#william wordsworth

[quietlotus]

“With an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.”

— William Wordsworth

[girlzoot]

A simple child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? ---William Wordsworth/We are Seven

[roua-poemului]

“And the sky, never before so beautiful, sank down into my heart, and held me like a dream.”

— William Wordsworth, from The Prelude; Book II.

[jacksinflatedhuman01]

[ochoislas]

LA SEGADORA SOLITARIA

¡Miradla sola en el campo, la zagala montañesa que para sí canta y siega! ¡Pasad de largo o callad! Sola falca y fajos liga, cantando triste saloma. ¡Oíd la vaguada honda cómo el canto va a anegar!

¡Nunca bulbul que salmea recibió de mejor gana la agotada caravana en arábigo cobil; ni el silencio del océano en las Hébridas remotas quebró con voz tan sabrosa el cuco en tarde de abril!

¿Quién me dirá lo que canta? Quizá sea medido planto por cosas tristes de antaño, y pretérito pugnar; o será cantiga humilde del vivir de cada día; menester, pena o fatiga, que si fue, puede tornar.

Cosa fuera, tal cantaba como si el fin no le viera; cantar la miré en su brega doblada sobre la hoz. La aceché quieto y callado; subiendo la varga luego llevaba el son en el pecho ya que al oído se hurtó.

*

THE SOLITARY REAPER

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt So sweetly to reposing bands Of Travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian Sands: No sweeter voice was ever heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of today? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again!

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending; I listened till I had my fill: And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

William Wordsworth

di-versión©ochoislas

[lyreandlion]

My mother loved poetry; and copied most of the poems she loved best into a little book which was never far from her. Some of these poems I also love best. And one of them I shall now try—in the quarter-hour remaining—to read you. It is William Wordsworth's Ode, entitled Imtimations Of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood; and prefaced by these tree lines:

The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,        The earth, and every common sight,                           To me did seem                       Apparelled in celestial light,             The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;—                       Turn wheresoe'er I may,                           By night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more.                       The Rainbow comes and goes,                       And lovely is the Rose,                       The Moon doth with delight        Look round her when the heavens are bare,                       Waters on a starry night                       Are beautiful and fair;        The sunshine is a glorious birth;        But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,        And while the young lambs bound                       As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief,                       And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,        The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,                       And all the earth is gay;                            Land and sea                 Give themselves up to jollity,                       And with the heart of May                  Doth every Beast keep holiday;—                       Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call       Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;       My heart is at your festival,             My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.                       Oh evil day! if I were sullen                       While Earth herself is adorning,                          This sweet May-morning,                       And the Children are culling                          On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide,                       Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:—                       I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!                       —But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone;                       The Pansy at my feet                       Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,                       Hath had elsewhere its setting,                          And cometh from afar:                       Not in entire forgetfulness,                       And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come                       From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close                       Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,                       He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east                       Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,                       And by the vision splendid                       Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,                       And, even with something of a Mother's mind,                       And no unworthy aim, The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,                       Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d art                       A wedding or a festival,                       A mourning or a funeral;                          And this hath now his heart,                       And unto this he frames his song:                          Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife;                       But it will not be long                       Ere this be thrown aside,                       And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage;                       As if his whole vocation                       Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie                       Thy Soul's immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—                       Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!                       On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

                      O joy! that in our embers                       Is something that doth live,                       That Nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—                       Not for these I raise                       The song of thanks and praise                 But for those obstinate questionings                 Of sense and outward things,                 Fallings from us, vanishings;                 Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:                       But for those first affections,                       Those shadowy recollections,                 Which, be they what they may Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;                 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,                 To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,                       Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy!                 Hence in a season of calm weather                       Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea                       Which brought us hither,                 Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!                       And let the young Lambs bound                       As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng,                       Ye that pipe and ye that play,                       Ye that through your hearts to-day                       Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight,                 Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;                       We will grieve not, rather find                       Strength in what remains behind;                       In the primal sympathy                       Which having been must ever be;                       In the soothing thoughts that spring                       Out of human suffering;                       In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day                       Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

e. e. cummings ❂ six nonlectures (1953)

[ukdamo]

To A Butterfly

William Wordsworth

I've watched you now a full half-hour; Self-poised upon that yellow flower And, little Butterfly! indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless!--not frozen seas More motionless! and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again!

This plot of orchard-ground is ours; My trees they are, my Sister's flowers; Here rest your wings when they are weary; Here lodge as in a sanctuary! Come often to us, fear no wrong; Sit near us on the bough! We'll talk of sunshine and of song, And summer days, when we were young; Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.

[amateurastrologyenthusiast]

8th house placements:

"after I had seen  That spectacle, for many days, my brain  Worked with a dim and undetermined sense  Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts  There hung a darkness, call it solitude  Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes  Remained, no pleasant images of trees,  Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;  But huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind  By day, and were a trouble to my dreams."

The Prelude - William Wordsworth