In Memorial

Something a bit different for me today:


Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
   Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
   By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
   Thou madest Life in man and brute;
   Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
   Thou madest man, he knows not why,
   He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,
   The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
   Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
   They have their day and cease to be:
   They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
   For knowledge is of things we see
   And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
   But more of reverence in us dwell;
   That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;
   We mock thee when we do not fear:
   But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
   What seem’d my worth since I began;
   For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
   Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
   I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
   Confusions of a wasted youth;
   Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
   Compell’d thy canvas, and my prayer
   Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move
   Thro’ circles of the bounding sky,
   Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam,
   My blessing, like a line of light,
   Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.

So may whatever tempest mars
   Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
   And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.

So kind an office hath been done,
   Such precious relics brought by thee;
   The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run.
. . .  .

Back to something a bit more usual tomorrow. Cheers. Take care. :-)

Heroism

I posted this almost 10 years ago, but in light of the pretty amazing testimony being given in the House Impeachment hearings I think it deserves a repost.


It takes great strength to train

To modern service your ancestral brain;

To lift the weight of the unnumbered years

Of dead men’s habits, methods and ideas;

To hold that back with one hand, and support

With the other the weak steps of new resolve!

It takes great strength to bring your life up square

With your accepted thought, and hold it there,

Resisting the inertia that drags back

From new attempts to the old habit’s track.

It is so easy to drift back—to sink—

So hard to live abreast of what you think!

 

It takes great strength to live where you belong,

When other people think that you are wrong;

People you love, and who love you, and whose

Approval is a pleasure you would choose.

To bear this pressure, and succeed at length

In living your belief—well, it takes strength—

Courage, too.   But what does courage mean

Save strength to help you face a pain foreseen;

Of setting yourself against your grandsire’s brain:

Dangerous risk of walking alone and free,

Out of the easy paths that used to be;

And the fierce pain of hurting those we love,

When love meets truth, and truth must ride above!

 

But the best courage man has ever shown,

Is daring to cut loose, and think alone.

Dark are the unlit chambers of clear space,

Where light shines back from no reflecting face.

Our sun’s wide glare, our heaven’s shining blue,

We owe to fog and dust they fumble through;

And our rich wisdom that we treasure so,

 

Shines from a thousand things that we don’t know.

But to think new—it takes a courage grim

As led Columbus over the world’s rim.

To think—it costs some courage—and to go—

Try it—it taxes every power you know.

 

It takes great love to stir a human heart

To live beyond the others, and apart;

A love that is not shallow, is not small;

Is not for one or two, but for them all.

Love that can wound love for its higher need;

Love that can leave love, though the heart may bleed;

Love that can lose love, family and friend,

Yet live steadfastly, loving to the end.

A love that asks no answer, that can live,

Moved by one burning, deathless force—to give!

Love, strength and courage; courage, strength and love—

The heroes of all time are built thereof

Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman (1860–1935) 
…launched her career as a lecturer, author, and reformer with the story for which she is best-known today, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”  She was hailed as the “brains” of the US women’s movement, whose focus she sought to broaden from suffrage to economics. Her most influential sociological work criticized the competitive individualism of capitalists and Social Darwinists, and touted altruistic service as the prerequisite to both social progress and human evolution.
By 1900, Gilman had become an international celebrity, but had already faced a scandal over her divorce and “abandonment” of her child. As the years passed, her audience shrunk and grew more hostile, and she increasingly positioned herself in opposition to the society that in an earlier, more idealistic period she had seen as the better part of the self. 
In her final years, she unflinchingly faced breast cancer, her second husband’s sudden death, and finally, her own carefully planned suicide— she “preferred chloroform to cancer” and cared little for a single life when its usefulness was over. A remarkable woman whose public solutions often belied her private anxieties.

Haiku On An Afternoon in the Gardens

red-winged_blackbird

Red-Wing blackbird chirps
lily-leaves sway in the breeze
trudge by, un-noticing

peter

59817686_f1652e1984

Haiku on Breeze

red-winged_blackbird

Red-Wing blackbird chirps
lily-leaves sway in the breeze
worms bask in the sun

peter

Image2 worm

Flat Pack Furniture

flatpack

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A Haiku on Hickories in Spring

Hickory1

hickories await
other trees to precede them
before their spring bloom

peter

Hickory2

A Haiku on Travel to Springfield

Castles in the Air

White powder puff skies
Zoom, zoom, zoom, big trucks passing
Blissful passages.

peter

Belle Esprit

After sunset we took a walk
It was pretty dark so we couldn’t gawk
We came to a bend and heard a snap
Not loud like a big bear trap.

It was the sound of a tree branch breaking
In the dark forest it had me quaking.
Then the dried leaves gave a rustle
We stood still no need to hustle.

Because we could see only a form gently move
And look our way but did not us pursue
Then Peter uttered as softly as could be
“It’s a deer! Look”  But if baffled me.

Because from out of nowhere it materialized
It caught us off guard; a wonderful surprise
It’s path seemed to parallel ours for a moment
And then in an instant another development.

It darted through campsites of those around
But they did not notice, nor saw it bound
Back into the dark forest to retreat
The silent form of a deer: Belle Esprit!