For this day, a painting, and a poem by Philip Booth.
Nightsong
Beside you,
lying down at dark,
my waking fits your sleep.
Your turning
flares the slow-banked fire
between our mingled feet,
and there,
curved close and warm
against the nape of love,
held there,
who holds your dreaming
shape, I match my breathing
to your breath;
and sightless, keep my hand
on your heart’s breast, keep
nightwatch
on your sleep to prove
there is no dark, nor death.
—Philip Booth
For the first day of fall, a poem by Paul Verlaine. Translation by Arthur Symons.
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure
Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
—Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long
Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours tolls deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over
And I weep.
And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.
Sketches I neglected to post last year, which seems more like ten years ago… A walk down memory lane.
Siamo arrivati.
We’ve all been working hard on painting and schoolwork and so decided to take a spring vacation along with the French.
It has arrived!
In honor of the first day of Spring, a poem by Robert Frost, and a painting.
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
—Robert Frost
Lynn & Donald
For the First Day of Christmas, a detail of a larger painting (part of a long-ongoing series, on which more later), and an excerpt from a letter written by a 16th century monk to a friend.
I wish you all a heavenly, peaceful, and joyful Christmas season.
I salute you.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not,
but there is much that while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Take peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy.
And so at this Christmastime, I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
—Fra Giovanni, 1513
Ann
Stephanie
In honor of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, I post this painting of a view of his native town, along with the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, which expresses yearning for a kind of inner transformation difficult to achieve even over the course of a lifetime, but is worth regular inspirational revisiting. A baby step is at least a step.
Today is also the feast day, that is to say birthday, of writer and humorist Roy Blount, Jr. I don’t know if wild birds and hungry wolves eat tamely out of his hand, but dogs do. For a sketch, a riddle, and a mini-bio, please see Language Lover.
