Category Archives: Poetry

Architecture, Poetry, Stain Glass

The Windows

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Saint Chapelle Church. Paris, France. 1250.

 

The Windows

George Herbert

 

Lord, how can a man preach thy eternal word?

He is a brittle crazy glass:

Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford

This glorious and transcendent place,

To be a window, through thy grace.

 

But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,

Making thy life to shine within

The holy Preacher’s; then the light and glory

More rev’rend grows, and more doth win:

Which else shows wat’rish, bleak, and thin.

 

Doctrine and life, colors and ight, in one

When they combine and mingle, bring

A strong regard and awe: but speech alone

Doth vanish like a flaring thing,

And in the ear, not conscience ring.

Painting, Poetry

The Noble Nature

Old live Oak Tree and Bluebonnets on the West Texas Military Grounds, San Antonio. Julian Onderdonk. 1920.

 

The Noble Nature

Ben Jonson

 

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night—

It was the plant and flower of Light.

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures life may perfect be.

Painting, Poetry

To Dianeme

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Portrait of a Woman (La Bella). Palma il Vecchio.

 

To Dianeme

Robert Herrick

 

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes

Which starlike sparkle in their skies;

Nor be you proud, that you can see

All hearts your captives; yours yet free:

Be you not proud of that rich hair

Which wantons with the lovesick air;

Whenas thatruby which you wear,

Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,

Will last to be a precious stone

When all your world’s of beauty gone.

Painting, Poetry

Lovelocks

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Lady Lilith. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

 

Lovelocks

Walter de la Mare

 

I watched the Lady Caroline

Bind up her beauteous hair.

Her face was rosy in the glass,

And, ‘twixt the coils, her hands would pass,

White in the candleshine.

 

Her bottles on the table lay,

Stoppered, yet sweet of violet;

Her image in the mirror stooped

To view those locks as lightly looped

As cherry boughs in May.

 

The snowy night lay dim without,

I heard the Waits their sweet song sing;

The window smouldered keen with frost;

Yet still she twisted, sleeked and tossed

Her beauteous hair about.

Painting, Poetry

Requirement

The Veteran in a New Field. Winslow Homer. 1865.

 

Requirement

John Greenleaf Whittier

 

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave

Of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s,

Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds.

What asks our Father of His children, save

Justice and mercy and humility,

A reasonable service of good deeds,

Pure living, tenderness to human needs,

Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see

The Master’s footprints in our daily ways?

No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,

But the calm beauty of an ordered life

Whose very breathing is unworded praise!—

A life that stands as all true lives have stood,

Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.

Painting, Poetry

Inspiration

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Woman Ironing (Silhouette). Edgar Degas. 1873.

 

Inspiration

Samantha Little, 2013

 

I woke alive and happy.

I don’t recall why, or whether there had ever been a reason,

But the fresh expectancy persisted

Through a breakfast of dry toast and weak tea,

And a drab heap of ironing.

 

I hummed a waltz as I dragged

The spluttering iron over wrinkled cloth,

And I watched the avocado leaves

Scatter the sunshine on the bare wall.

I collect coins for a Renoir print,

But now I rejoice in the unfettered adornment

Of light and shadow, shadow and light,

Dancing on my wall.

 

“I woke up very happy this morning. I don’t remember why or whether I ever knew, but the attitude of fresh expectancy persisted, sustained, perhaps, by Amy Lowell’s poetry. I have been transcribing my favorites from Pictures of the Floating World[...] Will this serenity, I wonder, conquer the heap of ironing and buttons to be sewn?… It did; it rested on all my day like a benediction.”—from a journal entry dated August 9, 2011

Painting, Poetry

Gubbinal

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Sunset. Felix Vallotton. 1918.

 

Gubbinal

Wallace Stevens, 1923

 

That strange flower, the sun,

Is just what you say.

Have it your way.

 

The world is ugly,

And the people are sad.

 

That tuft of jungle feathers,

That animal eye,

Is just what you say.

 

That savage of fire,

That seed,

Have it your way.

 

The world is ugly,

And the people are sad.

 

The word gubbinal is a derivative of a slang word meaning dullard.  The speaker in this poem fools the fool, mocking the person who cannot see the beauty of the sun and the life upon which it shines.

Painting, Poetry

To an Isle in the Water

The Proposal. William Adolphe Bouguereau. 1872.

 

To an Isle in the Water

William Butler Yeats, 1889

 

Shy one, shy one,

Shy one of my heart,

She moves in the firelight

Pensively apart.

 

She carries in the dishes,

And lays them in a row.

To an isle in the water

With her would I go.

 

She carries in the candles,

And lights the curtained room,

Shy in the doorway

And shy in the gloom;

 

Any shy as a rabbit,

Helpful and shy.

To an isle in the water

With her would I fly.