And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store?
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?
— Dr. Seuss
To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not notice when we die,
Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.
– Louis Macneice
366 complete. My heartfelt thanks to my “cloud of witnesses”.
O do you imagine, said fearer to farer,
That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking,
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?
– W.H. Auden
No idle gold – since this fine sun, my friend,
Is no mean miser, but doth freely spend.
.
No precious stones – since these green mornings show,
Without a charge, their pearls where’er I go.
– William Henry Davies
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair.
– Thomas Nashe
Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word, he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
– Walter De La Mare
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
– Louis Macneice
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
– W.B. Yeats
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
– T.S. Eliot
Start off the year on a bit of nonsense: The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter…
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
– Shakespeare
I wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year. And of course what this particular rose is named for: Peace.
Forget not yet, forget not this,
How long ago hath been and is
The mind that never meant amiss
Forget not yet.
– Sir Thomas Wyatt
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
.
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
– Lewis Carroll
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
– Goethe
Over mountain peaks
Silence tarries;
In the tree-tops
No breath carries
To you.
Birds in the forest are still.
Wait, for you will
Soon sleep too.
Perhaps Goethe’s most famous poem. First reading it in school, I wasn’t impressed. A year or so later, I was gripped by it’s icy imagery.
Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
– Shakespeare
While others are anxiously wondering whether they made the “nice” list, Olaf is hoping for a chat with the reindeer. He knows he’s been good all year.
A Very Merry Christmas from Olaf, Bertie and myself.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
˜
The thin-lipped armourer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
– W.H. Auden
From The Shield of Achilles.
I’m on holiday, and away from the net. I’ve scheduled some posts, mostly poetry. I hope you recognise some old favourites, or discover new ones.
Where waters smoothest run,
there deepest are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is found in fewest words,
The turtles do not sing, and yet they love.
– Edward Dyer
Poetry is
boned with ideas,
nerved and blooded with emotions,
all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
– Paul Engle
One of the first shots with my new camera is for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Delicate.
‘Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone.
All her lovely companions are faded and gone.
No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes and give sigh for sigh.
– Thomas Moore
More snow. Seems like winter is getting a foot in the door…
Listen to an ethereal recording of the poem set to music here.
For all that lives, is subject to that law:
All things decay in time, and to their end do draw.
– Edmund Spenser
I love the way colours of hollyhocks deepen into blue when the bloom withers.
The current Daily Prompt: Connect the Dots, is to open the nearest book at page 82, and work the third full sentence on the page into a post. The nearest book was the Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Helen Gardner, and the quote from The Faerie Queen.
XXXI. Tender Memory
She’s somewhere in the sunlight strong,
Her tears are in the falling rain,
She calls me in the wind’s soft song,
And with the flowers she comes again.
˜
Yon bird is but her messenger,
The moon is but her silver car;
Yea! sun and moon are sent by her,
And every wistful waiting star.
– Richard Le Gallienne
The Travel Theme: Soft
For every evil under the sun
There is a remedy or there is none.
If there be one, seek till you find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
– from Mother Goose
.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
A different view of yesterday‘s rose bush.
Stray Thoughts 