May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.
May you live to be a hundred years, with one extra year to repent.
As you slide down the banisters of life may the splinters never point the wrong way.
"St. Patrick's Day is an enchanted time -- a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic."~~By Adrienne Cook.~~
"Ireland is rich in literature that understands a soul's yearnings, and dancing that understands a happy heart."~~By Margaret Jackson.~~
"In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs."
~~By Sir John Pentland Mahaffy.~~
http://tacomaweekly.tripod.com/...
It is nearly the day for the wearing of the green and the lilt in our voices means poetry, prose that sings, and songs that dazzle. My great, great, great grandparents James Moore and Betsy Kinkade were from Ireland. Maybe south of Dublin.
Tonight, I am going to write down some favorite things from Ireland and anywhere in the world and I invite you to do the same.
The Wanderings of Oisin: Book I
William Butler Yeats
The complete long poem is here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/...
a few lines:
Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found on the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,
But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimson glowed
Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft bosom rose and fell…
Oisin. 'Why do you wind no horn?' she said
'And every hero droop his head?
The hornless deer is not more sad
That many a peaceful moment had,
More sleek than any granary mouse,
In his own leafy forest house
Among the waving fields of fern:
The hunting of heroes should be glad.'
'O pleasant woman,' answered Finn,
'We think on Oscar's pencilled urn,
And on the heroes lying slain
On Gabhra's raven-covered plain;
But where are your noble kith and kin,
And from what country do you ride?'
'My father and my mother are
Aengus and Edain, my own name
Niamh, and my country far
Beyond the tumbling of this tide.'…
We danced to where in the winding thicket
The damask roses, bloom on bloom,
Like crimson meteors hang in the gloom.
And bending over them softly said,
Bending over them in the dance,
With a swift and friendly glance
From dewy eyes: 'Upon the dead
Fall the leaves of other roses,
On the dead dim earth encloses:
But never, never on our graves,
Heaped beside the glimmering waves,
Shall fall the leaves of damask roses.
For neither Death nor Change comes near us,
And all listless hours fear us,
And we fear no dawning morrow,
Nor the grey wandering osprey Sorrow.'
From page seven of
The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis:
I became interested also in the kinds of waves I saw. The smallest were capillary waves, hardly more than wrinkles on the surface of the water, which act like tiny sails to catch the wind and make larger waves. Gusts blowing over the land plummeted to the water, flurried into cat’s paws, then gathered force and raced away toward Wisconsin. Whitecaps marched across the bay and pumped up against the blue of the lake. Breakers purled and galloped down the shore. Low swells made sluggish by the cold seemed to rise from the bottom of the lake and crawl to shore, finally collapsing on the sand like exhausted swimmers.
I am sorry that I don’t remember who contributed this to the Grieving Room, but it is lovely and there are times when it is needed:
"Walking With Grief" - Opening Sentence from Celtic Daily Prayer
Do not hurry as you walk with grief; it does not help the journey.
Walk slowly, pausing often: do not hurry as you walk with grief.
Be not disturbed by memories that come unbidden.
Swiftly forgive; walk slowly, and let Christ speak for you unspoken words.
Unfinished conversation will be resolved in Him. Be not disturbed.
Be gentle with the one who walks with grief.
If it is you, be gentle with yourself.
Swiftly forgive; walk slowly, pausing often.
Take time; be gentle as you walk with grief.
Yes, some of my favorite quotations come from DKos friends.
bookgirl says:
Reading fiction isn't hiding from the world. It's gathering strength to carry on.
I think it was
la urracca who brought this poem to Bookflurries and I have often included it. Somehow it turns up the creative urge in me.
Overheard on a Saltmarsh
by Harold Munro
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?
Give them me.
No.
Give them me. Give them me.
No.
I will howl all night in the reeds,
lie in the mud and howl for them.
Goblin, why do you love them so?
They are better than stars or water,
better than voices of winds that sing,
better than any man's fair daughter,
your green glass beads on a silver ring.
Hush, I stole them out of the moon.
Give me your beads, I desire them.
No.
I will howl in a deep lagoon
for your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
No.
One great hour of noon with the sky-faring Rukh
I clanged on the golden dome of Heaven.
Now in the long dusk of adversity
I have found my palace of contentment, my dream pavilion;
Even the tiny twig of the little humble wren.
PO CHU-I “Myself”, translated by L. Cranmer-Byng
Quoted in Highways to a War by Christopher J. Koch
What are your favorite songs, poems, quotations?
Diaries of the week:
Write On! The Subtlety of the Least Grebe.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Thursday Classical Music OPUS 71: Beethoven's Ninth: The Ode to Joy Finale
by Dumbo
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early
POLL I know you can’t choose just one, but vote and comment on others, please.