Tag: George Eliot

A Day Well Spent

barnstormingblog1 Comment

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went —
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay —
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face —
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost —
Then count that day as worse than lost.
~George Eliot “Count That Day Lost”

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
~Naomi Shihab Nye from “Kindness”

I tend to forget – in my own self-absorption – the privilege I have to help make the world a better place for someone else each day — to share a drop of sunshine in some way. Each morning I’m given another chance to treat the day like the gift that it is and hand it off to someone else in a continual “pay it forward” act of kindness.

Only kindness makes sense in this fallen world. We have been steeped in sorrow for so long. I don’t want to lose one more day to anything less than a depth of kindness and comfort that never leaves my side, still present as the sun goes down into darkness.

Only such Loving Kindness will raise the sun again in the morning.

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Thorns Have Roses

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You love the roses – so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
~George Eliot from “The Spanish Gypsy”

It was gardener/author Alphonse Karr in the mid-19th century who wrote that even though most people grumble about roses having thorns,  he was grateful that thorns have roses.

There was a time when thorns were not part of our world, when we knew nothing of suffering and death. Yet in pursuing and desiring more than we were already generously given, we received more than we bargained for. We are still paying for that decision; we continue to reel under the thorns our choices produce — every day there is more bloodletting.

So a Rose was sent to adorn the thorns.

And what did we do? We chose thorns to make Him bleed and still do to this day.

A fragrant rose blooms beautiful,
bleeding amid the thorns,
raining down as we sleep and wake,
and will to the endless day.

Abandon entouré d’abandon, tendresse touchant aux tendresses…
C’est ton intérieur qui sans cesse se caresse, dirait-on;
se caresse en soi-même, par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème du Narcisse exaucé.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Dirait-on” from his French Poetry collection ‘Les chansons de la rose’

(Literal translation of “So They Say” from “The Song of the Rose”)
Abandon enveloping abandon, Tenderness brushing tendernesses,
Who you are sustains you eternally, so they say;
Your very being is nourished by its own enlightened reflection;
So you compose the theme of Narcissus redeemed.

http://www.classicalchops.org/videos/morten-lauridsen-how-he-wrote-dirait-on

Successive Autumns

barnstormingblog5 Comments

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Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
~ George Eliot

These mornings are a din of calls
and breathy rush
of beating wings overhead,
a migration to something
that isn’t here
but beyond.
Such restlessness isn’t just in the air
but in this heart’s longing
for something more,
for somewhere else,
for somehow settled,
for somewhat remembered,
for Someone who leads the way,
calling us back home.

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The Light of Old October

barnstormingblog10 Comments

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In Heaven, it is always Autumn
~John Donne

 

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He found himself wondering at times,
especially in the autumn,
about the wild lands,
and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
~J.R.R. Tolkien Fellowship of the Rings

 

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Is not this a true autumn day?
Just the still melancholy that I love –
that makes life and nature harmonise.
The birds are consulting about their migrations,
the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay,
and begin to strew the ground,
that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air,
while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.
Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
~George Eliot

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shuksanbase

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Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.
~Charles Nodier

 

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I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
~L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

 

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I was drinking in the surroundings:
air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers
and greens in every lush shade imaginable
offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
~Wendy Delsol

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Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture,
so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.
~Leo Tolstoy

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After the keen still days of September,
the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels,
emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare  The Witch of Blackbird Pond

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It was one of those sumptuous days
when the world is full of autumn muskiness
and tangy, crisp perfection:
vivid blue sky, deep green fields,
leaves in a thousand luminous hues.
It is a truly astounding sight
when every tree in a landscape becomes individual,
when each winding back highway
and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed
with every sharp shade that nature can bestow
– flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.
~Bill Bryson

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The ripe, the golden month has come again…
Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons,
and all things living on the earth turn home again…
the fields are cut, the granaries are full,
the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness,
and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run.
The bee bores to the belly of the grape,
the fly gets old and fat and blue,
he buzzes loud, crawls slow,
creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling,
the sun goes down in blood and pollen
across the bronzed and mown fields of the old October.
~Thomas Wolfe

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