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 

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. 

Something in Mountain Air

Why we need to go to the mountains from time to time...

"There is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.  Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences?"

(H.D. Thoreau, On Walking)

An Invitation

"Away, away, from men and towns,

To the wild wood, and the downs -

To the silent wilderness

Where the soul need not repress

Its music, lest it should not find

An echo in another's mind,

While the touch of Nature's art

Harmonizes heart to heart."

Extract from Shelley's poem 'The Invitation'

 

 

Oscar Wilde's Birthday

Oscar Wilde
(16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900)
 Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet.

Oscar Wilde is famous for his plays, witticisms and some of his poems such as 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol.'  But there are other writings of his that are overshadowed by his more popular works.  He is associated is the drawing room and dinner party, social circles, but there was another side to him.  His love of nature comes across in this beautiful poem of his that I recently found and it has quickly become a favourite.

 We Are Made One with What We Touch and See 

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerveless germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

Star Gazing

 

Closing the curtains last night, my eyes were drawn to the sky which was a mass of glittering stars.  So I went outside and 

"I stood and stared; the sky was lit,

The sky was stars all over it,

I stood, I knew not why,

Without a wish, without a will, 

I stood upon that silent hill

And stared into the sky until 

My eyes were blind with stars and still 

I stared into the sky."

(Ralph Hodgson,1871-1962)

I stayed for quite a while, mesmerised by the scene above my head.  How many times have I seen stars across my life? - yet, a star-filled sky moves me, affects me as though each sighting was the first.  

The gems twinkling under the lights of their display cases in jewellers' shop windows don't arrest my attention or stop me in my tracks as I pass by.  But these heavenly bodies that are so far away draw me to them, have a magnetic pull on my heart and soul that have me standing or sitting until my neck hurts and I am numb with cold.  Even then, it is difficult to leave their company and go back indoors.  

I opened the curtains before getting into bed so that I could fall asleep with my last memory of yesterday being a glimpse of that star-filled sky.

Relationship in Nature

   

 "Into this surrounding space, as you sit, or stand, or lie, as necessity may dictate, you fling forth your spirit; and the spirit of what you are gazing at — for every scene that exists hath its spirit — flows back responsively into your mind; until between your mind and this cubic segment of the cosmos there comes to be established a strange and rhythmical harmony, lulling your senses and liberating your soul with a feeling for which at present human language has no name."

(John Cowper Powys, Philosophy of Solitude)