NO ONE EVER MENTIONED

NO ONE EVER MENTIONED 

No-one ever mentioned

The beauty I would see

When my life was changed 

And a gift was given to me.

I expected many changes ~

Better health and days,

I knew that I would learn

To understand these ways.

No-one ever told me

That tears would fill my eyes

That I would stand in wonder

Beneath the star filled skies.

I never really saw the beauty 

Of roses raindrop kissed

I've learned again the wonder

Of standing in the mist.

I saw again the sunset

And once more heard the rain,

Listened to the thunder storms

After days of pain.

No-one ever told me 

That I would feel so blessed

That family would be cherished

And friends would be the best.

No-one ever told me

That wonder would fill my heart

And that for me it would be

Like a brand new start

No one ever told me 

What joy would fill my soul

I am very glad to discover

The things that make me whole. 

© Linda J. Vaughan

26th. June 2012

AND THAT IS DYING ................

"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

“Gone Where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!”

And that is dying."

-Henry Van Dyke

PSALM OF LIFE

A  PSALM OF LIFE

Tell me not in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, - act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solenm main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor and to wait. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

CLARION CALLS

I fell in love –
Taken by the innocence of 
Child-face daffodils: 


Their perky April fanfares – 
Clarion calls from yellow-ochre brass bands
Presaging, rejoicing, calling us: 


‘Here we are! Here we are! ’




Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010

SONNET XVIII By William Shakespeare.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

FULL MOON

A FULL MOON

A full moon lit the autumn sky,

A balmy night was ours.

No wind to stir the gum trees

A velvet sky with stars,

The shadows held me captive

The air was sweet and still.

I lay and watched the movement

And the changes on the hill.

A sleepless night was mine

But I was rich indeed

With Mother Nature’s comfort

To meet my special need.

I heard a distant rustle

Of  leaves which soon will fall ~

A tiny creature scurrying,

I heard the owl’s soft call.

With her velvet cloak around me

Her stars for me to wear

The morning dew was mine

Making diamonds in my hair.

I could smell the damp earth

For it had rained that day

The moon was softly waning

And would soon be on it's way.

The clouds began to gather

And drift across the moon

Why did this perfect night

Have to end so soon?

©  Linda J. Vaughan

May 24th. 2005

THE PROPHET BY KHALIL GIBRAN - SPEAK TO US OF FRIENDSHIP.

Khalil Gibran - The Prophet  

And a youth said,

- Speak to us of Friendship!

  And he answered, saying:

  Your friend is your needs answered.

  He is your field which you sow with love

and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

  For you come to him with your hunger,

and you seek him for peace.

  When your friend speaks his mind you fear

not the "nay" in your own mind,

nor do you withhold the "ay".

  And when he is silent your heart ceases

not to listen to his heart;

  For without words, in friendship, all thoughts,

all desires, all expectations are born and shared,

with joy that is unacclaimed.

  When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

  For that which you love most

in him may be clearer in his absence,

as the mountain to the climber

is clearer from the plain.

  And let there be no purpose in friendship

save the deepening of the spirit.

  For love that seeks aught but the disclosure

of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth:

and only the unprofitable is caught.

  And let your best be for your friend

that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

  For it is his to fill your need,

but not your emptiness.

  And in the sweetness of friendship

let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

  For in the dew of little things

the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

SABRINA FAIR

@Arthur Rackham ~ 'Sabrina Rises"

SABRINA FAIR

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen

Within thy airy shell

By slow Meander's margent green,

And in the violet-imbroider'd vale

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:

Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair

That likest thy Narcissus are?

O if thou have

Hid them in some flow'ry cave,

Tell me but where

Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere,

So mayst thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all heav'ns harmonies.

Sabrina fair

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;

Listen for dear honour's sake,

Goddess of the silver lake,

Listen and save.

Listen and appear to us

In name of great Oceanus,

By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,

And Tethys' grave majestic pace;

By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,

And the Carpathian wizard's hook;

By scaly Triton's winding shell,

And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell;

By Leucothea's lovely hands,

And her son that rules the strands;

By Thetis' tinsel-slipper'd feet,

And the songs of Sirens sweet;

By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,

And fair Ligea's golden comb,

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks

Sleeking her soft alluring locks;

By all the nymphs that nightly dance

Upon thy streams with wily glance,

Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head

From thy coral-pav'n bed,

And bridle in thy headlong wave,

Till thou our summons answer'd have.

Listen and save.

By the rushy-fringed bank,

Where grows the willow and the osier dank,

My sliding chariot stays,

Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen

Of turkis blue, and em'rald green

That in the channel strays,

Whilst from off the waters fleet

Thus I set my printless feet

O'er the cowslip's velvet head,

That bends not as I tread;

Gentle swain at thy request

I am here.

A THING OF BEAUTY BY John Keats

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.


John Keats

THE LISTENERS

THE LISTENERS

 

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, 

Knocking on the moonlit door; 

And his horse in the silence champed the grass 

Of the forest's ferny floor; 

And a bird flew up out of the turret, 

Above the Traveller's head: 

And he smote upon the door again a second time; 

"Is there anybody there?" he said. 

But no one descended to the Traveller; 

No head from the leaf-fringed sill 

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, 

Where he stood perplexed and still. 

But only a host of phantom listeners 

That dwelt in the lone house then 

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight 

To that voice from the world of men: 

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, 

That goes down to the empty hall, 

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken 

By the lonely Traveller's call. 

And he felt in his heart their strangeness, 

Their stillness answering his cry, 

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 

'Neath the starred and leafy sky; 

For he suddenly smote on the door, even 

Louder, and lifted his head:-- 

"Tell them I came, and no one answered, 

That I kept my word," he said. 

Never the least stir made the listeners, 

Though every word he spake 

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house 

From the one man left awake: 

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, 

And the sound of iron on stone, 

And how the silence surged softly backward, 

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

 

Walter de la Mare