deer in the field
lifting their heads until
the train whistle fades
and
dusk before the moon —
the first day I’ve forgotten
to remember you
by Shelley Krause,
Friendly poet ahd story teller,
January 2017
Discover
so many more scintillating, vivid lines of beauty and reflection.
Read them at Shelley's website or in her book:
But Wait, There's More!
http://butwait.blogspot.com/
Each Stone
http://www.blurb.com/b/164917-each-stone
--
The Marshes of Glynn
GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,—
Emerald twilights,—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within 10
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;—
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire,—
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, 15
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;—
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; 20
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,—
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, 25
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the Marshes of Glynn 30
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face 35
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark:— 40
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low,—
Thus—with your favor—soft, with a reverent hand
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!),
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand 45
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
50
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? 55
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main. 60
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free 65
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 70
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 75
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: 80
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, 85
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run; 90
’Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run,
And the sea and the marsh are one.
How still the plains of the waters be! 95
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men, 100
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn. 105
by Sidney Lanier
--
The poets “stop and examine what others have missed, whether it be veins on a leaf or the surge of a mob…hear what others miss—not just skylarks but the breath of an old man or sleet against the window...
respond to the feel of a rusted iron railing, a cut, or a gull’s feather...
identify the variety of city smells and country orders and consider what it is that makes an unoccupied house different from one lived in...
taste not food but pine gum and smog.”
“Imagery is one of the elements that gives poetry its forcefulness. Images are basically copies of things that you can see. Photographers usually attempt to make exact copies of what they see. Poets work with language, so they can’t make exact copies of the world,”
and poets don’t want to anyway.
That’s what technological machines do, and scientists focus on.
Poets on the other hand are more like impressionistic painters. They don’t want to capture an exact image like a clone, but rather instill the impression, essence, feeling, experience of a scintillating moment, hour, or century of perception.
“An image can be so fresh, so powerful, that it can speak to our deepest feelings.”
Brief quotes from
Elements, pages 234-235
from SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PUBLISHED QUAKER VERSE
Rosemary Moore
University of Birmingham, England
ABSTRACT
"Early Quakers disapproved of most aspects of popular culture,
and before 1661 they
published very little verse. During the 1660's
some thirty Quaker authors published verse,
addressed both to Quakers and to the public."
"The impetus behind this surge of verse publication was probably
the appearance during 1660 and 1661 of a number of papers by John Perrot, a Quaker preacher who had been arrested
in Italy and imprisoned by the
Inquisition."
"His writings, which were brought to England, included a considerable
amount of poetry. Perrot was released in 1661 and returned to England, feted by many
Quakers as a near martyr. It is likely that his example encouraged others to publish their
efforts at verse-making. The Quaker leadership considered
Perrot a disruptive influence, and for several years there was a serious dispute,
publicly conducted, within the Quaker movement."
"This would account for the timing of much of the published Quaker verse,
and the fact that the authors included Quakers on both sides of the dispute. Most of it
was published in 1662-63, before the breach between Perrot
and the leadership seemed
irretrievable.
The outpouring of verse publication diminished towards the end of the
decade, and during the rest of the century not much Quaker verse was published."
"The early Quakers disapproved of many aspects of their contemporary popular
culture, whether sports, games, music or theatre."
"No portraits were painted of the first Quakers, and they were expected to dress plainly
and to avoid drunkenness and any form of conviviality, including conversation for pleasure."
"Poetry
was not proscribed, but before 1660 there was practically no Quaker verse
printed, although a good deal of popular religious verse was being published
around this time."
http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=quakerstudies
In the Light of Poetic Beauty,
Daniel Wilcox
