Alfred Noyes -- September 16

 

Alfred Noyes September 16, 1880 –  June 25, 1958

 

 

 

Peace by Alfred Noyes

 

Give me the pulse of the tide again
And the slow lapse of the leaves,
The rustling gold of a field of grain
And a bird in the nested eaves;

 

And a fishing-smack in the old harbour
Where all was happy and young;
And an echo or two of the songs I knew
When songs could still be sung.

 

For I would empty my heart of all
This world's implacable roar,
And I would turn to my home, and fall
Asleep in my home once more;

 

And I would forget what the cities say,
And the folly of all the wise,
And turn to my own true folk this day,
And the love in their constant eyes.

 

There is peace, peace, where the sea-birds wheel,
And peace in the breaking wave;
And I have a broken heart to heal,
And a broken soul to save.

                             

 

The Humming Birds by Alfred Noyes
                          

Green wing and ruby throat,
What shining spell, what exquisite sorcery,
Lured you to float
And fight with bees round this one flowering tree?

 

Petulant imps of light,
What whisper or gleam or elfin-wild perfumes
Thrilled through the night
And drew you to this hive of rosy bloom?

 

One tree, and one alone,
Of all that load this magic air with spice,
Claims for its own
Your brave migration out of Paradise;

 

Claims you, and guides you, too,
Three thousand miles across the summer's waste
Of blooms ye knew
Less finely fit for your ethereal taste.

 

To poets' youthful hearts,
Even so the quivering April thoughts will fly,--
Those irised darts,
Those winged and tiny denizens of the sky.

 

Through beaks as needle-fine,
They suck a redder honey than bees know.
Unearthly wine
Sleeps in this bloom; and, when it falls, they go.

 

 

 

The Loom of Years by Alfred Noyes
                              

In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

 

The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again

In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.

 

The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

 

The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.

 

Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?
Ah hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

 

O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,

 

One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

        

        

 

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

 

                               PART ONE

     

                             I

 

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
          Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

                              II

 

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
          His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

           

                               III

 

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred; 

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
          Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

 

                              IV

 

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
          The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

 

                              V

 

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
          Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

 

                              VI

 

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
          (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.

 

 

                              PART TWO

 

                              I

 

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
          Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

 

                              II

 

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
          And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

 

                              III

 

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say—

Look for me by moonlight;
          Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

 

                              IV

 

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till now, on the stroke of midnight,
          Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

 

                              V

 

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
          Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

 

                              VI

 

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
          Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

 

                              VII

 

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
          Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

 

                              VIII

 

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know she stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
          The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

 

                              IX

 

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
          Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

 

 

*          *           *

 

                              X

 

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
          Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

                              XI

 

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
          Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

    

 

 

 

The beautiful words of The Highwayman have been set to music and recorded by Loreena McKennitt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

–Cat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raymond Carver – May 25

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988 

                       This Morning by Raymond Carver
                              

                       This morning was something. A little snow
                       lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
                       blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
                       as far as the eye could see.
                       Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
                       for a walk -- determined not to return
                       until I took in what Nature had to offer.
                       I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
                       Crossed a field strewn with rocks
                       where snow had drifted. Kept going
                       until I reached the bluff.
                       Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
                       the gulls wheeling over the white beach
                       far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
                       cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
                       began to wander. I had to will
                       myself to see what I was seeing
                       and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is
                       what mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
                       for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
                       it crowded out the usual musings on
                       what was right, and what was wrong -- duty,
                       tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should
                       treat with my former wife. All the things
                       I hoped would go away this morning.
                       The stuff I live with every day. What
                       I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
                       But for a minute or two I did forget
                       myself and everything else. I know I did.
                       For when I turned back I didn't know
                       where I was. Until some birds rose up
                       from the gnarled trees. And flew
                       in the direction I needed to be going.


                       


                      The Best Time Of The Day by Raymond Carver
                              

                       Cool summer nights.
                       Windows open.
                       Lamps burning.
                       Fruit in the bowl.
                       And your head on my shoulder.
                       These the happiest moments in the day.

                       Next to the early morning hours,
                       of course. And the time
                       just before lunch.
                       And the afternoon, and
                       early evening hours.
                       But I do love

                       these summer nights.
                       Even more, I think,
                       than those other times.
                       The work finished for the day.
                       And no one who can reach us now.
                       Or ever.





                       Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
                       

                       And did you get what
                       you wanted from this life, even so?
                       I did.
                       And what did you want?
                       To call myself beloved, to feel myself
                       beloved on the earth.


  --Cat

April 15 -- Bliss Carman

[William] Bliss Carman   

April 15, 1861 - June 8, 1929

                                       A Song Before Sailing

                              Wind of the dead men's feet,
                              Blow down the empty street
                              Of this old city by the sea
                              With news for me!
                              Blow me beyond the grime
                              And pestilence of time!
                              I am too sick at heart to war
                              With failure any more.
                              Thy chill is in my bones;
                              The moonlight on the stones
                              Is pale, and palpable, and cold;
                              I am as one grown old.

                              I call from room to room
                              Through the deserted gloom;
                              The echoes are all words I know,
                              Lost in some long ago.

                              I prowl from door to door,
                              And find no comrade more.
                              The wolfish fear that children feel
                              Is snuffing at my heel.

                              I hear the hollow sound
                              Of a great ship coming round,
                              The thunder of tackle and the tread
                              Of sailors overhead.

                              That stormy-blown hulloo
                              Has orders for me, too.
                              I see thee, hand at mouth, and hark,
                              My captain of the dark.

                              O wind of the great East,
                              By whom we are released
                              From this strange dusty port to sail
                              Beyond our fellows' hail,

                              Under the stars that keep
                              The entry of the deep,
                              Thy somber voice brings up the sea's
                              Forgotten melodies;

                              And I have no more need
                              Of bread, or wine, or creed,
                              Bound for the colonies of time
                              Beyond the farthest prime.

                              Wind of the dead men's feet,
                              Blow through the empty street;
                              The last adventurer am I,
                              Then, world, goodby!



                                     Under the April Moon

                              
                              Oh, well the world is dreaming
                              Under the April moon,
                              Her soul in love with beauty,
                              Her senses all a-swoon!
                              Pure hangs the silver crescent
                              Above the twilight wood,
                              And pure the silver music
                              Wakes from the marshy flood.
                              O Earth, with all thy transport,
                              How comes it life should seem
                              A shadow in the moonlight,
                              A murmur in a dream?



                                 A More Ancient Mariner

                              The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
                              A burly velveted rover,
                              Who loves the booming wind in his ear
                              As he sails the seas of clover.

                              A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
                              With not a soul to deplore him,
                              He steers for the open verge of blue
                              With the filmy world before him.

                              His flimsy sails abroad on the wind
                              Are shivered with fairy thunder;
                              On a line that sings to the light of his wings
                              He makes for the lands of wonder.

                              He harries the ports of Hollyhocks,
                              And levies on poor Sweetbriar;
                              He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox,
                              And the Rose is his desire.

                              He hangs in the Willows a night and a day;
                              He rifles the Buckwheat patches;
                              Then battens his store of pelf galore
                              Under the taughtest hatches.

                              He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach,
                              Inveigles Daffodilly,
                              And then like a tramp abandons each
                              For the gorgeous Canada Lily.

                              There's not a soul in the garden world
                              But wishes the day were shorter,
                              When Mariner B. puts out to sea
                              With the wind in the proper quarter.

                              Or, so they say! But I have my doubts;
                              For the flowers are only human,
                              And the valor and gold of a vagrant bold
                              Were always dear to woman.

                              He dares to boast, along the coast,
                              The beauty of Highland Heather,-
                              How he and she, with night on the sea,
                              Lay out on the hills together.

                              He pilfers every port of the wind,
                              From April to golden autumn;
                              But the theiving ways of his mortal days
                              Are those his mother taught him.

                              His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed;
                              He prospers after his kind,
                              And follows an instinct compass-sure,
                              The philosophers call blind.

                              And that is why, when he comes to die,
                              He'll have an earlier sentence
                              Than someone I know who thinks just so,
                              And then leaves room for repentance.

                              He never could box the compass round;
                              He doesn't know port from starboard;
                              But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
                              Where the choicest goods are harbored.

                              He never could see the Rule of Three,
                              But he knows the rule of thumb
                              Better than Euclid's, better than yours,
                              Or the teachers' yet to come.

                              He knows the smell of the hydromel
                              As if two and two were five;
                              And hides it away for a year and a day
                              In his own hexagonal hive.

                              Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone,
                              Booms the old vagrant hummer,
                              With only his whim to pilot him
                              Throught the splendid vast of summer.

                              He steers and steers on the slant of the gale,
                              Like the fiend or Vanderdecken;
                              And there's never an unknown course to sail
                              But his crazy log can reckon.

                              He drones along with his rough sea-song
                              And the throat of a salty tar,
                              This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair
                              By the light of a yellow star.

                              He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord,
                              And makes like a Trojan hero;
                              Then loafs all winter upon his hoard,
                              With the mercury at zero.


                                
--Cat

April 14 – James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell  

April 14, 1879 - May 5, 1958

                                 Ballad Of Plagiary


      "Freres et matres, vous qui cultivez"--PAUL VERVILLE.
      
      Hey, my masters, lords and brothers, ye that till the fields of rhyme,
      Are ye deaf ye will not hearken to the clamor of your time?
      Still ye blot and change and polish--vary, heighten and transpose--
      Old sonorous metres marching grandly to their tranquil close.
      Ye have toiled and ye have fretted; ye attain perfected speech:
      Ye have nothing new to utter and but platitudes to preach.
      And your rhymes are all of loving, as within the old days when
      Love was lord of the ascendant in the horoscopes of men.
      Still ye make of love the utmost end and scope of all your art;
      And, more blind than he you write of, note not what a modest part
      Loving now may claim in living, when we have scant time to spare,
      Who are plundering the sea-depths, taking tribute of the air,--
      Whilst the sun makes pictures for us; since to-day, for good or ill,
      Earth and sky and sea are harnessed, and the lightnings work our will.
      Hey, my masters, all these love-songs by dust-hidden mouths were sung
      That ye mimic and re-echo with an artful-artless tongue,--
      Sung by poets close to nature, free to touch her garments' hem
      Whom to-day ye know not truly; for ye only copy them.
      Them ye copy--copy always, with your backs turned to the sun,
      Caring not what man is doing, noting that which man has done.
      _We are talking over telephones, as Shakespeare could not talk;_
      _We are riding out in motor-cars where Homer had to walk;_
      _And pictures Dante labored on of mediaeval Hell_
      _The nearest cinematograph paints quicker, and as well._
      But ye copy, copy always;--and ye marvel when ye find
      This new beauty, that new meaning,--while a model stands behind,
      Waiting, young and fair as ever, till some singer turn and trace
      Something of the deathless wonder of life lived in any place.
      Hey, my masters, turn from piddling to the turmoil and the strife!
      Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life.
      _Thus I wrote ere Percie passed me. . . . Then did I epitomize_
      _All life's beauty in one poem, and make haste to eulogize_
      _Quite the fairest thing life boasts of, for I wrote of Percie's eyes._


--Cat

World Poetry Day - March 21

                            Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith 
                                   September 20, 1902 – March  7, 1971



                               Alone in the Woods by Stevie Smith

                              Alone in the woods I felt
                              The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees
                              Nature has taught her creatures to hate
                              Man that fusses and fumes
                              Unquiet man
                              As the sap rises in the trees
                              As the sap paints the trees a violent green
                              So rises the wrath of Nature's creatures
                              At man
                              So paints the face of Nature a violent green.
                              Nature is sick at man
                              Sick at his fuss and fume
                              Sick at his agonies
                              Sick at his gaudy mind
                              That drives his body
                              Ever more quickly
                              More and more
                              In the wrong direction.


                              
--Cat

February 27 -- Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882

                              A Gleam of Sunshine

                            
                              This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
                              Let me review the scene,
                              And summon from the shadowy Past
                              The forms that once have been.

                              The Past and Present here unite
                              Beneath Time's flowing tide,
                              Like footprints hidden by a brook,
                              But seen on either side.

                              Here runs the highway to the town;
                              There the green lane descends,
                              Through which I walked to church with thee,
                              O gentlest of my friends!

                              The shadow of the linden-trees
                              Lay moving on the grass;
                              Between them and the moving boughs,
                              A shadow, thou didst pass.

                              Thy dress was like the lilies,
                              And thy heart as pure as they:
                              One of God's holy messengers
                              Did walk with me that day.

                              I saw the branches of the trees
                              Bend down thy touch to meet,
                              The clover-blossoms in the grass
                              Rise up to kiss thy feet,

                              "Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
                              Of earth and folly born!"
                              Solemnly sang the village choir
                              On that sweet Sabbath morn.

                              Through the closed blinds the golden sun
                              Poured in a dusty beam,
                              Like the celestial ladder seen
                              By Jacob in his dream.

                              And ever and anon, the wind,
                              Sweet-scented with the hay,
                              Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves
                              That on the window lay.

                              Long was the good man's sermon,
                              Yet it seemed not so to me;
                              For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
                              And still I thought of thee.

                              Long was the prayer he uttered,
                              Yet it seemed not so to me;
                              For in my heart I prayed with him,
                              And still I thought of thee.

                              But now, alas! the place seems changed;
                              Thou art no longer here:
                              Part of the sunshine of the scene
                              With thee did disappear.

                              Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
                              Like pine-trees dark and high,
                              Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
                              A low and ceaseless sigh;

                              This memory brightens o'er the past,
                              As when the sun, concealed
                              Behind some cloud that near us hangs
                              Shines on a distant field.






--Cat

Remembrance Day

I have two different music videos posted today to commemorate the brave soldiers who have died for their country and for peace.

Since I first heard it in 1985, I've loved the song Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. The lyrics are moving and so appropriate for the message they send.

This is a powerful video of the song and shows the horror, the senselessness, and stupidity of war. Who gains? A wealthy few. Who loses? Everyone.







I heard The White Cliffs of Dover by Vera Lynn on Remembrance Day several years ago on CBC public radio. 

The song was written in 1941 and recorded in 1942, when Europe was in the grip of the second world war. An immensely popular song, it's filled with hope that there will be an end, there will be an 'after.'

Can we now, seventy years later, still have that hope?






I cry when I hear both of these.

-- Cat

July 12 -- Henry David Thoreau

                                       Maxham daguerreotype of Thoreau made in 1856

                                Henry David Thoreau  July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

Massachusetts-born Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, based on journals he wrote during a two-year solitary stay [1845-1847] at Walden Pond, and his essay Civil Disobedience, a statement of his philosophy of passive resistance against unjust laws and wars. [Later influencing Gandhi and others]

He was a historian, a philosopher, an ardent naturalist and environmentalist, was involved in the transcendental movement along with Emerson and Alcott, opposed war, championed abolition. He wrote detailed observations of nature and his surroundings, wrote several travel books, and became a follower of Darwin.

He left an impressive body of work: essays, poetry, books and articles on natural history, philosophy, politics...

He died of tuberculosis at the age of 44.






Nature
by Henry David Thoreau   
 
O Nature! I do not aspire
To be the highest in thy choir, -
To be a meteor in thy sky,
Or comet that may range on high;
Only a zephyr that may blow
Among the reeds by the river low;
Give me thy most privy place
Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn, unpublic mead
Let me sigh upon a reed,
Or in the woods, with leafy din,
Whisper the still evening in:
Some still work give me to do, -
Only - be it near to you!

For I'd rather be thy child
And pupil, in the forest wild,
Than be the king of men elsewhere,
And most sovereign slave of care;
To have one moment of thy dawn,
Than share the city's year forlorn.




Mist
by Henry David Thoreau   

Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of the lake and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields!




The Inward Morning
by Henry David Thoreau

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion's hourly change
It all things else repairs.
In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast-abiding light
With its unchanging ray?

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,
Upon a winter's morn,
Where'er his silent beams intrude,
The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
The insect's noonday hum--

Till the new light with morning cheer
From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
For many stretching miles?

I've heard within my inmost soul
Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,
When the first birds awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,
Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
Which from afar he bears.




I am the Autumnal Sun
by Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature
-- not his Father but his Mother stirs
within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims
kindredship with us, and some globule
from her veins steals up into our own.

I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
I am all sere and yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods,
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief...




Epitaph On The World
by Henry David Thoreau
                                                       
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
'Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when 'twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.





– Cat