Saturn

When Saturn is viewed through a large telescope, it is seen to be greatly flattened at the poles.

Waiting

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea;

I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,

For lo! My own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways,

And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me;

No wind can drive my bark astray,

Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it has sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own, and draw

The brook that springs in yonder height;

So flow the good with equal law

Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;

The tidal wave unto the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,

Can keep my own away from me.

-       John Burroughs[1]

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[1] John Burroughs (1837-1921) was an American naturalist and essayist important in the evolution of the U.S. conservation movement. According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. By the turn of the century he had become a virtual cultural institution in his own right: the Grand Old Man of Nature at a time when the American romance with the idea of nature, and the American conservation movement, had come fully into their own.

His extraordinary popularity and popular visibility were sustained by a prolific stream of essay collections, beginning with Wake-Robin in 1871. In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs’ special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of “a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world.” The result was a body of work whose perfect resonance with the tone of its cultural moment perhaps explains both its enormous popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since. (Source: Wikipedia)

God of the Open Air

I

Thou who hast made Thy dwelling fair

With flowers below, above with starry lights,

And set Thine altars everywhere—

On mountain heights,

In woodlands dim with many a dream,

In valleys bright with springs,

And on the curving capes of every stream;

Thou who has taken to Thyself the wings of morning, to abide

Upon the secret places of the sea,

And on far islands, where the tide

Visits the beauty of untrodden shores,

Waiting for thy worshippers to come to Thee

In Thy great out-of-doors;

To Thee I turn, to Thee I make my prayer,

God of the open air….

II

These are the gifts I ask

Of Thee, Spirit serene:

Strength for the daily task,

Courage to face the road,

Good cheer to help me bear the traveler’s load,

And, for the hours of rest that come between,

An inward joy in all things heard and seen.

These are the sins I fain

Would have Thee take away;

Malice, and cold disdain,

Hot anger, sullen hate,

Scorn of the lowly, envy of the great,

And discontent that casts a shadow gray

On all the brightness of the common clay.

These are the things I prize

And hold of dearest worth:

Light of the sapphire skies,

Peace of the silent hills,

Shelter of forests, comfort of the grass,

Music of birds, murmur of little rills,

Shadows of cloud that swiftly pass,

And after showers,

The smell of flowers,

And of the good brown earth—

And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth.

So let me keep

These treasures of the humble heart

In true possession, owning them by love;

And when at last I can no longer move

Among them freely, but must part

From the green fields and from the waters clear,

Let me not creep

Into some darkened room and hide

From all that makes the world so bright and dear;

But throw the windows wide

To welcome in the light;

And while I clasp a well beloved hand,

Let me once more have sight

Of the deep sky and the far-smiling land—

Then gently fall on sleep,

And breathe my body back to Nature’s care,

My spirit out to Thee, God of the open air.

-       Henry Van Dyke[1]

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[1] Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) was an American clergyman, educator, and author. He was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Princeton, 1873, and Princeton Theological Seminary, 1874. He was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City (1883–99), professor of English literature at Princeton (1899–1923), and U.S. minister to the Netherlands (1913–16). Among his popular inspirational writings is the Christmas story The Other Wise Man (1896). The themes of his sermons are also expressed in his poetry and the essays collected in Little Rivers (1895) and Fisherman’s Luck (1899). He translated (1902) The Blue Flower of Novalis.  (Source: Columbia Encyclopedia)

Bluebells

Oh Bluebells, dainty bluebells,

On slender stems aquiver,

Do you see your fair reflection

In the ripples of the river;

Oh bluebells, gently swaying,

Is it but a year ago

We sat upon the mossy bank,

And watched the river flow.

The ripples danced and sparkled

In the sunlight’s golden rays,

And birds gave of their sweetest,

In an ecstasy of praise;

The summer wind blew softly,

Of time we took no heed;

When we picked the dainty bluebells,

And life was sweet indeed.

The bluebells sway and quiver,

On every passing breeze,

And a burst of joyous music

Comes from the leafy trees;

But the waters of the river,

That flows onward to the sea,

Like the years that are gone forever,

Can come back no more to me.

A Burden

(By Mary Newmarch Prescott)[1]

What did you bring to us, Old Year?

Many a hope and many a fear?

Smiles a few, but many a tear?

Many a heartache for days together,

Many a taste of frosty weather?

Many a wish ungratified,

Many a happiness denied?

But you brought us, too, the rosy day,

Let its troubles be what they may:

The hollow night, whose planets climb

Pathways older, perhaps, than Time;

The sunset’s lingering, fading flush

And the twilight’s eloquent hush;

And baby moon, like a sweet surprise,

Leaning out of the western skies

You brought the dawn, with its balmy light

Woven out of the infinite;

The early anemone in the wood,

And all the delicate sisterhood;

The pink mayflower in its hiding places;

And the pale Linnaea’s tender graces;

The blood-root, with its crimson stain,

And the lonesome whippoorwill’s refrain.

Out of your treasure-house you brought

The season’s tapestries, inwrought

With wild and beautiful devices,

And fragrant with all fragrant spices;

The scarlet and god of the autumn leaf,

The corn in the ear, the wheat in the sheaf,

The witchery of the snow, that weaves

After the pattern of stars and leaves

And the light that never from land or sea

Borrowed half of its poetry.

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[1] In Early New England People, Sarah Titcomb writes: “Mary N. Prescott, while yet a schoolgirl, began writing for magazines….In the words of Mr. Woodman, in Poets’ Homes, ‘there is a rare depth and tenderness in her verse.’  Her love and faith and trust in God ‘well up like clear springs.’”

In the Blue of Summer

Island in blue of summer floating on,

Little brave sister of the Sporades,[1]

Hail and farewell!  I pass, and thou are gone,

So fast in fire the great boat beats the seas.

But slowly fade, soft Island!  Ah to know

Thy town and who the gossips of that town,

What flowers flash in thy meadows, what winds blow

Across thy mountain when the sun goes down.

James Elroy Flecker[2]

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[1] The Sporades are an island chain along the east coast of Greece.

[2] James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) was educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, where his father was headmaster, and at Uppingham and Trinity College, Oxford.  After university he joined the Diplomatic Service, spending time in Constantinople and Beirut. In 1913 he went to Switzerland to seek a cure for his tuberculosis but died there two years later at the age of 31.

He produced a prolific volume of poetry during his short life including The Bridge of Fire (1907), Forty-Two Poems (1911), The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913), and The Old Ships (1915).  (Source: englishverse.com)

An Oaten Pipe

The summer’s surf against my feet

In leagues of foam-white daisies beat;

Along the bank-side where I lay

Poured down the golden tides of day,

A vine above me wove its screen

Of leafy shadows, cool and green,

While, faintly as a fairy bell,

Upon the murmurous silence fell

The babbling of a slender stream

In the sweet trouble of its dream.

Then as the poppied noon did steep

The breathing world in fumes of sleep

I shaped with fingers drowsed and slow

An oaten pipe whereon to blow,

And in the chequered light and shade

Its wild, untutored notes essayed;

But in the larger music ‘round

My slender pipings all were drowned.[1]

-       Kenyon[2]

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[1] This, minus the last four lines, is the introduction to Kenyon’s 1895 book An Oaten Pipe, a collection of his poems.

[2] James Benjamin Kenyon was born in Frankfort, Herkimer County, New York, in 1858. He was educated at Hungerford Collegiate Institute in Adams, New York, and entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1878. In 1887 he was pastor of the Arsenal Street M. E. church in Watertown, New York. By 1900 he was living in Syracuse and ministering at University Church. James was a prolific poet, especially admired for his sonnets. He contributed to periodicals and authored several books of poems. James also published at books in prose, such as 1901’s Loiterings in Old Fields, a volume of literary sketches of famous poets. In 1920 Kenyon published a complete collection of his poems entitled The Harvest Home. He died in 1924. His daughter Doris became a well-known actress; Doris Kappelhoff (Doris Day) was named for her.  (Source: Wikipedia)   

Rain Music

On the dusty earth-drum

Beats the falling rain;

Now a whispered murmur,

Now a louder strain.

Slender silvery drumsticks,

On the ancient drum,

Beat the mellow music,

Bidding life to come.

Chords of earth awakened,

Notes of greening spring,

Rise and fall triumphant

Over everything.

Slender silvery drumsticks,

Beat the long tattoo—

God, the Great Musician,

Calling life anew.[1]

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[1] This poem is by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. (1895-1919), poet, journalist, and forerunner of the African American cultural renaissance of the 1920s. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, son of the poet Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. After graduation from Louisville Central High School in 1911, Joseph enrolled at Fisk University, where he worked on the Fisk Herald, a monthly published by the university literary societies. During his second year at Fisk, Cotter had to return home to Louisville due to the onset of tuberculosis.

Upon his return home, Joseph accepted a position as an editor and writer for the Louisville newspaper the Leader, and he began to establish his brief yet brilliant career as poet. Grief over his sister’s death inspired the early tribute To Florence; it is one of his most moving poems. Precluded from military service in World War I because of his deteriorating physical condition but stimulated by his own interest and by the war service of a close friend, Joseph produced a number of poems, including Sonnet to Negro Soldiers and O, Little David, Play on Your Harp, which place him among the best Great War poets.

Other notable poems of the Gideon collection include the title poem, which recalls the style of the traditional southern black preacher and seems to encode protest regarding the treatment of black World War I veterans. Among the best modernist free verse pieces are The Mulatto to His Critics and the provocative Is It Because I Am Black, which dramatically interrogates those who would dismiss or patronize the African American narrator. Joseph died at the age of 24.  (Source: answers.com)

A White Rose

How pure the light thy petals hold 

In fragrance on the tideless air!

How gently come the hands that mold

Nor break the sleep of color there!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ah, calm thy day, ere evening take

Her misty throne, upbuilt anew

Of starlit gloom, till dawn awake

The topaz hidden in the dew.

-       George Sterling[1]

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[1] George Sterling was born in 1869 in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the eldest of nine children. His father was Dr. George A. Sterling, a physician who determined to make a priest of one of his sons; George attended Saint Charles College in Maryland for three years. There he developed an interest in poetry, but decided the priesthood was not for him. George’s mother Mary was from a wealthy family. Her brother, Frank C. Havens, went to San Francisco and established himself as a prominent lawyer and real estate developer. George followed his uncle west in 1890 and worked for 18 years as a real estate broker. He also became a poet. 

Sterling never became well known outside California, but he was a significant figure in Bohemian literary circles in northern California in the first quarter of the 20th century.  He helped develop the artists’ colony in Carmel; he was mentored by a much older Ambrose Bierce, and became close friends with Jack London. Sterling married, but before long began to have marital trouble. He had become an alcoholic, and perhaps an opium addict. His wife left. In 1926, he committed suicide by swallowing cyanide at his residence at the San Francisco Bohemian Club.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Good to Be Alive

It is good to be alive when the trees shine green,

And the steep red hills stand up against the sky;

Big sky, blue sky, with flying clouds between—

It is good to be alive and see the strong winds blow,

The strong, sweet winds blowing straightly off the sea;

Great sea green sea, with swinging ebb and flow—

It is good to be alive and see the waves run by.

Charlotte Perkins Stetson[1]

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[1] Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut to Frederic Beecher and Mary Wescott Perkins. During her infancy, her father abandoned the family, leaving them in poverty. Her mother was unable to support the family on her own; they often spent time with Charlotte’s aunts on her father’s side of the family: Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragist; Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author; and Catharine Beecher, a feminist. 

Charlotte taught herself to read at the age of five. As she grew, she became a frequenter of libraries, studying on her own.  Much of Charlotte’s youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. She was a self-described tomboy. She had only the spottiest formative education, attending seven different schools before she was fifteen, but only completing four years of study in that time. At eighteen she enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, supporting herself as an artist of trade cards. She also became a tutor, and encouraged others to expand their artistic creativity.

In 1884, Charlotte she married the artist Charles Walter Stetson. Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, was born the following year. Charlotte suffered a serious bout of post-partum depression in the months after Katharine’s birth. In 1888, she separated from Charles—a move she felt necessary for the her mental health. Following the separation, she moved with her daughter to Pasadena, California where she became active in several feminist and reformist organizations. When the divorce was final, in 1894, Charlotte sent Katherine east to live with her ex-husband and his second wife.

Charlotte’s mother died in 1895, and she decided to move back east. When she arrived, she looked up Houghton Gilman, her first cousin, a Wall Street attorney. They had not seen each other in fifteen years. They soon began to date. They married in 1900, and spent the next 22 years living in New York City. In 1922 them moved to Houghton’s old homestead in Norwich, Connecticut. In 1932 she was diagnosed with uncurable breast cancer. In 1934, Houghton died suddenly, and Charlotte moved back to California, where her daughter resided. In the grip of cancer, and perhaps ironically, given the verse quoted above (which from the citation dates to her first marriage) she committed suicide in 1935.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Dust

The dust that all quiet is lying,

When others recline on the ground,

Around me in volumes is flying

Like a desert where whirlwinds abound,

And Fate in the ship of my being,

In happiness hurries me past,

But if ever from sorrow I’m flying

It anchors me fast.

-       Anwari[1]

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[1] Anwari (Auhad-uddin Ali Anwari) was born in the Khawaran district of Khorasan early in the 12th century. He enjoyed the special favour of the Sultan Sanjar, whom he attended on all his warlike expeditions. Once, when the sultan was besieging the fortress of Hazarasp, a fierce poetical conflict was maintained between Anwari and his rival Rashidi, who was within the beleaguered castle, by means of verses fastened to arrows. His literary powers were considerable; his exercises in irony and ridicule make pungent reading. He was adept in astrology and considered himself to be superior to his contemporaries in logic, music, theology, mathematics and all other intellectual pursuits. 

It appears that Anwari’s patrons after Sultan Sanjar failed to value his services as highly as he did himself; at any rate he considered their rewards inadequate. Either that fact or jealousy of his rivals caused him to renounce the writing of eulogies and of ghazals, although it is difficult to decide at what point in his career this took place. His satires doubtless created him enemies. His declining fortunes led to persistent complaint against capricious Fate. In style and language he is sometimes obscure, so that Dawlatshah declares that he needs a commentary. That obscurity, and a change in literary taste, may be one reason he is not better known today.

Anwari died at Balkh towards the end of the 12th century. The Diwan, or collection of his poems, consists of a series of long poems, and a number of simpler lyrics. His longest piece, The Tears of Khorassan, was translated into English verse by Captain Kirkpatrick.  (Source: Wikipedia)

“Lookin’ Back”

Wathers O’Moyle an’ the white gulls flyin’,

Since I was near ye what have I seen?

Deep great seas, an’ a sthrong wind sighin’

Night an’ day where the waves are green.

Struth na Moyle, the wind goes sighin’

Over a waste o’ wathers green.

Slemish an’ Trostan, dark wi’ heather,

High are the Rockies, airy-blue;

Sure ye have snows in the winter weather

Here they’re lyin’ the long year through.

Snows are fair in the summer weather,

Och, and the shadows between are blue!

 

Lone Glen Dun an’ the wild glen flowers,

Little ye know if the prairie is sweet,

Roses for miles, an’ redder than ours

Spring here under the horses’ feet,

Ay, an’ the black-eyed sunflowers—

Not as the glen flowers small an’ sweet.

Wathers o’ Moyle, I hear ye callin’

Clearer for half o’ the world between,

Antrim hills an’ the wet rain fallin’

Whiles ye are nearer than snow-tops keen:

Dream o’ the night an’ a night wind callin’—

What is the half o’ the world between?

-       Moira O’Nell[1]

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[1] Moira O’Neill (the citation misspells the surname) was the pen name of Agnes Shakespeare Higginson Skrine. Born in County Antrim, Ireland, she began writing poetry young. Her works illustrate an intense love of her native county. She wrote dialect poems about country people, but came in fact from a big house, Anglo-Irish background. Agnes married Walter Claremont Skrine in 1895, an Englishman who was a successful rancher in Canada. She went to Alberta with him, settling in on the Bar S Ranch, 24 miles southwest of High River, Canada. Walter built a new, two-story home for his bride, the lumber freighted from Calgary by teams of horses. The Skrines lived there for six years, before returning to Ireland, where Agnes, as Moira O’Neill, wrote two books of poetry on the Glens of Antrim. Her poetry was so successful that John Masefield, poet laureate (see footnote 128), wrote a tribute to her when she died in 1955. The Skrines had five children; the third, Molly, became a well-known novelist. (Sources: An Anarchy in the Mind and in the Heart: Narrating Anglo-Ireland by Ellen M. Wolff; Wikipedia; Alberta Settlement – abheritage.ca)