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'.

Clear Sight - John Ruskin

During a visit to John Ruskin's home at Brantwood, Cumbria, I saw this quote by him on what it means to truly see. 

Photo: Kathy Roscoe taken at Brantwood, Cumbria

Every moment we are awake, our eyes are open. We see the people and things around us and the events of the day unfold in front of our eyes. We look out of the window, at the faces of others, at TV screens, the sky, the street. We say we saw a friend, the neighbourhood, the park, or the people walking past us. The question is- do we see these things or are we just looking at them? Are they merely images, be they human or otherwise, that pass before our eyes and register in our brain? 

From time to time in our lives, something will happen and we find ourselves saying things like, "I did'n see it like that before," or " I see him/her in a whole new light."  These expressions imply that we are now seeing something we thought familiar in a clearer and deeper way.  Up to that point, we were seeing someone or something in a superficial way.  We saw the surface and mistook that for the totality of the person or thing. We failed to see that there was more.  To truly see, we must take our time and give our full attention. then we might see things as they really are.  

If we saw other people and other creatures as they are - their true essence and their reality - we might be more compassionate and see the miracle that is life. We might treat others and the earth in a new way and create a better and kinder world. 

The Relevance of John Ruskin - On the Role of Government

Quotes from John Ruskin on the role government and the State.  Wise words and very relevant today.

(John Ruskin 1819-1900)

"The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education."

 "The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion."

“What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared to what we spend on our horses?”

"Civilisation is the making of civil persons."

The Relevance of John Ruskin - on Nature

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.” 

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ” 

“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.” 

"I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth."

"Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery." 

"The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight."

"There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are,even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their 

brilliancy."

"I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw."

"It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us."

The Relavnce of John Ruskin - On Wealth

At a time of increasing poverty and widening of the gap between rich and poor, the words of John Ruskin give food for thought.

(Feb 8th 1819 - Jan 20th 1900)

"That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”

"The whole question, respecting not only the advantage, but even the quality of national wealth, resolves itself finally into one of abstract justice."

 "Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor."

"Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending, or the taxation of labour."

"... the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist’s sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor."

"The universal and constant action of justice […] is therefore to diminish the power of wealth, in the hands of one individual, over masses of men, and distribute it through a chain of men."

“What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant ''well-being,'' and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.”

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration..." 

“Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking- had he the gold, or the gold him?”

“What is really desired, under the name of riches, is, essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for own own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends.”


"A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money."