Trees Against The Sky

On National Poetry Day, a poem about trees and nature

Trees Against The Sky

Edge of Wood in Cumbria

Pines against the sky,

Pluming the purple hill;

Pines . . . and I wonder why,

Heart, you quicken and thrill?

Wistful heart of a boy,

Fill with a strange sweet joy,

Lifting to Heaven nigh -

Pines against the sky.

Palms against the sky,

Failing the hot, hard blue;

Stark on the beach I lie,

Dreaming horizons new;

Heart of my youth elate,

Scorning a humdrum fate,

Keyed to adventure high -

Palms against the sky.

Oaks against the sky,

Ramparts of leaves high-hurled,

Staunch to stand and defy

All the winds of the world;

Stalwart and proud and free,

Firing the man in me

To try and again to try -

Oaks against the sky.

Olives against the sky

Of evening, limpidly bright;

Tranquil and soft and shy,

Dreaming in amber light;

Breathing the peace of life,

Ease after toil and strife . . .

Hark to their silver sigh!

Olives against the sky.

Cypresses glooming the sky,

Stark at the end of the road;

Failing and faint am I,

Lief to be eased of my load;

There where the stones peer white

in the last of the silvery light,

Quiet and cold I'll lie -

Cypresses etching the sky.

Trees, trees against the sky -

O I have loved them well!

There are pleasures you cannot buy,

Treasurers you cannot sell,

And not the smallest of these

Is the gift and glory of trees. . . .

So I gaze and I know now why

It is good to live - and to die. . . .

Trees and the Infinite Sky.

 Robert William Service (1874-1958)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

This is one of my all-time favourite poems -'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' by the great W.B.Yeats.

"Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words." (Paul Engle)

William Butler Yeats (1865 –1939)

 Yeats's words transport me to his ideal place, Innisfree, in County Sligo, Ireland, so that I see, hear and feel it. It's as though I am standing there by that cabin of his dreams with the landscape around me. 

He also conveys the deep longing he feels when he is away from the place and in the city.  There, he is hemmed in by buildings, and swamped by the noise and bustle. But still, deep within his mind and soul is Innisfree, vivid and alive.

The sentiments of the poem resonate strongly with me as I too have my ideal place amid the fields and mountains, with lake water lapping, and peace and solitude.

We, each of us, have our own place that is special to us.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Here's the poem read by the man himself at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGoaQ433wnw

And here it is set to music by Mike Scott and The Waterboys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GMFJi7Z8Ow

I hope you enjoy The Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats in whichever format you choose to experience it 

Flowers are spelling it out...

"I often think flowers are the angels' alphabet whereby they write on hills and fields mysterious and beautiful lessons for us to feel and learn."

Beautiful sentiments from Louisa May Alcott (born 1832), who died on this day in 1888, aged 55. Author of Little Women (1868) Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). She was also a transcendentalist, an abolitionist and a feminist.

She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and  Henry David Thoreau. What a group of people! They are buried on a hillside now known as'Authors' Ridge'.