Time

 Robert Louis Stevenson —

'Time which none can bind, While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.'

around

 

He fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and strung them around his neck

-Tove Jansson

a daisy a day

"I'll give you a daisy a day

I'll give you a daisy a day

I'll love you until the rivers run still

And the four winds we know blow away." 

-Jud Strunk

forever

I grew up singing hymns.
It was like a course in memorizing with zero effort or even the realization that I WAS memorizing.
Hymns have fallen out of common use in most churches.
But, wonderfully, it has been a case of out of sight NOT out of mind.
The words are retrieved just when I need them and often just as I rise from sleep to waking.
This morning I woke to the triumphant words of Low in the Grave He Lay.

Up from the grave He arose
With a mighty triumph o'er His foes
He arose a victor from the dark domain
And He lives forever with His saints to reign 
He arose!
He arose!
Hallelujah, Christ arose!

more music

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson 

I have a soft spot for Tennyson. He's the master of drama and his words are like music to my ears.

I can remember quoting this poem and having my grandson say the last line. I loved to hear him chant, "And like a thunderbolt he falls!!" That was like music to my ears too.

Pictures of eagles always make me hear this fragment of Hebrew poetry from Isaiah.  "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles"

More music to my ears.

pinkish purplish bluish

The colors of this runner make me think of The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg by Bill Peet.

"Drew the egg - colored it pinkish purplish bluish- and printed the title under it, and then wondered for a few years what could be in the egg. (I) went on to other things. I thought at first there might be a dragon in the egg, but then I thought, well, there have been so many dragon stories and I thought I could find something a little different. Finally I decided it would be a griffin." Bill Peet in an interview with E. Edwards, post 1970
  
" Soon all sorts of birds began flocking around
To see the big egg that Myrtle had found-
Blue jays and redbirds and noisy magpies
And a big stuffy owl who was worldly and wise.
'It won't hatch, said the owl. 'That egg is stone-cold.
Why for all we know it's a thousand years old.'
"If it does hatch,' a jay said, 'I'll bet it's a turtle,
For, after all, you are a turtledove, Myrtle.'
But the dove didn't listen to what the birds said;
She was bound and determined to go right ahead."
Bill Peet from the book The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg 

a light exists

"A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels"
-Emily Dickinson

isn't it

"Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different."  C.S.Lewis

the quality of mercy

"The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings.
It is an attribute to God himself.
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice."

-William Shakespeare

tight-rope

 "Could we have a tornado here?' he asks soberly.
"Mmmm, probably not. Tornado's prefer wide open spaces and we have mountains all round us..."
"Could we have a hurricane?" he asks again, just as soberly.
"Hurricanes need warmer seas than we have here," I say. "They need warm water to meet up with cold air. We don't really have that this far north.
"What about a Typhoon," he asks.
"It's the same," I say.
"What about an earthquake," he asks, already knowing. "Could we have an earthquake here."
"Well, yes, that could happen. We do live near a fault line."
"Oh, that makes me remember something," he says, his face brightening.
"Gramma, what did one earthquake say to the other."
"Ummm, You crack me up?" I say hopefully. "Give me a break?" I try and try but in the end he has to help me out.
"It's not my fault," he declares.

"...humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tight-rope of life."
William Arthur Ward

fullness of life

'Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough....it can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend..'
M. Beattie

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Melody Beattie
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_thankful.html

inaccessible solitudes

The Sound of the Sea- by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,

And round the pebbly beaches far and wide

I heard the first wave of the rising tide

Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;

A voice out of the silence of the deep,

A sound mysteriously multiplied

As of a cataract from the mountain's side,

Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.

So comes to us at times, from the unknown

And inaccessible solitudes of being,

The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;

And inspirations, that we deem our own,

Are some divine of foreshadowing and foreseeing

Of things beyond our reason or control. 

in the bank

"In the bleak midwinter,
frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow,
snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
long ago."
Man I love Christina Rossetti.
Love all poetry.
Poetry and song lyrics.
Old hymns too.

Last night I sat with an old friend, visiting my mother.
Our conversation led us by the hand in big loops and circles and brought us around to our beginning point; the power of words to comfort us.

My mother has forgotten things.
She is even forgetting how to speak, how to frame her thoughts with words.
But words have not forgotten her.
If anything, they hold an even greater power and importance for her.
When I quote back to her, snatches of song and poem, her eyes brighten.
Hearing a story read aloud stirs all of her emotions in turn, right in time with the words.

When I was a child, students still memorized things, poems mostly although nothing like the previous generation had. Nor they, like the generation before them. My great grandmother was known for breaking into snatches of song and for reciting poetry. My great Uncle Howard could recite great long epic poems, stanza after stanza. My own grandmother was a quoter as well and my mom too.  And my dad too now that I think about it. Bits and pieces and fragments of poems, selected just for the moment from a rich repository.

I'm so glad my earliest memories include plenty of poetry and song. That while I sat fidgeting and squirming on hard wooden pews, mighty hymns swirled in an out of focus. That as I sat pouring over the pages of Childcraft Encyclopedia's stories and poems, I was building something important. Those words, so rich and varied and colorful and comforting are there now. Just like money in the bank.

rain on sunshine

Frances Hodgson Burnett- The Secret Garden

"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”

Emily on spring

Emily Dickinson-(1830-86)

DEAR March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

did you

'Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?'
A.A. Milne

timeless

'It's raining it's pouring, the old man is snoring....'
Now isn't that a timeless piece of writing?

anything else

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
Emily Dickinson

but by the seeds

 "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

Robert Louis Stevenson

as well

Now here is a souvenir of an event that really did happen. The Royal Visit to Canada of King George VI and Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of York. This couple were the parents of our current Queen. Queen Elizabeth. I never realized until today that the Queen Mom, as she was affectionately known, was actually an Elizabeth too.
I was at a baby shower once and we were asked to tell how we got our name. More than half the group had been named after someone.
We bring something of our unique self to our name, but I think our name brings something to us as well.
As Dr. Seuss would say, "You are you. Now isn't that pleasant?"