This time of year for me is an eclectic mix of quiet time and busy fervor, and sometimes I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. I love Christmas, but I very much resent the commercialism. So naturally I retreat to the comfort of poetry, which is my salvation. 🙂 That includes some worthy quotes that you could think of as “Twitter poetry”. Sure, why not?
So here’s a little selection that will soothe frazzled nerves and calm the soul:
And all the sweet serenity of books”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
― Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
― William Wordsworth
Kathleen Raine
(b. 1908 d. 2003)
NOCTURNE
Night comes, an angel stands
Measuring out the time of stars,
Still are the winds, and still the hours.
It would be peace to lie
Still in the still hours at the angel’s feet,
Upon a star hung in a starry sky,
But hearts another measure beat.
Each body, wingless as it lies,
Sends out its butterfly of night
With delicate wings, and jewelled eyes.
And some upon day’s shores are cast,
And some in darkness lost
In waves beyond the world, where float
Somewhere the islands of the blest.
“Nocturne” from Stone and Flower (1943)
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THE TREE OF HEAVEN
The peace of flowers. Heaven like a tree grows
In silence; has no voice
Till they come and perch in the branches, images of words
From two worlds, birds and angels,
Inhabitants of mute leaves, lovers of the plant’s rapt blindness.
Heaven, simple like a seed, from its minute beginning
Rooted in flesh and blood, instinct with death and pain
Grows complex, manifold; grows great with living,
With green and blossom and bough, sky-covering
With world, where nothing was, until heaven’s spring.
Pattern of tree and man, unfold within me—
Branch where the veins run, quicken at the heart,
Be felt in every nerve, and fruitful at the breast,
Vine, pattern of Christ, interior quiet,
Quicken this barrenness, flower in my desert!
from Living in Time (1946)
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
