Friday Poetry: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend.

The Windhover

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: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: William Wordsworth

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

The Green Linnet

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring's unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year's friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:
A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

My dazzled sight he oft deceives,
A brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;
As if by that exulting strain
He mocked and treated with disdain
The voiceless Form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes. 

William Wordsworth

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: Sara Teasdale

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the American lyric poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933).

May Night

The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing -
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring. 

Sara Teasdale

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: William Brightly Rands

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the Victorian writer and nursery rhyme creator William Brightly Rands (1823-1882).

The Wonderful World

Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast -
World, you are beautifully dressed!

The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree, -
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

You friendly Earth, how far do you go,
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
With cities and gardens, and cliffs, and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles?

Ah! you are so great, and I am so small,
I hardly can think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
My mother kissed me, and said, quite gay,

"If the wonderful World is great to you,
And great to father and mother, too,
You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot!
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!"

William Brightly Rands

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Czeslaw Milosz

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator and diplomat Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004).

Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. 
I knew no one worth my envying him. 
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Czeslaw Milosz

Happy Reading

Etsy

Friday Poetry: Charlotte Mew

Happy Friday!

My chosen poem this week is by the English poet whose work spanned the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism, Charlotte Mew (1869-1928).

In the Fields

Lord, when I look at lovely things which pass,
Under old trees the shadows of young leaves
Dancing to please the wind along the grass,
Or the gold stillness of the August sun on the August
sheaves:
Can I believe there is a heavenlier world than this?
And if there is
Will the strange heart of everlasting thing
Bring me these dreams which take my breath away?
They come at evening with the home-flying rooks and the
scent of hay,
Over the fields. They come in Spring. 

Charlotte Mew

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Friday Poetry: John Galsworthy

Happy Friday!

My chosen this week is by the English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy (1867-1933).

The Downs

O the Down high to the cool sky;
And the feel of the sun-warmed moss!
And each cardoon, like a full moon 
Fairy-spun of the thistle floss;
And the beech-grove, and a wood-dove,
And the trail where the shepherds pass;
And the lark's song, and the wind-song,
And the scent of the parching grass!

John Galsworthy

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Wendell Berry

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has good plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem today is by the American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer Wendell Berry (1934).

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.

Wendell Berry

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Ada Limon

Happy Friday Everyone!

My chosen poem this week is by a new poet for me. Ada Limon (1976) is an American poet who in 2022 was named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-coloured blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all. 

Ada Limon

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend. My husband is very excited that the Grand Prix is back on. Grand Prix always means more reading time for me.

My chosen poem this week is by the Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926).

Spring Has Come Back Again

Spring has come back again. The earth
is like a child who has memorised 
poems, oh, many! ... now it seems worth
the effort, for she wins the prize.

Her teacher was strict. We loved the white
hair of the old man's beard.
When we ask what the green and the blue are, right
off she knows every word. 

Lucky earth, with your holiday,
and all the children coming to play!
We try to catch you. The gayest will do it. 

Teacher trained her until she knew it,
and all that's printed in roots and long
unruly stems she sings in song. 

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Jessie Lamont