Painting, Poetry

‘Women Know the Way to Rear Up Children’

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Madonna and Child. Unknown artist.

 

from Aurora Leigh, Book One

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1856

 

…Women know

The way to rear up children, (to be just),

They know a simple, merry, tender knack

Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,

And stringing pretty words that make no sense,

And kissing full sense into empty words;

Which things are corals to cut life upon,

Although such trifles: children learn by such,

Love’s holy earnest in pretty play.

And get not over-early solemnized,—

But seeing, as in a rose bush, Love’s Divine,

Which burns and hurts not, not a single bloom,—

Become aware and unafraid of Love.

Such good do mothers.     …

Memory Box, Painting, Poetry

Prologue from Evangeline

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Dark Forest. Ivan Shishkin. 1890.

 

Prologue

from Evangeline, 1847

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

 

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

 

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it

Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?

Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,—

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,

Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?

Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!

Scattered like dust and leaves when the mighty blasts of October

Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.

Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

 

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,

List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;

List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

Memory Box, Painting, Poetry

Work

The Lacemaker. Johannes Vermeer. 1671.

Work

Henry van Dyke

 

Let me but do my work from day to day,

In field or forest, at the desk or loom

In roaring market-place or tranquil room;

Let me but find it in my heart to say,

When vagrant wishes beckon me astray,

“This is my work; my blessing, not my doom;

Of all who live I am the one by whom

This work can best be done in the right way.”

Then shall I see it not too great, nor small,

To suit my spirit and to prove my powers;

Then shall I cheerful greet the laboring hours,

And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall

At eventide, to play and love and rest,

Because I know for me my work is best.

Painting, Poetry

Binsey Poplars

Polars on the Banks of the River Epte, Seen from the Marsh. Claude Monet. 1892.

 

Binsey Poplars

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

felled 1879

 

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, are all felled;

Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On a meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

 

O if we but knew what we do

When we delve or hew—

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch, her being só slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean

To mend her we end her

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc unselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

Painting, Poetry, Psalms, Scripture

Psalm 128

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Prayer Before Meal. Jan Steen. 1665.

 

Psalm 128

(King James Version)

 

A Song of Decrees

 

Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways.

For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.

Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the LORD.

The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life.

Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel.

 

A Psalm designated as a “Song of Decrees” was written to be sung by pilgrims on the road to the holy city of Jerusalem.

When the word LORD appears in the biblical translation in all capital letters, it indicates that God’s Holy Name—YHVH—is used in the original text.

Painting, Poetry

Impressionist Picture of a Garden

Sunshine. Thomas Edwin Mostyn.

 

Impressionist Picture of a Garden

Amy Lowell, 1919

 

Give me sunlight, cupped in a paint brush,

And smear the red of peonies

Over my garden.

Splash blue upon it,

The hard blue of Canterbury bells,

Paling through larkspur

Into heliotrope,

To wash away among forget-me-nots.

Dip red again to mix a purple,

And lay on pointed flares of lilacs against bright green.

Streak yellow for nasturtiums and marsh marigolds

And flame it up to orange for my lilies.

Now dot it so and so along an edge

Of Iceland poppies.

Swirl it a bit, and faintly,

That is honeysuckle.

Now put a band of brutal, bleeding crimson

And tail it off to pink, to give the roses.

And while you re loaded up with pink,

Just blotch about that bed of phlox.

Fill up with cobalt and dash in a sky

As hot and heavy as you can make it ;

Then tree-green pulled up into that

Gives a fine jolt of colour.

Strain it out,

And melt your twigs into the cobalt sky.

Toss on some Chinese white to flash the clouds,

And trust the sunlight you ve got in your paint.

There is the picture.

Painting, Poetry

The Word

3 Comments
Winter Sun. Daniel F. Gerhatz.

 

The Word

Tony Hoagland, 1992

 

Down near the bottom

of the crossed-out list

of things you have to do today,

 

between “green thread”

and “broccoli” you find

that you have penciled “sunlight.”

 

Resting on the page, the word

is as beautiful, it touches you

as if you had a friend

 

and sunlight were a present

he had sent you from some place distant

as this morning—to cheer you up,

 

and to remind you that,

among your duties, pleasure

is a thing,

 

that also needs accomplishing.

Do you remember?

that time and light are kinds

 

of love, and love

is no less practical

than a coffee grinder

 

or a safe spare tire?

Tomorrow you may be utterly

without a clue

 

but today you get a telegram,

from the heart in exile

proclaiming that the kingdom

 

still exists,

the king and queen alive,

still speaking to their children,

 

—to any one among them

who can find the time

to sit out in the sun and listen.

Painting, Poetry

Sonnet CXXIX

5 Comments

 

The Music Lesson. Johannes Vermeer. 1662.

Sonnet CXXIX

William Shakespeare

 

How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled, they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blest than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Painting, Poetry

Seal’s Lullaby

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Seals. Albert Bierstadt.

 

Seal’s Lullaby

Rudyard Kipling

 

Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,

And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,

At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

 

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,

Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!

The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!

 

 A Little Poetry—This beautiful lullaby opens the story of “The White Seal” in Kipling’s popular Jungle Book.

A Little Music—Composer Eric Whitacre wrote a choral transcription of Kipling’s lullaby for a DreamWorks film that has since been cancelled. You can watch Whitacre conduct Junges Vokalensemble Hannover at YouTube. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuLDD7O29T4>