i shall imagine life
is not worth dying if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain
but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed’s
a rose roses(you feel
certain)will only smile
~e.e.cummings
only the Rose knows
a life is worth His dying ~
only He, through His pain,
transforms each weed of us
to a thing of beauty.
Smiling in His knowing, such death
is never in vain.
~EPG
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
~Mary Oliver “Praying”
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”
I will try.
I will step from the house to see what I see and hear and I will praise it…
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again…
~Mary Oliver from “Red Bird”
Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field’s edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.
~Richard Wilbur from “Exeunt”
This was one of those perfect days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.
– Sarah Orne Jewett
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
~John Ruskin
Weeds are flowers too,
once you get to know them.
~A.A. Milne
A look around the farm and nearby to find our spring
It is in the early morning hour that the unseen is seen,
and that the far-off beauty and glory,
vanquishing all their vagueness,
move down upon us till they stand
clear as crystal close over against the soul.
~Sarah Smiley
Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.
~Susan Coolidge
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
~Thornton Wilder
Reluctantly the summer goes
In a cloud of thistledown.
~ Beverly Ashour, September
Some thistles purpling into violet,
Their blossoms with a thousand thorns afret,
And like a cobweb, shadowy and grey,
Far floats their down–far drifts my dream away.
~Emily Pauline Johnson
Barnstorming 