The flower of the pear-tree gathers and turns to fruit;
The swallows’ eggs have hatched into young birds.
When the Seasons’ changes thus confront the mind
What comfort can the Doctrine of Tao give? (more…)
All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships. (more…)
Keep off your thoughts from things that are past and done. (more…)
From mysliveroflife.blogspot.com
In Spring the gardener finds out death.
He finds which limbs did not o’erwinter.
Some stems twig and bud and bloom,
Some stems splinter.
I lost a limb some seasons back,
Of my flesh, my firstborn daughter.
Time dried the break, but I still lack
The fruits–a moiety of laughter.
Wikipedia‘ suggested candidate: William McGonagall (more…)
When the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky.
Two passages from Kipling: (more…)
From the July 2012 issue of First Things. (more…)
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Thus Antonio Machado. (more…)
I have fallen in love with the Mormons’ names,
Ernesto Saenz and Young Adcock . . .
Stephen Vincent Benet should have gone with the youth to do baptism for the dead. (more…)
How have these couplets on the death of the poet’s father until now escaped the grasp of my hispanophilia?
“The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.”
Heaven Haven, by Gerard Manley Hopkins: (more…)