I like to hear of wealth and gold,
And El Doradoes in their glory;
I like for silks and satins bold
To sweep and rustle through a story.
The nightingale is sweet of song;
The rare exotic smells divinely;
And knightly men who stride along,
The role heroic carry finely.
But then, upon the other hand,
Our minds have got a way of running
To things that aren't quite so grand,
Which, maybe, we are best in shunning.
For some of us still like to see
The poor man in his dwelling narrow,
The hollyhock, the bumblebee,
The meadow lark, and chirping sparrow.
Finds more beauty in hollyhocks, bumblebees, and sparrows than in grand riches
There is a marvellous washing
creamy and snowy-white
hung high on lines
stretched from upper and lower balconies
in the back-yard, across the narrow lane
behind my rusty apple-tree
and dusty lilac hedge;
and a great splendid ‘woman-by-the-day’
comely and fat, with a bronzed skin
and tumbled blue black hair,
and an ugly and joyous scarlet gown,
is hanging out the clothes ...
wet heavy clean white clothes ...
soft liquid splashes of light amidst dull dusty trees
and sombre dirty bricks.
The laden lines begin to ripple seductively
Turns a back-lane laundry scene into a radiant moment of thanks to Life
In summer when my life was cold,
Frozen too weary for desire,
I warmed my heart at your marigold,
As at a fire.
It was the first flower from your new ground,
The first gold largess from the care
And loving, you had planted there,
And in the walks around.
I stole your garden's coin to buy content,
A vision of black earth dug deep for flowers.
Through sunny self-forgetful hours.
With joys, God meant.
In summer when my life was cold,
Frozen too weary for desire,
I warmed my heart at your marigold.
As at a fire.
A single marigold from a friend's garden warms a cold, weary heart
Sing a song of men’s pyjamas,
Half-past-six has got a pair,
And he’s wearing them this evening,
And he’s looking such a dear.
Sing a song of frocks with pockets
I have got one, it is so’s
I can use my ’nitial hankies
Every time I blow my nose.
Celebrates cozy delight in pyjamas, pockets, and handkerchiefs
WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Sees every walk, meal, and blade of grass as an unspeakably perfect miracle
But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.
The sea and wind do then obey
And sighing, sighing double notes
Of double basses, content to play
A droning chord for the little throats--
The little throats that sing and rise
Up into the light with lovely ease
And a kind of magical, sweet surprise
To hear and know themselves for these--
For these little voices: the bee, the fly,
The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,
The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,
The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.
Finds rare wonder in tiny sounds of air, leaf, and insect above the vast sea and wind
We should not mind so small a flower --
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the Lawn again.
So spicy her Carnations nod --
So drunken, reel her Bees --
So silver steal a hundred flutes
From out a hundred trees --
That whoso sees this little flower
By faith may clear behold
The Bobolinks around the throne
And Dandelions gold.
Small flower brings back lost garden and opens vision of paradise through faith
I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room.
Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9.
1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be a cat and just sleep.
Or to read the Confessions of Saint Augustine.
Jesus called the sons of Zebedee the Sons of Thunder.
In my secret room, plans are hatched: we'll explore the Smoky Mountains.
Then we'll walk along a beach: Hallelujah!
(A letter was just delivered by Overnight Express--
Everyday fragments and odds and ends become enough, an immense ritual and tradition
As dew leaves the cobweb lightly
Threaded with stars,
Scattering jewels on the fence
And the pasture bars;
As dawn leaves the dry grass bright
And the tangled weeds
Bearing a rainbow gem
On each of their seeds;
So has your love, my lover,
Fresh as the dawn,
Made me a shining road
To travel on,
Set every common sight
Of tree or stone
Delicately alight
For me alone.
Love's freshness makes every common sight delicate and alight, a shining road
Good morning, Life--and all
Things glad and beautiful.
My pockets nothing hold,
But he that owns the gold,
The Sun, is my great friend--
His spending has no end.
Hail to the morning sky,
Which bright clouds measure high;
Hail to you birds whose throats
Would number leaves by notes;
Hail to you shady bowers,
And you green fields of flowers.
Hail to you women fair,
That make a show so rare
In cloth as white as milk--
Be't calico or silk:
Greets life joyfully with empty pockets, but sun, birds, and flowers are endless wealth
An old and quiet house set down
A windy field or two from town.
And a great clump of lavender,
All day with cross, small bees astir.
Larkspur, hot-blue as with a sting;
And mint, so brief and sharp a thing.
Tall, well-thumbed books upon a shelf;
A green, white-flowered jug of delf.
Old friends, who from the village walk
On Sunday afternoons, to talk
Of the new shop; the guests from town;
The wind that blew the apples down.
They go; the dusk comes from afar,
Like music blown from out a star.
Those Others drift across the dew;
My early love — and you — and you!
Quiet gratitude woven through cherished objects, old friends, and lingering memories
Dead oakleaves everywhere
Under my feet,
Filling the forest air
With odours sweet.
Acorns, three, four and five,
Falling apace.
Thank God I am alive
This day of grace!
Thanks for being alive among autumn's sweet, simple abundance
SING on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough,
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain,
See aged Winter, ’mid his surly reign,
At thy blythe carol, clears his furrowed brow.
So in lone Poverty’s dominion drear,
Sits meek Content with light, unanxious heart;
Welcomes the rapid moments, bids them part,
Nor asks if they bring ought to hope or fear.
I thank thee, Author of this opening day!
Thou whose bright sun now gilds yon orient skies!
Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys—
What wealth could never give nor take away!
Yet come, thou child of poverty and care,
The mite high heav’n bestow’d, that mite with thee I’ll share.
Contentment with pure joys and sharing small blessings despite poverty
Is there anything new under the sun?
Certainly there is.
See how a bird flies, how flowers smile !
Delight in the ordinary miracle of a bird's flight and flowers' smiles
“MAIL’S UP!” The vast of night is over,
And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
(His wife, his sister, or his lover.)
Mail’s up, the vast of night is over,
The grey-faced heaven joy does cover
With love, and God once more seems kind.
“Mail’s up!” the vast of night is over,
And love of friends fills all one’s mind.
Gratitude for letters that lift gloom and renew faith in kindness
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears --
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity --
The little stone’s happy independence echoes gratitude for simple, carefree existence
AN acre of land between the shore and the hills,
Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three,
The lovely visible earth and sky and sea,
Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:
A house that shall love me as I love it,
Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash-trees
That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches
Shall often visit and make love in and flit:
A garden I need never go beyond,
Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one
Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun:
A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond:
For these I ask not, but, neither too late
Nor yet too early, for what men call content,
And also that something may be sent
To be contented with, I ask of fate.
It asks only for 'content' and small natural joys, not material wealth
When I was making myself a game
Up in the garden, a little rain came.
It fell down quick in a sort of rush,
And I crawled back under the snowball bush.
I could hear the big drops hit the ground
And see little puddles of dust fly round.
A chicken came till the rain was gone;
He had just a very few feathers on.
He shivered a little under his skin,
And then he shut his eyeballs in.
Even after the rain had begun to hush
It kept on raining up in the bush.
One big flat drop came sliding down,
And a ladybug that was red and brown
Was up on a little stem waiting there,
And I got some rain in my hair.
A child’s delight in raindrops and a ladybug celebrates tiny, everyday wonders
I'm glad I am alive, to see and feel
The full deliciousness of this bright day,
That's like a heart with nothing to conceal;
The young leaves scarcely trembling; the blue-grey
Rimming the cloudless ether far away;
Brairds, hedges, shadows; mountains that reveal
Soft sapphire; this great floor of polished steel
Spread out amidst the landmarks of the bay.
I stoop in sunshine to our circling net
From the black gunwale; tend these milky kine
Up their rough path; sit by yon cottage-door
Plying the diligent thread; take wings and soar--
O hark how with the season's laureate
Joy culminates in song! If such a song were mine!
Explicitly glad to be alive, savoring the fullness of a spring morning
HE has a hump like an ape on his back;
He has of money a plentiful lack;
And but for a gay coat of double his girth
There is not a plainer thing on the earth
This fine May morning.
But the huxter has a bottle of beer;
He drives a cart and his wife sits near
Who does not heed his lack or his hump;
And they laugh as down the lane they bump
This fine May morning.
Laughing with little wealth shows joy found in simple pleasures and love
Here a little child I stand
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat, and on us all. Amen.
Turns a child's simple table grace into a tender everyday gratitude ritual
O lovely chance, what can I do
To give my gratefulness to you?
You rise between myself and me
With a wise persistency;
I would have broken body and soul,
But by your grace, still I am whole.
Many a thing you did to save me,
Many a holy gift you gave me,
Music and friends and happy love
More than my dearest dreaming of;
And now in this wide twilight hour
With earth and heaven a dark, blue flower,
In a humble mood I bless
Your wisdom--and your waywardness.
You brought me even here, where I
Live on a hill against the sky
Names chance as the giver of friends, love, and quiet landscape joys
Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew;
Showcases stored summer moments that enrich the plodding present
A little hour of sunshine,
A little while of joy,
We winnow in our harvesting
From all the world's alloy.
None, none, are so benighted,
Who journey up life's hill.
But have some treasured memory,
Which lives all vibrant still.
One little sunshine of joy becomes the treasured harvest everyone keeps
Here lies the body of Lois Spears,
Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,
Wife of Cyrus Spears,
Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,
Children with clear eyes and sound limbs—
(I was born blind)
I was the happiest of women
As wife, mother and housekeeper.
Caring for my loved ones,
And making my home
A place of order and bounteous hospitality:
For I went about the rooms,
And about the garden
With an instinct as sure as sight,
As though there were eyes in my finger tips—
Glory to God in the highest.
Blindness heightens touch to find calm blessing in home, garden, and care
I am only a note in the chorus,
A leaf in the fluttering June,
A wave on the deep.
These things that I struggle to utter
Have all been uttered before.
In many another heart
The selfsame song was born,
The ancient ache endured,
The timeless wonder faced,
The unanswered question nursed,
The resurgent hunger felt,
And the eternal failure known!
But glad is the lip of its whisper;
The wave, of its life;
The leaf, of its lisp;
And glad for its hour is my soul
Small voice joining a timeless chorus turns individual effort into shared gladness
HERE again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.
'Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end
When the birds do. I think they blend
Now better than they will when passed
Is this unnamed, unmarked godsend.
Or do all mark, and none dares say,
How it may shift and long delay,
Somewhere before the first of Spring,
But never fails, this singing day?
And when it falls on Sunday, bells
Are a wild natural voice that dwells
On hillsides; but the birds' songs have
The holiness gone from the bells.
An unpromised day of birdsong and bells holds more dearness than named celebrations
The sass’fras tea is red and clear
In my white china cup,
So pretty I keep peeping in
Before I drink it up.
I stir it with a silver spoon,
And sometimes I just hold
A little tea inside the spoon,
Like it was lined with gold.
It makes me hungry just to smell
The nice hot sass’fras tea,
And that’s one thing I really like
That they say’s good for me.
The sensory ritual of tea in a favorite cup becomes a treasured small joy
Happy the lab'rer in his Sunday clothes!
In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn'd hose,
Andhat upon his head, to church he goes;
As oft, with conscious pride, he downward throws
A glance upon the ample cabbage rose
That, stuck in button-hole, regales his nose,
He envies not the gayest London beaux.
In church he takes his seat among the rows,
Pays to the place the reverence he owes,
Likes best the prayers whose meaning least he knows,
Lists to the sermon in a softening doze,
And rouses joyous at the welcome close.
Sunday clothes and a church doze bring a laborer's quiet, contented pride
The sugar maples ...
Benevolent goddesses
Who offer honey.
Sugar maples as benevolent goddesses turn syrup into a sacred offering
God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers
O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours.
A hundred lights in every temple burn,
And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.
Everyday beauty as scattered, all-encompassing grace to be reverently noticed
Here, a little child, I stand,
Heaving up my either hand:
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat, and on us all.
Amen.
A child’s simple mealtime blessing turns an ordinary moment into profound thanks
The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
Finding kingly happiness in the sheer abundance of the world around us
What shall I render to Thy name
Or how Thy praises speak?
My thanks how shall I testify?
O Lord, Thou know'st I'm weak.
I owe so much, so little can
Return unto Thy name,
Confusion seizes on my soul,
And I am filled with shame.
O Thou that hearest prayers, Lord,
To Thee shall come all flesh
Thou hast me heard and answered,
My plaints have had access.
What did I ask for but Thou gav'st?
What could I more desire?
But thankfulness even all my days
I humbly this require.
Gratitude for answered prayers expressed through humility over life’s small mercies
Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain
For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain.
On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden;
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold
Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold;
Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North,
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth,
A pumpkin pie becomes a vessel for cherished childhood and harvest gratitude
On such a day as this I think,
On such a day as this,
When earth and sky and nature's whole
Are clad in April's bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
On such a day as this.
Finds bliss in simply being alive on a balmy spring day
And it was Sunday everywhere,
And Father pinned a rose on me
And said he guessed he'd better take
Me down to see Miss Kate-Marie.
And when I went it all turned out
To be a Sunday school, and there
Miss Kate-Marie was very good
And let me stand beside her chair.
Her hat was made of yellow lace;
Her dress was very soft and thin,
And when she talked her little tongue
Was always wriggling out and in.
I liked to smell my pretty rose;
I liked to feel her silky dress.
She held a very little book
And asked the things for us to guess.
Cherishes the sensory joys of a Sunday with a beloved teacher
Outside the sky is light with stars;
There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.
How little I thought, a year ago,
In that horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.
Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.
We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.
Turns shared camomile tea and quiet domesticity into a magical refuge
I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
Grateful for song, heart's wonders, and dreamful refuge amid chaos
WHAT shall I give my daughter the younger
More than will keep her from cold and hunger?
I shall not give her anything.
If she shared South Weald and Havering,
Their acres, the two brooks running between,
Paine's Brook and Weald Brook,
With pewit, woodpecker, swan, and rook,
She would be no richer than the queen
Who once on a time sat in Havering Bower
Alone, with the shadows, pleasure and power.
She could do no more with Samarcand,
Or the mountains of a mountain land
And its far white house above cottages
Like Venus above the Pleiades.
Her small hands I would not cumber
With so many acres and their lumber,
Values natural riches and quiet happiness over material gifts