Showing posts with label Moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moon. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 January 2016

The Song of Wandering Aengus

 

One of my all-time favourite poems and so wonderfully set to music by both Donovan and The Waterboys below.  The last four lines conjure up an image that calls to something deep within, the search for the perfect place and time, and the pull of the sun and moon on the human heart.  Yeats certainly had a way of translating human longing into beautiful words.


I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
(William Butler Yeats)
Donovan's Adaptation
 The Waterboys

Tuesday, 21 July 2015

Nature Worship


"Not to worship the sun and moon and earth and sea, and each one of the planets and stars, is to make a pompous ass of yourself."

John Cowper Powys

(In Defence of Sensuality)

Monday, 13 July 2015

John Clare Birthday



John Clare.jpg
John Clare 
born 13th July1793


  Today is the birthday of John Clare, a poet of nature.  His poems are simply beautiful.  His love of the natural world flows from every line and his works are more like love letters than poems so filled are they with affection, wonder and care. A simple, honest man of the earth.  A sensitive soul touched and moved by nature to convey in words the most wonderful images, feelings and emotions.

 

ETERNITY OF NATURE
 
 All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide. 

John Clare


Article on John Clare http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/09/john-clare-poetry