Full many a flower is born to blush unseen… — Thomas Gray
Poetry
My April Lady
by Henry Van Dyke
When down the stair at morning
The sunbeams round her float,
Sweet rivulets of laughter
Are bubbling in her throat;
The gladness of her greeting
Is gold without alloy;
And in the morning sunlight
I think her name is Joy.
When in the evening twilight
The quiet book-room lies,
We read the sad old ballads,
While from her hidden eyes
The tears are falling, falling,
That give her heart relief;
And in the evening twilight,
I think her name is Grief.
My little April lady,
Of sunshine and of showers,
She weaves the old spring magic,
And breaks my heart in flowers!
But when her moods are ended,
She nestles like a dove;
Then, by the pain and rapture,
I know her name is Love.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822
“If we are a metaphor of the universe,
the human couple is the metaphor par excellence,
the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms.
The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.”
Octavio Paz
Where the Passion Flower Grows
By Charles M. Moore
Lay down on your pillow
and turn the lights down low
let me take you to the garden
where the passion flower grows
Close your eyes and enter dreams
as love’s emotion sets the scene
and flitters through the garden
where the passion flower grows
Touch the tender petals
of the flower as she grows
a tentative endeavour
as your feelings overflow
Let me draw you to the place
where ecstasy can be embraced
the beauty of the garden
where the passion flower grows
Feel your mind exploding
in the heavy scented air
experience the shiver
as you’re captured unaware
A little touch of heaven
where imagination flows
the valley in the garden
where the passion flower grows.
✿
I have many many favorite poems including the Yeats poem Krista posted as her example for this week’s challenge. I selected this one that I’ve posted before because recently the poem’s author left a comment with praise of this posting. So I’m honored and delighted that the poet found the photos worthy of this exceptional poem. Here’s an except from Charles M. Moore’s biography –
“Born in the backstreets of the Gorbals in Glasgow Scotland, Kept in hospital because of Tuberculosis untill I was five, released, and given the all clear when I was fifteen, have always worked for a living and suppose had a pretty hard upbringing, but I wouldn’t change it for the world, love life and my outlook of it, have always as far as I can remember written poetry and songs.”
Journeys bring power and love
Back into you. If you can’t go somewhere,
Move in the passageways of the self.
They are like shafts of light,
Always changing, and you change
When you explore them.
– Rumi
“A work of arte; and yet no arte of man,
Can worke, this worke, these little creatures can”
– Geffrey Whitney, 1586.
You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you’ll sweep petals from the floor.
Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say “I’m old,”
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.
– Hanshan
Maverick Mist 