, the last lines of the poem frequently bring up questions or bring into question what appears to be the overall theme. Frost tells us here at the end that there are two of them, something not even hinted at earlier. "No shadow" suggests that it was a clear day and also that they were alone. They did not go into the wood for solitude but for a "change of solitude." They went for a different type of solitude, the kind found in the wood which was different from the kind found in a house. And again, as usual with Frost, he leaves it up to us to discover or even perhaps to create those differences.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Robert Frost: "The Vantage Point"
This is one of Robert Frost's earlier poems. It appeared in his first collection of poetry, A Boy's Will, which was published in April 1913 in London.
The Vantage Point
If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me--in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.
And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sun burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.
I always have to be careful, if not wary, when reading a Frost poem. I think I know what's going on, and then, at the end, he manages somehow to introduce a question as to just exactly what is going on here. This poem is no exception. It seems very straightforward at first. He is tired of looking at nature and wishes to see something of humankind. And, he knows the spot from where he can see homes and also cattle owned by humans. But, then, there's those ". . . graves of men on an opposing hill." He can think of humans "Living or dead, whichever are to mind." This strikes me as being a strange way when "tired of trees" to contemplate humankind. To me, anyway, it suggests some sort of ambiguity in his attitude towards his fellow humans. It seems the only differences between the living and the dead are the ways in which one wishes to think of them or as Frost puts it --"whichever are to mind."
The second stanza now reverses his original thought, and now he's tired of humankind. He once again selects nature, and all that is required is "to turn on my arm." This is a very nice vantage point. Now he has a view of nature--sun, earth, plants. Then, comes the last line, the end of the poem: "I look into the crater of the ant." Is he drawing a comparison between the human habitations and the crater of the ant? As is typical with Frost, one may think he's providing answers, but there's always that last line.
The Vantage Point
If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me--in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.
And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sun burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.
I always have to be careful, if not wary, when reading a Frost poem. I think I know what's going on, and then, at the end, he manages somehow to introduce a question as to just exactly what is going on here. This poem is no exception. It seems very straightforward at first. He is tired of looking at nature and wishes to see something of humankind. And, he knows the spot from where he can see homes and also cattle owned by humans. But, then, there's those ". . . graves of men on an opposing hill." He can think of humans "Living or dead, whichever are to mind." This strikes me as being a strange way when "tired of trees" to contemplate humankind. To me, anyway, it suggests some sort of ambiguity in his attitude towards his fellow humans. It seems the only differences between the living and the dead are the ways in which one wishes to think of them or as Frost puts it --"whichever are to mind."
The second stanza now reverses his original thought, and now he's tired of humankind. He once again selects nature, and all that is required is "to turn on my arm." This is a very nice vantage point. Now he has a view of nature--sun, earth, plants. Then, comes the last line, the end of the poem: "I look into the crater of the ant." Is he drawing a comparison between the human habitations and the crater of the ant? As is typical with Frost, one may think he's providing answers, but there's always that last line.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Serendipity
Since the Fall Equinox or the First Day of Fall is September 23 this year, less than two weeks from today, this poem seemed appropriate.
Late Summer
In the gentle evening of the summer,
which is tired with the festival,
the water is clear
and the fish are at the bottom.
Holding leftover wreaths
in their languid arms,
trees are
already dreaming.
The last bird has flown by,
holding a black sound
in its beak.
Farewell, summer,
quicken your pace as you go . . .
Stars fall quietly into the water . . .
-- Tada Chimako --
from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
Gary Schmidt & Susan M. Felch, editors
Late Summer
In the gentle evening of the summer,
which is tired with the festival,
the water is clear
and the fish are at the bottom.
Holding leftover wreaths
in their languid arms,
trees are
already dreaming.
The last bird has flown by,
holding a black sound
in its beak.
Farewell, summer,
quicken your pace as you go . . .
Stars fall quietly into the water . . .
-- Tada Chimako --
from Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
Gary Schmidt & Susan M. Felch, editors
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