ETERNAL LINES

 

 

ETERNAL LINES

 

Hymn to the Spirit of Nature

 

Life of Life! Thy lips enkindle

With their love the breath between them’

And thy smiles before they dwindle

Make the cold air fire; then screen them

In those looks, where whoso gazes

Faints, entangled in their mazes.

 

Child of Light! Thy limbs are burning

Through the vest which seems to hide them,

As the radiant lines of morning

Through the clouds, ere they divide them;

And this atmosphere divinest

Shrouds thee whereesoe’er thou shinest.

 

Fair are others: none beholds thee;

But thy voice sounds low and tender

Like the fairest, for it folds thee

From the sight, that liquid splendour;

And all feel, yet see thee never, ----

As I feel now, lost for ever!

 

Lamp of Earth! Where’er thou movest

Its dim shapes are clad with brightness.

And the souls of whom thou lovest

Walk upon the winds with lightness

Till they fail, as I am failing,

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

 

                        ---Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

The Human Seasons

 

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honey’d cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh

His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness----to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forgo his mortal nature.

 

                        ---John Keats

 

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

 

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen

 

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho! Sing heigh ho! Unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh ho! The holly!

This life is most jolly.

 

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember’d not.

Heigh ho! Sing heigh ho! Unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh ho! The holly!

This life is most jolly.

 

                                    William Shakespeare

 

                        Grass

 

A child said What is the grass?

fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child?

I do not know what it is any more than he.

 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,

out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,

Bearing the owner’s name some way in the corners,

that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

 

Or I guess that grass is itself a child,

the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

And it means, sprouting alike in broad

zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among white,

Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give

them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut

hair of graves.

 

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,

It may be you transpire from the breasts

of young men, It may be if I had known them

I would have loved them, It may be you are from

old people, or from offspring taken

Soon out of their mothers’ laps,

And here you are the mothers’ laps.

 

This grass is very dark to be from the white

heads of old mothers, Darker then the colourless

beards of old men, Dark to come from under

the faint red roofs of mouths.

 

Or I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,

And I perceive they do not come from the roofs

of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the

hints about the dead young men and women,

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the

off-spring taken soon out of their laps.

 

What do you think has become of the young

and old men? And what do you think has become

of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

And if there was it led forward life, and does not

wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceased the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed,

and luckier.

 

                                    ---Walt Whitman