Haiku by Adjei Agyei-Baah, Ghana

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“The Unicorn in Captivity” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Here sits the Unicorn 
In captivity; 
His bright invulnerability 
Captive at last; 
The chase long past, 
Winded and spent, 
By the king’s spears rent; 
Collared and tied 
To a pomengranate tree-  
Here sits the Unicorn 
In captivity, 
Yet free. 

Here sits the Unicorn; 
His overtakelessness 
Bound by a circle small 
As a maid’s embrace; 
Ringed by a round corral; 
Pinioned in place 
By a fence of scarlet rail, 
Fragile as a king’s crown, 
Delicately laid down 
Over horn, hoofs, and tail, 
As a butterfly net 
Is lightly set. 

He could leap the corral, 
If he rose 
To his full white height; 
He could splinter the fencing light, 
With three blows 
Of his porcelain hoofs in flight-  
If he chose. 
He could shatter his prison wall, 
Could escape them all-  
If he rose, 
If he chose. 

Here sits the Unicorn; 
The wounds in his side 
Still bleed 
From the huntsmen’s spears, 
Yet he takes no heed 
Of the blood-red tears 
On his milk-white hide, 
That spring unsealed, 
Like flowers that rise 
From the velvet field 
In which he lies. 
Dream wounds, dream ties 
Do not bind him there 
In a kingdom where 
He is unaware 
Of his wounds, of his snare. 

Here sits the Unicorn; 
Head in a collar cased, 
Like a girdle laced 
Round a maiden’s waist, 
Broidered and buckled wide, 
Carelessly tied. 
He could slip his head 
From the jewelled noose 
So lightly tied –  
If he tried, 
As a maid could loose 
The belt from her side; 
He could slip the bond 
So lightly tied –  
If he tried. 

Here sits the Unicorn; 
Leashed by a chain of gold 
To the pomengranate tree. 
So light a chain to hold 
So fierce a beast; 
Delicate as a cross at rest 
On a maiden’s breast. 
He could snap the golden chain 
With one toss of his mane, 
If he chose to move, 
If he chose to prove 
His liberty. 
But he does not choose 
What choice would lose. 
He stays, the Unicorn, 
In captivity. 

In captivity, 
Flank, hoofs, and mane –  
Yet look again –  
His horn is free, 
Rising above Chain, fence, and tree, 
Free hymn of love; His horn 
Bursts from his tranquil brow 
Like a comet born; 
Cleaves like a galley’s prow 
Into seas untorn; 
Springs like a lily, white 
From the Earth below; 
Spirals, a bird in flight 
To a longed-for height; 
Or a fountain bright, 
Spurting to light 
Of early morn –  
O luminous horn! 

Here sits the Unicorn –  
In captivity? 
In repose. 
Forgotten now the blows 
When the huntsmen rose 
With their spears; dread sounds 
Of the baying hounds, 
With their cry for blood; 
And the answering flood 
In his veins for strife, 
Of his rage for life, 
In hoofs that plunged, 
In horn that lunged. 
Forgotten the strife; 
Now the need to kill 
Has died like fire, 
And the need to love 
Has replaced desire; 
Forgotten now the pain 
Of the wounds, tthe fence, the chain –  
Where he sits so still, 
Where he waits Thy will. 

Quiet, the Unicorn, 
In contemplation stilled, 
With acceptance filled; 
Quiet, save for his horn; 
Alive in his horn; 
Horizontally, 
In captivity; 
Perpendicularly, 
Free. 
As prisoners might, 
Looking on high at night, 
From day-close discipline 
Of walls and bars, 
To night-free infinity 
Of sky and stars, 
Find here felicity: 
So is he free –  
The Unicorn. 
What is liberty? 
Here lives the Unicorn, 
In captivity, 
Free. 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Haiga by Salil Chaturvedi

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“Bereft” by Robert Frost

BEREFT

Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?

What would it take my standing there for,

Holding open a restive door,

Looking down hill to a frothy shore?

Summer was past and the day was past.

Sombre clouds in the west were massed.

Out on the porch’s sagging floor,

Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly struck at my knee and missed.

Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret must be known:

Word I was in the house alone

Somehow must have gotten abroad,

Word I was in my life alone,

Word I had no one left but God.

Robert Frost

Photo credit: Jean Guichard

bereave [bih-reev]

 

verb (used with object), be·reaved or be·reft, be·reav·ing.

 

-to deprive and make desolate, especially by death (usually followed by of):

Illness bereaved them of their mother.

 

-to deprive ruthlessly or by force (usually followed by of):

The war bereaved them of their home.

 

– Obsolete . to take away by violence.

 

ORIGIN OF BEREAVE

 

before 900; Middle English bereven, Old English berēafian; cognate with Dutch berooven, German berauben, Gothic biraubōn. See be-, reave1

 

RELATED FORMS

be·reave·ment , noun

be·reav·er , noun

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Three Poems by Phoebe Hasketh

PHOEBE HESKETH

Sunflowers and Silver Birch: A Memoir

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Epiphany: Do Good to Everyone

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From the Asahi Haikuist (Fall 2018)

~ Gabriel Zech (Sollars Elementary)

~ Pat Davis (Pembroke, NH)

~ Lee Nash (France)

~ Ana Drubot (Bucharest)

 

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Haiku by Peggy Willis Lyles

winter solstice
our son reads a fairy tale
to his unborn child

winter night
I dreamed your garden lights
were fireflies

 

Reaching for green pears–
the pull
of an old scar

  for her mother
bluets
roots and all

hazy moon
the nun begins her journey
with a backward glance

 

an open window
somewhere
a woman’s wordless song

sweet peas
tremble on the trellis
the bride’s “I will”

smooth garden bench
a woman embroiders
a unicorn

 

dew drops
on the dark rose
our reflections

 

yellow leaves
a girl plays hopscotch
by herself

 

starlight
on the harp strings
Christmas Eve

 

clay on the wheel I confess my faith

 

winter night
he patiently untangles
her antique silver chain

 

cathedral garden
cardinals in the birdbath
scatter drops of light

 

the boy stands still
fingers splayed
above a starfish

 

birdsong
through open windows—
he lifts the veil

 

night flight
a young man fast asleep
beside his cello

 

dress by dress
the story of her life
day lilies close

 

soft Gullah
at the graveside…
blue glass shines

Peggy Willis Lyles

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Haiku and the Brain

This is amazing ….

Source: Haiku and the Brain

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Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Lady of Shallott” with Paintings by John William Waterhouse

Part I

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro’ the field the road runs by

       To many-tower’d Camelot;

The yellow-leaved waterlily

The green-sheathed daffodilly

Tremble in the water chilly

       Round about Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens shiver.

The sunbeam showers break and quiver

In the stream that runneth ever

By the island in the river

       Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle imbowers

       The Lady of Shalott.

Underneath the bearded barley,

The reaper, reaping late and early,

Hears her ever chanting cheerly,

Like an angel, singing clearly,

       O’er the stream of Camelot.

Piling the sheaves in furrows airy,

Beneath the moon, the reaper weary

Listening whispers, ‘ ‘Tis the fairy,

       Lady of Shalott.’

The little isle is all inrail’d

With a rose-fence, and overtrail’d

With roses: by the marge unhail’d

The shallop flitteth silken sail’d,

       Skimming down to Camelot.

A pearl garland winds her head:

She leaneth on a velvet bed,

Full royally apparelled,

       The Lady of Shalott.

Part II

No time hath she to sport and play:

A charmed web she weaves alway.

A curse is on her, if she stay

Her weaving, either night or day,

       To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be;

Therefore she weaveth steadily,

Therefore no other care hath she,

       The Lady of Shalott.

She lives with little joy or fear.

Over the water, running near,

The sheepbell tinkles in her ear.

Before her hangs a mirror clear,

       Reflecting tower’d Camelot.

And as the mazy web she whirls,

She sees the surly village churls,

And the red cloaks of market girls

       Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

An abbot on an ambling pad,

Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,

Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,

       Goes by to tower’d Camelot:

And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

       The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror’s magic sights,

For often thro’ the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights

       And music, came from Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead

Came two young lovers lately wed;

‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said

       The Lady of Shalott.

Part III

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,

He rode between the barley-sheaves,

The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,

And flam’d upon the brazen greaves

       Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d

To a lady in his shield,

That sparkled on the yellow field,

       Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,

Like to some branch of stars we see

Hung in the golden Galaxy.

The bridle bells rang merrily

       As he rode down from Camelot:

And from his blazon’d baldric slung

A mighty silver bugle hung,

And as he rode his armour rung,

       Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather

Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,

The helmet and the helmet-feather

Burn’d like one burning flame together,

       As he rode down from Camelot.

As often thro’ the purple night,

Below the starry clusters bright,

Some bearded meteor, trailing light,

       Moves over green Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;

On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;

From underneath his helmet flow’d

His coal-black curls as on he rode,

       As he rode down from Camelot.

From the bank and from the river

He flash’d into the crystal mirror,

‘Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:’

       Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom

She made three paces thro’ the room

She saw the water-flower bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

       She look’d down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

       The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV

In the stormy east-wind straining,

The pale yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

       Over tower’d Camelot;

Outside the isle a shallow boat

Beneath a willow lay afloat,

Below the carven stern she wrote,

       The Lady of Shalott.

A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight,

All raimented in snowy white

That loosely flew (her zone in sight

Clasp’d with one blinding diamond bright)

       Her wide eyes fix’d on Camelot,

Though the squally east-wind keenly

Blew, with folded arms serenely

By the water stood the queenly

       Lady of Shalott.

With a steady stony glance—

Like some bold seer in a trance,

Beholding all his own mischance,

Mute, with a glassy countenance—

       She look’d down to Camelot.

It was the closing of the day:

She loos’d the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

       The Lady of Shalott.

As when to sailors while they roam,

By creeks and outfalls far from home,

Rising and dropping with the foam,

From dying swans wild warblings come,

       Blown shoreward; so to Camelot

Still as the boathead wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her chanting her deathsong,

       The Lady of Shalott.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy,

She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her eyes were darken’d wholly,

And her smooth face sharpen’d slowly,

       Turn’d to tower’d Camelot:

For ere she reach’d upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

       The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,

By garden wall and gallery,

A pale, pale corpse she floated by,

Deadcold, between the houses high,

       Dead into tower’d Camelot.

Knight and burgher, lord and dame,

To the planked wharfage came:

Below the stern they read her name,

       The Lady of Shalott.

They cross’d themselves, their stars they blest,

Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.

There lay a parchment on her breast,

That puzzled more than all the rest,

       The wellfed wits at Camelot.

‘The web was woven curiously,

The charm is broken utterly,

Draw near and fear not,—this is I,

       The Lady of Shalott.’

• Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

 

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Tennyson’s “Morte d’Arthur”

ILLUMINATED

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“Life is but a Weaving” (The Tapestry Poem) by Corrie ten Boom

My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.

Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.

Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned

He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.

Corrie ten Boom

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Still Point

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Imagism

In a Station of a Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

by Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound’s Precepts

In March 1913, Poetry published “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste.” In it, imagist poet F. S. Flint, quoting Pound, defined the tenets of imagist poetry:

I. Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

Oread
by H.D.

Whirl up, sea—

whirl your pointed pines,

splash your great pines

on our rocks,

hurl your green over us,

cover us with your pools of fir.

Images
by Richard Aldington

Like a gondola of green scented fruits
Drifting along the dark canals of Venice,
You, O exquisite one,
Have entered into my desolate city.

The blue smoke leaps
Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing;
So my love leaps forth toward you,
Vanishes and is renewed.

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky
When the sunset is faint vermillion
In the mist among the tree-boughs
Art thou to me, my beloved.

A young beech tree on the edge of the forest
Stands still in the evening,
Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air
And seems to fear the stars–
So are you still and so tremble.

The red deer are high on the mountain,
They are beyond the last pine-trees,
And my desires have run with them.

The flower which the wind has shaken
Is soon filled again with rain;
So does my heart fill slowly with tears
Until you return.

Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

l.
by e.e. cummings

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

* Read more poems by e.e. cummings:
https://thepoetryplace.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/e-e-cummings/

Nuance

Even the iris bends

when the butterfly lights upon it.

by Amy Lowell

Patterns
by Amy Lowell 

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the
buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he
clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon–
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the
Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

Amy Lowell on Imagism (1917)

1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms -as the expression of new moods — and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon “free-verse” as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry a new cadence means a new idea.
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly of aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past. Webelieve passionately in the artistic value of modem life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 19 11.
4. To present an image (hence the name: “Imagist”). We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

• Source: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/amylowell/imagism.htm

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Three Poems by Gerard Manly Hopkins

PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

THE WINDOVER

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

GOD’S GRANDEUR

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Another biography (with digitized facsimiles of works and letters)

Sketches+

 

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“On God Measuring the World with a Compass” by Lara Adams Gaydos

Lara Adams Gaydos

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COURAGEOUS

I am a TOTALLY COURAGEOUS woman —
my HEART is bigger than the sky.

jb

“Be ye therefore STRONG and courageous
for your work will be rewarded.”

2 Chronicles 15:7

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Pomegrantes

“The things you bring forth
are a paradise of pomegranates”

Songs of Songs 4:13

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Poems by Daniel Kerdin

How Can It Be?

How can it be that you are there
Quiet, hidden and at peace
In the long still silence of the monastery cell
And then, joyful and clamorous
In the eternal songs
Of thunder, waterfall and fire?

How can it be
That, from the first beginnings and beyond,
Your gentle love
Fills to teeming fullness and repletion
The atom and the universe, unceasingly?

How can it be that you gaze
Upon my frailty
Only to love
So deeply what you see?

Daniel Kerdin
Of Poetry and God (2016)

L’Angélus de Millet

Conveyed there by an artist’s hand
In peasant garb, at harvest time,
A couple in the twilight stand
As church bells, in the distance, chime
And ring out to remind the pair
And others who are at their toil
That here and now is time for prayer
And time to leave the busy soil
And so the tools of work are laid
Aside, while labour turns to rest,
And there the Angelus is prayed
Her hands are joined, his cap is pressed
Against his breast, their heads are bowed
The sun sets silent as they say
The reverential words aloud
Which they repeat, this hour, each day:
An angel’s pledge do they avow?
Or does some grief inflame their prayer?
The basket holds its secret now
The unseen coffin, hidden there.

Daniel Kerdin
Of Poetry and God (2016)

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From Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”

“Honey”

Susan Sharman
The Daily Fabric Exhibit
Benicia Library
Sept 2016

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Isaiah 32:1-2

1 Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness,
and as for princes, they shall rule in justice.

2 And a man shall be as in a hiding-place from the wind,
and a covert from the tempest —
as by the watercourses in a dry place,
as in the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Isaiah 32:1-2

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From George MacDonald’s “The Light Princess”

Perhaps the best thing for the princess would have been to fall in love. But how a princess who had no gravity could fall into anything is a difficulty–perhaps THE difficulty. As for her own feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a beehive of honey and stings to be fallen into. But now I come to mention another curious fact about her.

The palace was built on the shores of the loveliest lake in the world, and the princess loved this lake more than father or mother. The root of this preference no doubt, although the princess did not recognise it as such, was, that the moment she got into it, she recovered the natural right of which she had been so wickedly deprived–namely, gravity.

Whether this was owing to the fact that water had been employed as the means of conveying the injury, I do not know. But it is certain that she could swim and dive like the duck that her old nurse said she was.

~ George MacDonald
from Ch. 8 “Try a Drop of Water”
of The Light Princess

The Prince’s Song

“As a world that has no well,
Darting bright in forest dell;
As a world without the gleam
Of the downward-going stream;
As a world without the glance
Of the ocean’s fair expanse;
As a world where never rain
Glittered on the sunny plain;
Such, my heart, thy world would be,
if no love did flow in thee.

As a world without the sound
Of the rivulets underground;
Or the bubbling of the spring
Out of darkness wandering;
Or the mighty rush and flowing
Of the river’s downward going;
Or the music-showers that drop
On the outspread beech’s top;
Or the ocean’s mighty voice,
When his lifted waves rejoice;
Such, my soul, thy world would be,
if no love did sing in thee.

Lady, keep thy world’s delight;
Keep the waters in thy sight.
Love hath made me strong to go,
For thy sake, to realms below,
Where the water’s shine and hum
Through the darkness never come;
Let, I pray, one thought of me Spring,
a little well, in thee;
Lest thy loveless soul be found
Like a dry and thirsty ground.”

George MacDonald
from Ch. 14 “This is Very Kind of You”
of The Light Princess

Illustrations by Dorothy Lathrop

p.s. Read the whole story:
GeorgeMacDonald-TheLightPrincess

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Hildegard von Bingen

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“Willow” by Songs of Water

Listen to “Willow“

Psalm 137 and Psalm 126

A Pair of Psalms

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