The Glory
Edward Thomas
The glory of the beauty of the morning,
-The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew;
The blackbird that has found it, and the dove
That tempts me on to something sweeter than love;
White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay;
The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy
Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart:
-The glory invites me, yet it leaves me S
Scorning all I can ever do, all I can be,
Beside the lovely of motion, shape, and hue.
The happiness I fancy fit to dwell
In beauty's presence. Shall I now this day
Begin to seek as far as heaven, as hell,
Wisdom or strength to match this beauty, start
And tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops,
In hope to find whatever it is I seek,
Hearkening to short-lived happy-seeming things
That we know naught of, in the hazel copse?
Or must I be content with discontent
As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings?
And shall I ask at the day's end once more
What beauty is, and what I can have meant
By happiness? And shall I let all go,Glad, weary, or both? Or shall I perhaps know
That I was happy oft and oft before,
Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent,
How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to,
Is Time?
I cannot bite the day to the core.
Tag: poetry
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The Glory
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Let This Darkness be a Belltower – Rainer Maria Rilke
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am. -
Another Chance – by Ardhan Swatridge
A new poem by Ardhan (Paul) Swatridge – October 2019
We learned so much:
How not to trust,
how not to feel
and if we did,
to hide our fear
our loneliness,
our inner truth,
at any cost.The rules served to
indoctrinate,
forced compliance,
closed our hearts.
We all obeyed
except the few
who broke and went
to darker hells.We who survived,
the lucky ones,
buried deep our pain,
which sits for years,
a weight in waiting
for that later crisis
or the drip drip drip
that wears away the stone.We needed armour then,
to try to be a ‘man’,
though much too young,
our innocence suppressed:
that vulnerable beauty
of shame-free feelings
lived fully in the raw;
of laughter, tears and rage.Creativity first flowed
and then was blindly crushed
beneath those adaptations;
‘for your own good’ – they said.
So I forgot to mind
that innocent one,
to hug and hold that boy;
his fragile truth betrayed.Is this present crisis
now another chance
to override my need
for a grey numb state?
for safe isolation,
for letting go a lie?
Can those hatches,
battened down for decades,
release their padlocks now?
Can I dare to feel
the grief of those lost years?
Can I let my ‘pleaser’ go?
Can I face the facts
and name it trauma now?
Can I give myself
the gift ‘he’ holds
in ‘his’ unblemished hands?Relief at last, to breathe him
back to life again.
A light to penetrate
the dark of old beliefs
that nothing ever tried
could mend those cracks.
Now hope and love
are seeping through.Is this coming home
after so long away?
Can these fragments
make a healthy whole?
So many loves lost,
but what about him?
He awaits me still,
to hold him and say,
“I love you my son.” -
A Winter of Words
In a winter of words
the verbal garden hibernates.
The streams dry up
in a drought of expression,
a writer’s depression.
It is pencil down-time
where poetry lies fallow;
barren silence on a blank page.It’s a waiting time,
a frustrating time,
without metaphor or rhyme.
The voice deprived of ways
to map an inner path.
No light to shine on truths,
no eyes to see beyond
and penetrate the dark.
Spring’s sap will surely come
to fuel an inspiration
for fresh communication,
bursting through earth’s crust
like lava flow or geyser steam
enriching inner landscapes
with those rare minerals
from the archetypal depths.Skillful words that can unmask
the previously unseen,
purposefully drawing us
closer to our soul,
to meet a subtle promise
that we barely knew
was waiting – so patiently
inside our broken heart.– Ardhan Swatridge, Feb 2018
