Much I desired when Youth did fire my veins, To join fair combat with some foe august; And more I dreaded sloth and creeping rust Than any meed of martyr scorns and pains. How would my heart beat quick at clarion strains; All to the God of battle would I trust– As one who, midst the hissing barbs and dust, From some swift Argive chariot flung the reins!
But now my pulse is slowed, my veins are cold, O Spirit of the leafage silver-green– Now let thy cool sweet shadow intervene, That I no more the strenuous day behold; So fold me, as the flocks that rest in fold, While Hesper makes the darkening sky serene.
Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl! John Keats
ASLEEP! O sleep a little while, white pearl! And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee, And let me call Heaven’s blessing on thine eyes, And let me breathe into the happy air, That doth enfold and touch thee all about, Vows of my slavery, my giving up, My sudden adoration, my great love!
NOT flesh alone am I, when I can be So swiftly caught in Beauty’s shimmering thread Whose slender fibres, woven, held by me, With their frail strength my following heart have led.
Yea, not all mortal, not all death my mind, When, watching by lone twilight waters’ brim I tremblingly decipher, as they wind, Her deathless hieroglyphs, though strange and dim.
So for this faith, when Thou my dust shalt bring To dust, remember well, Great Alchemist, Yearly to change my wintry earth to spring, That I with Beauty still may keep my tryst.
I yearn for pebbles on the beach Each telling me their tale of Endless wearing away by incessant waves So they become more rounded Lose their sharp edges Display their colours more fully Deeply connected To those stratas Where they were formed over millennia Rising like providence to be shaped
I am half alive And need smoothing off And smelling them They are authentic and real Oh God I thirst For that.
Some Friendships are like leaves;when skies are fair Their green flags flutter,making glad the day; But when the chill winds blow,they fall away And leave the quiv’ring branches cold and bare. Break not an ancient friendship; keep it hale; Stir round its roots, that it be green of heart; Let not the spirit of its growth depart: It is a power to brave the strongest gale. Leonid Afremov Art
The Arrow and the Song Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
Stanzas to a Friend Mary Darby Robinson
And as the varying seasons glide away, This moral lesson shall my bosom learn, How TIME steals on, while blissful hours decay Like fleeting shadows;NEVER to return. And when I see thy warm unspotted mind, Torn with the wound of broken FRIENDSHIP’S dart; When sickness chills thy breast with pangs unkind, Or ruthless sorrow preys upon thy heart; The task be MINE to soothe thee to repose, To check the sigh, and wipe the trickling tear, Or with soft SYMPATHY to share thy woes; O, proudest rapture of the soul sincere ! And ye who flutter thro’ the vacant hour, Where tasteless Apathy’s empoison’d wand Arrests the vagrant sense with numbing pow’r, While vanquish’d REASON bows at her command. O say, what bliss can transient Life bestow, What balm so grateful to the social mind, As FRIENDSHIP’S voicewhere gentle precepts flow From the blest source of sentiment refin’d? When FATE’S stern hand shall close my weeping eye, And seal, at length, my wand’ring spirit’s doom; Oh! may kind FRIENDSHIP catch my parting sigh, And cheer with HOPE the terrors of the TOMB. Vladimir Volegov Art
Portrait of a Friend Unknown
I can’t give solutions to all of life’s problems, doubts, or fears. But I can listen to you, and together we will search for answers. I can’t change your past with all it’s heartache and pain, nor the future with its untold stories. But I can be there now when you need me to care. I can’t keep your feet from stumbling. I can only offer my hand that you may grasp it and not fall. Your joys,triumphs,successes,and happiness are not mine; Yet I can share in your laughter. Your decisions in life are not mine to make, nor to judge; I can only support you, encourage you, and help you when you ask. I can’t prevent you from falling away from friendship, from your values, from me. I can only pray for you, talk to you and wait for you. I can’t give you boundaries which I have determined for you, But I can give you the room to change, room to grow, room to be yourself. I can’t keep your heart from breaking and hurting, But I can cry with you and help you pick up the pieces and put them back in place. I can’t tell you who you are. I can only love you and be your friend.
The year is fair, the year is sweet, And Nature’s ministry complete. The graceful tree-tops idly swing, The summer birds are on the wing; And ladened with a rare perfume Is every wandering breeze of June.
The far-off stable hills abide, And guard the valleys cool and wide. Across the green the rivers run, Like silver ribbons in the sun; With low wish-wash they onward flee, Swift-footed seekers for the sea.
Fair skies of June with radiant glow, Bend over all their blue and snow With clouds that sweep the upper air Like angels, winged to answer prayer. And yet the tender summer skies Keep close their secret from our eyes, And never open any door Into the land we would explore.
Ah! fields of summer, sweet with balm! Ah! skies of summer, far and calm! Across your beauty yet doth break The cry of hearts that long and ache. O! give the world some perfect strain, To heal its discord and its pain; For though the year is fair and sweet Your ministry is not complete.
It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night– It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.
The earth is bright and dewy-fresh As Dian, risen from her bath, While, just released from slumber’s mesh, I fare me down a flowery path. I pass between the clover fields Where sleek, slow-moving cattle graze; I seek the joys which Nature yields To him who knows her pleasant ways.
I go where honeysuckles blow, And climb with them the rocks I love; A world of green spreads out below, A wider world of blue above.
And many a sturdy, stately elm, And many a proud, ancestral oak, Deep in the forest’s shady realm, Hold tuneful choirs of feathered folk.
I gaze, and all is fair to see– I listen, and the songs are good; My singers are of high degree, The prima donnas of the wood.
Here, then, I find my concert-hall, My columned temple and my shrine, God’s perfect handiwork–and all To draw me nearer the divine.
When twilight darkens, and one by one, The sweet birds to their nests have gone; When to green banks the glow-worms bring Pale lamps to brighten evening; Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl Through the dewy air to prowl.
Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits, While the small mouse atrembling sits With tiny eye of fear upcast Until his brooding shape be past, Hiding her where the moonbeams beat, Casting black shadows in the wheat.
Now all is still: the field-man is Lapped deep in slumbering silentness. Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high Pass in dim flocks across the sky, Puffed by a breeze too light to move Aught but these wakeful sheep above.
O what an arch of light now spans These fields by night no longer Man’s! Their ancient Master is abroad, Walking beneath the moonlight cold: His presence is the stillness, He
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