Tag Archives: Winslow Homer

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.

To the Skylark

Song of the Lark (In the Field). Winslow Homer.

 

To the Skylark

William Wordsworth

 

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?

Or, while thy wings aspire, are heart and eye

Both with thy nest on the dewy ground?

Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,

Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

 

To the last point of vision, and beyond

Mount, daring warbler!—that love-prompted strain

—Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond—

Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain:

Yet might’st thou seem, proud privilege! to sing

All independent of the leafy Spring.

 

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

When thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

 

A Little Poetry—If you enjoyed this poem by Wordsworth, you may want to compare it with a similar poem (“Song”) by William Wadsworth Longfellow.

A Fine Picture—Although the lark does not appear in Winslow Homer’s painting, clearly its song has thrilled the “bosom of the plain.”

The Pulley

Life Line. Winslow Homer. 1884.

 

The Pulley

George Herbert (1593-1633)

 

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Let the world’s riches, which disperséd lie,

Contract into a span.”

 

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,

Rest in the bottom lay.

 

“For if I should,” said he,

“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

So both should losers be.

 

“Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.”