Keeping a Book of Centuries
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In My Notebook...

In my Commonplace...

7/19/2011

2 Comments

 
A new poet.
Picture
photo courtesy of amatuerphotographer.co.uk
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Richard Wilbur 

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
``Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.''

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

``Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.''
2 Comments
Bonnie Buckingham link
7/20/2011 03:37:36 pm

I feel like memorizing that so I can recite it! Aren't the images so beautiful!

Reply
Laurie
7/21/2011 01:13:48 am

Bonnie, clotheslines have always had a special place in my heart...but this poem has captured it. Thank you for the introduction. Yes, I would love to recite this. It feeds me somehow and recalls all the clotheslines I have known.

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    "Ideas 
    ​won't keep; something must be done about them."

     - Alfred Whitehead

     

    A Charlotte Mason education leads to all kinds of ideas! Join me in keeping one or several of the notebooks she prescribed and discover the Science of Relations and the Art of Mindfulness.

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    "Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it." 
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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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  • welcome
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  • in my notebook...
  • shop
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    • Original Invitation