GOD IS GREAT, BUT NOT MAN

 

GOD IS GREAT, BUT NOT MAN

            One of the best loved poems which will be quoted below is titled: All Things Bright And Beautiful. It is written by the Irish poet Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895). The very first quatrain of the poem says:

            All things bright and beautiful,

            All creatures great and small,

            All things wise and wonderful,

            The Lord God made them all.

But when we  look at the world with eyes of the modern man, we feel extremely depressed. A war is going on; thousands of people have already died; infrastructure worth billions of rupees has been destroyed; hatred, not love is the main basis of relationships. James Kirkup’s poem “No Men are Foreign” is completely forgotten. He had said:

            Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign,

            Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes

            Like ours; the land our brothers walk upon

            Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie.  

There are thousands of religious places preaching peace and love but to no universal effect. Most of the countries believe that their survival depends on deadliest weapons, not on good neighbourly relationship.

 

Consequently, man’s productions cannot be titled : All Things Bright And Beautiful.

 

            Here are the remaining quatrains of the above-mentioned poem.

Each little flower that opens,

Each little bird that sings,

He made their glowing colours

He made their tiny wings.

 

The purple-headed mountain,

The river running by,

The sunset, and the morning

That brightens up the sky,

 

The cold wind in the winter,

The pleasant summer sun,

The ripe fruits in the garden,

He made them every one.

 

The tall trees in the greenwood,

The meadows where we play,

The rushes by the water,

We gather every day.

 

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell

 How great is God Almighty

Who has made all things well.

                                                            ********

G.R.Kanwal

22 April 2026

 

                                               

 

NEW FRIENDS AND OLD FRIENDS

 

         

                   NEW FRIENDS AND OLD FRIENDS

            ”New Friends And Old Friends” is a poem written by a Welsh composer and musician Joseph Parry. He was born on 21^st May 1841 in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, United Kingdom, and died in Penarth, Wales, United Kingdom,  on 17^th  February 1903.  

            Before I quote the text of the aforesaid poem, let us have a look at the meaning of the word “Friend”.

            According to some  dictionaries a friend is a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, trust, and support.

            Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English defines the word friend as a person you know well and like, and who is not usually a member of your family.

            Some synonyms of the word “Friend” are: companion, mate, crony, comrade, playmate, soul mate, confidante, ally, associate, chum, buddy, and alter ego.

            The noun friendship means ---- intimacy, close relationship, affinity, comradeship, fellowship, alliance, and close relationship.

            Psychologically, a friend is more than a physician during one’s sickness or any other adversity upsetting one’s  peace of mind.

            The English clergy Robert Hall (1764-1831) said: A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.

            He further said: He who has made the acquisition of a judicious and sympathizing friend, may be said to have doubled his mental resources.

            According to the American neurologist and author Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) : He alone has lost the art to live who cannot win new friends.

            One of the lines in Joseph Parry’s poem New Friends And Old Friends says:

            Friendships that have stood the test ---

            Time and change ---are surely best.

 

Another line which compares well with William Shakespeare’s  following lines :

             “  Love is not Time’s  fool”, and “ “Love alters not when it alteration finds”.  is:

            “Friendship never knows decay”.

Finally, what follows is the full text of Joseph Parry’s poem :NEW FRIENDS AND OLD FRIENDS.

  “Make new friends, but keep the old;

Those are silver, these are gold.

New-made friendships, like new wine,

Age will mellow and refine.

Friendships that have stood the test—

Time and change—are surely best;

Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,

Friendship never knows decay.

For 'mid old friends, tried and true,

Once more we our youth renew.

But old friends, alas! may die,

New friends must their place supply.

Cherish friendship in your breast—

New is good, but old is best;

Make new friends, but keep the old;

Those are silver, these are gold.”

                                                                        ************

G.R.Kanwal

21^st April 2026

 

 

OMAR KHAYYAM

 

                                OMAR  KHAYYAM

            “Omar Khayyam” was a poet who had masterly knowledge about many subjects like mathematics, astronomy, Islam, and Persian literature. He was born in Neyshapur, Iran, on 18 May 1048 and died there on 4 December 1131 at the age of 83 years.

            He was influenced by great scholars including  Ibn Sina, Al-Khwarizmi, Albiruni, Euclid, and Apollonius of Perga.

            In Persian literature he is famous for his anthology of about 600 Persian quatrains known as Rubaiyat of Omar  Khayyam. 

            Currently Khayyam is known as a world poet due to the translation of  his quatrains by the English poet and writer Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883). In fact, Fitzgerald himself became famous all over the world due to translating  Khayyam’s  quatrains, which are even now considered the first and the best free adaptation which  touches the hearts of  both the romantic and philosophically minded readers.

            According to a literary opinion about  Khayyam’s philosophy expressed through his quatrains, there is a great emphasis on existentialism , skepticism, and hedonism. He admits that life is short, death is absolute and the future is uncertain; yet he advises his readers to find joy in fleeting moments, wine, books, and companionship.

            Some quatrains translated into English follow:

*Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,

A flask of wine, a book of verse ---and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness –

And wilderness is paradise now.

                        --

**Think, in this batter’d caravanserai

Whose doorways are alternate night and  day,

How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp

Abode his hour or two, and went his way.

                        -----

 ***Then to this earthen bowl did I adjourn

My lip the secret well of life to learn :

And lip to lip it murmur’d –“While you live

Drink ---for once dead you never shall return.”

                         ___

           

****Ah, fill the cup: what boots it to repeat

How Time is slipping underneath our feet:

Unborn To-Morrow and dead YESTERDAY

Why fret about them if To-DAY be sweet !

                                    _____

The moving finger writes: and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

                                    *********

To conclude, the central theme of Khayyam’s quatrains is: The ephemeral   

nature of human life. And his advice to human beings is to  catch the present moment tightly and enjoy it whole-heartedly.  

 

G. R.  Kanwal

20 April 2026

BOOKWORMS

 

                BOOKWORMS

            Bookworms are persons who are extremely devoted to reading. They love  books , buy or borrow them , and spend almost every moment of their life among  old and new books.

            You can call them avid readers and collectors of books. Other names for them are book-lovers, bibliophiles, studious individuals, scholars, and bibliomaniacs.

            The term bookworm is used both in the negative and positive sense. A bookaholic is addicted to buying, collecting and reading books. He is a serious person, not a light-hearted one. His eyes are always focused on books even when he is travelling or having his meals.

            In the positive sense a bookworm is an enthusiastic consumer of books. You will find his room  loaded  with stocks of old and new books on a particular or variety of subjects.

            The most well-known 18^th-century poem titled “The Book-worm“  was written by Thomas Parnell (1679-1718). He was an Irish poet and scholar. According to a commentator his poem is a humorous take on a creature that eats books, arguing that it gains more knowledge than “hungry” scholars who only care about the books’ value.

            Another poem titled “The Bookworm” is by Robert Buchanan  (1841-1901) who lived a somewhat Bohemian life. If I am not wrong, he was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist. A few stanzas of his aforesaid poem follow.

            With spectacles upon his nose

            He shuffles up and down ;

            Of antique fashion are his clothes,

            His naples hat is brown,

            A mighty watch, of silver wrought,

            Keeps time in sun and rain

            To the dull ticking of the thought

            Within his dusty brain.

 

            To see him at the bookstall stand

            And bargain for the prize

            With the old sixpence in his hand

            And greed in his grey eyes !

            Then, conquering, grasp the book, half blind,

            And take the homeward track

            For fear the man should change his mind

            And want the bargain back.

 

            But think not as he walks along

            His brain is dead and cold;

            His soul is thinking in the tongue

            Which Plato spake of old ;

            And while some grinning cabman sees

            His quaint shape with a jeer

            He smiles ----for Aristophanes

            Is joking in his ear.

 

            Around him stretch Athenian walks

            And strange shapes under trees ;

            He pauses in a dream and talks

            Great speech with Socrates.

            Then as the fancy fails ---still meshed

            In thoughts that go and come,

            Feels in his pouch, and is refreshed

            At touch of some old tome.

 

After a few more stanzas, the poem concludes with the last one which consists of the following lines:

 

            A good old Ragpicker is he

            Who, following morn and eve

            The quick feet of humanity,

            Searches the dust they leave ;

            He pokes the dust, he sifts with care,

            He searches close and deep,

            Proud to discover here and there

            A treasure in the heap !

                                                *****

G.R.Kanwal

19 April 2026

 

  

 

             

                           

SOME QUTATIONS FROM TENNYSON’S POETRY

 

                SOME QUTATIONS FROM TENNYSON’S POETRY

            Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was a celebrated English poet and poet Laureate (1850-1892).  Some of his famous poems are:

            “Ring Out Wild Bells,”  “The Lady of Shalot,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Ulysses,” “In Memoriam, “ “The Lotus Eaters,“ “Come Into the garden, Maud.  and “Crossing the Bar,”.

            His language is simple, yet forceful  and impressive. He is rightly admired as a great poetic artist.

            Here are a few popular quotations from his poems.  

 

1.     Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.     

                        ----

2.     Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

3.     A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

4.     The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

 

5.     More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

 

6.     Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control

These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

 

7.     It is better to have loved and lost,

Than  never to have loved at all.

 

                                    ******

G. R. Kanwal

18 April 2026   

 

SOME TRIBUTES TO GOETHE

 

                SOME TRIBUTES TO GOETHE

            Goethe was a German poet and prose writer. His full name was Johann Wolfgang von GOethe. He was born on 28 August 1749 and died on 1832. He was also a great orientalist. When he received  in 1791 a copy of the first German translation of  Kalidasa’s  Sakuntala published by Georg Forster, he expressed his appreciation in the following poetic lines which are the English translation  of the original in  Germany:

             Shall I embrace the blossoms of spring, the fruits of the autumn,

            All that enchants and that charms, all that nurtures and fills,

            Shall I embrace in a name all heaven and whole of the earth:

            Call I, Sakontala, thee --- all is comprised in one name.

 

              Goethe’s most famous book is two-part tragic play Faust, and an other German  book Translated as West-Eastern Divan  is a collection of lyrical poems published in 1819 and expanded in 1827.

 

            Now what follows are a few tributes to Goethe who is famous all over the world for his vast wisdom on many subjects.

 

1.     We consider Goethe to be a richly educated Poet, no less than a richly educated Man; a master both of Humanity and of Poetry; one to whom Experience has given true wisdom, and the “Melodies Eternal’ a perfect utterance for his wisdom.---Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881).

 

2.     In the width, depth and richness of his criticism of life, Goethe is by far our greatest modern man.----Matthew Arnold  (1822-1888).

 

3.     Whenever a Virgil, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Goethe is born, the whole future of European poetry is altered. ---T. S. Eliot (1888-1965).

 

4.  Never was there a time when it seemed more necessary that Goethe’s spirit should be kept alive among us now when international relations between the leading powers of the world are severely strained and when ideological fanaticism are darkening all wise counsels and extinguishing human sympathies.----Dr. S. Radhakrishnan . (1888-1975).

 

5.     Goethe goes much deeper than Shakespeare; he had an incomparably greater intellect than the English poet and sounded problems of problems of life and thought Shakespeare had no means of approaching even, ----Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950).

                                         

                                          *******

G.R.Kanwal

17 April 2026

ADMIRABLE THOUGHTS

 

          ADMIRABLE THOUGHTS

            In his book of song offerings called Gitanjali  (1913), the Indian poet, philosopher and political thinker Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)  prayed in a song, at a time when India was under the British rule :

            Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

            Where knowledge is free;

            Where the world has not been broken

            up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

            Where words come out from the depth of truth;

            Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection :

            Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into

            the dreary desert sand of dead habit ;

            Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and         action---

            Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 

India became free from the British rule on 15 August 1947. But even today after about 79 years of freedom, the minds of most of the people are not without fear and their heads are not held high. Narrow domestic walls are still there.  Words are not coming out from the depth of truth.  The clear stream of reason has still lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; and the country is not being led forward by God.

 

Morality has rather declined. Selfishness more than selflessness is on the rise.

 

People look at their fellow citizens as strangers and do not help them if they see them being killed by criminal wayfarers before their very eyes.

 

Unfortunately, the whole world which should have embraced Tagore’s prayer is becoming violent and unethical . Deadliest weapons are being manufactured and sold like other goods and chattels.

 

War-minded leaders feel proud that they have crippled  some  weaker country by using their powerful military power.  

Peace-makers are  now rare. Apostles of non-violence like the Indian freedom fighter Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi  (1869-1948),  are nowhere to be seen.  

 

            Finally, here is a relevant quote:

Non-violence is a powerful force for change, emphasizing strength, compassion, and the rejection of retaliation. It is a sword that heals and a means to transform conflict through love rather than force.       

                                                                        ******

G. R. Kanwal

16 April 2026

                

 

                                                  

                                 

A HYMN OF TRUST

 

 

                                    A HYMN OF TRUST

 

            “A HYMN OF TRUST” was  written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1804- 1894).  He was an American  physician physician, poet and polymath based in Boston. According to available details he was grouped among the fireside poets and was regarded as one of the best writers of the day.

 

            The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858) is regarded as one of his best known prose works, and his most famous quotes are:

           

            “We do not quit playing because we grow old,  we grow old because we quit playing”. “ A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience”. “I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving “.  “Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future”.  “Man has his will, but woman has her way”.

                

            The poem “A Hymn of Trust” focuses on divine help  in life’s hardships. It affirms the nearness of God in every unfortunate situation. Look at the third quatrain of the four-quatrain poem, in which the poet says:

             

            When drooping pleasure turns to grief,

            And trembling faith is changed to fear,

            The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf,

            Shall softly tell us, thou art near.

           

            As the title indicates the poem is a hymn of trust in God’s helpfulness during  our difficult situations .   

 

            By definition, a hymn is a spiritual lyric of praise, adoration, or prayer directed toward a deity or saint.

                                                            *******

G.R.Kanwal

15 April 2026

 

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SQUIRREL

 

                                THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SQUIRREL      

            “The Mountain And The Squirrel” is a humorous and satirical poem written by the American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson . He was born at Boston on 25 May 1803 and died at Concord on 27 April 1882.

            Asa writer, he is best remembered for leading the 19^th century transcendentalist movement in his country.

            Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement. It emphasizes intuition, individualism, and the inherent goodness of people and nature.

            Emerson believed in a shared, universal divine spirit known as the “Over-Soul” which stands for a direct connection between the individual soul and God. It also lays emphasis on self-reliance and idealism whereby the superiority of the spiritual world has an upper hand over the physical one.

             In his poem “The Mountain And The Squirrel” which is reproduced below, Emerson deals with the relationship between the natural world and human beings; the former is represented by the mountain, and the latter by the squirrel.

            Both the mountain and the squirrel are unique due to  their individualistic .  Whether somebody is huge or small is immaterial. All beings are  to be judged by their own peculiar  qualities.  

            The poem ends with the following lines spoken by the squirrel which is a  much smaller creature than the mountain:

            Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

            If I cannot carry forests on my back,

            Neither can you crack a nut.

 

                        What follows is the full text of the poem :   

The mountain and the squirrel

Had a quarrel,

And the former called the latter

"Little prig."

Bun replied,

"You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather

Must be taken in together

To make up a year

And a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,

And not half so spry:

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track.

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut."

 

                                                                        ********

G. R. Kanwal

14 April 2026