Autumn Daybreak

Autumn Daybreak

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,
I know—for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor—
How may boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.
Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;
When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.


-Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know why...

...the caged bird sings.


Haley and I sat down to do watercolors the other day. I had this picture in my mind of this regal wrought iron bird cage on a beautiful scrolled stand with the most darling bluebird sitting inside, singing.

What came out onto paper was elementary, to say the least.
It turned out terrible.
'Cause I'm no artist.

But, while I was looking down at the finished page, one of the most beautiful poems popped into my head.

I know why the caged bird sings
by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.



Beautiful words. Moving, don't you think?

Afternoon on a hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

-Edna St. Vincent Millay


I love those days when nature soothes the soul, don't you?

The Year's At The Spring

Snapped this afternoon- My tulips reaching for the sky.


The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven—
All's right with the world!
-Robert Browning

Does spring rejuvenate you, too?

An Ancient Gesture

Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse (1912).

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay


*Side note: In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus, who keeps her suitors at bay in his long absence. She devised tricks to delay her suitors, one of which is to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. Every night for three years, she undoes part of the shroud, until some unfaithful maidens discover her trickery and reveal it to the suitors.

Ancient gestures. Fascinating, don't you think?

Sonnet XLIII: How Do I Love Thee?

On this Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a well-known and cherished love poem by Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She wrote this for Robert (I have an 1883 copy of some his poetry selections- he was an amazing poet, too), and upon his insistence, they were published. In 1861, she died in his arms.

I never get tired of reading this...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

♥ Happy Valentine's Day! ♥

A Song From The Suds

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam raises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart's-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say—
"Head, you may think; heart, you may feel;
But hand, you shall work always!"

-Louisa May Alcott

Sonnet 116

Those that love the movie Sense & Sensibility, will find these words very familiar. It was such an adorable part with Marianne and Willoughby.



Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare

Happy Thursday!
-Jen

Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

-Pablo Neruda


Ahhh, {sigh}. Beautiful.

I have vampire love on the brain tonight. {Thanks to Miss Stephanie Meyer!}

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.
One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if
they are few...
Gradually one discards and keeps just the perfect specimen; not
necessarily a rare shell, but a perfect one of it's kind.
One sets it apart by itself, ringed around by space- like an island.
For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.
Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant- and therefore beautiful.
A tree has a significance from the silences on either side.
A candle flowers in the space of night.
Even small and casual things take on significance if they are washed
in space like a few autumn grasses in one corner of an Oriental painting,
the rest of the page bare.
For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures- an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea- 1955

I love reading this. Sometimes, less is more, isn't it?

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers

The breaking waves dash'd high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches toss'd;

And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moor'd their bark
On the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted, came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear;-
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard and the sea:
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free!

The ocean eagle soar'd
From his nest by the white wave's foam
And the rocking pines of the forest roar'd-
This was their welcome home!

There were men with hoary hair
Amidst that pilgrim band:-
Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?

There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trode.
They have left unstained, what there they found
Freedom to worship God.

~Felicia Dorothea Hemans
1826

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! =)

Natural Wonders

Natural Wonders

A babbling brook turned to a raging river
by the flooding of spring.
The roar of an ocean surf
beating against the sand.
These are the changes a passionate
embrace can bring,
comparable to the feelings I get
from the gentle brush of the hand.
As if a volcano emptying it's fiery spray,
body and soul are fulfilled this way.

Against this passion it's a hopeless fight.
As if trying to keep a bird from flight.

I need a river rushing into my sea,
an outlet to set my desires free.


Written by my beautiful Aunt who left this earth much too soon.

On Monsieur's Departure

Queen Elizabeth I, a poet?

I'll read anything about the Tudors that I can get my hands on. All that love and courage, betrayal, and beheading. Love it.

Last night, after everyone was in bed, I did what I sometimes like to do. Hop on the computer. Shocking, I know.

After coming across the poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti at Willow Manor awhile back, I made a note to find more of his work online. So last night, that's just what I did. Little did I know, I'd stumble upon this loveliness...

Imagine my surprise.


On Monsieur's Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned.
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Beautiful, isn't it?