Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,The sunset hangs on a cloud;A golden storm of glittering sheaves,Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,The wild wind blows in a cloud. Hark to a voice that is callingTo my heart in the voice of the wind:My heart is weary and sad and alone,For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,And why should I stay behind? Sarojini Naidu (India 1879 – 1949 ) ...
Alfred Lord Tennyson (England 1809 – 1892) I come from haunts of coot and hern,I make a sudden sallyAnd sparkle out among the fern,To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down,Or slip between the ridges,By twenty thorpes, a little town,And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip’s farm I flowTo join the brimming river,For men may come and men may go,But I go on for ever. I chatter...
I live, I die, I burn, I drownI endure at once chill and coldLife is at once too soft and too hardI have sore troubles mingled with joys Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cryAnd in pleasure many a grief endureMy happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchangedAll at once I dry up and grow green Thus I suffer love’s inconstanciesAnd when I think the pain is most intenseWithout thinking, it is...
“To break out of the chaos of my darknessInto a lucid day is all my will.My words like eyes in night, stare to reachA centre for their light: and my acts thrownTo distant places by impatient violenceYet lock together to mould a path of stoneOut of my darkness into a lucid day.”
Extract from: The Still Centre, 1935
Stephen Spender
“Nature” is what we see—The Hill—the Afternoon—Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—Nay—Nature is Heaven—Nature is what we hear—The Bobolink—the Sea—Thunder—the Cricket—Nay—Nature is Harmony—Nature is what we know—Yet have no art to say—So impotent Our Wisdom isTo her Simplicity.
Emily Dickinson