The Pulley
BY GEORGE HERBERT 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 dispersèd 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.” MORE POEMS BY GEORGE HERB
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September
The goldenrod is yellow, The corn is turning brown; The trees in apple orchards With fruit are bending down. The gentian's bluest fringes Are curing in the sun; In dusty pods the milkweed Its hidden silk has spun. The sedges haunt their harvest, In every meadow's nook; And asters by the brookside Make asters in the brook. From dewy lanes at morning The grapes' sweet odore rise; At noon the roads all flutter With yellow butterflies. By all those lovely tokens September days are here, With summer's best of weather, And autumn's best of cheer. Helen Hunt Jackson Jack-in-the-Pulpit
after William Carlos Williams’s “Queen-Anne’s-Lace” Kimiko Hahn, 1955 Remote purple lays claim to stem, beside routine stripes of green and brown. Dark as a patch of shade in the marsh across the path that the neighborhood kids and I, were forbidden to pass. It is that hue that overtakes, the marsh that sucks in boots and offers up skunk cabbage and cattails. Nests here and overhead. Who named this plant-- also called bog onion, brown dragon, Indian turnip, wake robin, Arisaema triphyllum-- and who told me I cannot name. But his purple—all shadow, all remote and not-remote, all question marks, craving. Yes? This herbaceous perennial, growing from corm vertical and swollen as it is underground. Even in late summer, it is not nothing, William (or Jack), turning from purple to red before his scattering. Copyright © 2016 by Kimiko Hahn. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 28, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets. Spring
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. Gerard Manley Hopkins The Bay is flat and greasy
and the mudflats feel like Mars. Past buoys long neglected we head south among the bars Where sometimes the sea is breaking when it kicks up hard southeast and water; dark and angry, tries to swamp you on the beach. -from "Hell to Pay," by Jon Broderick (a fisherpoet) "Praying"
by Mary Oliver, Thirst It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. How Far is it to Bethlehem?
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A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
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