"I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: “Why do they make good neighbours?"

SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.


The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.


To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.


Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.


My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.


Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.


He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 
“Good fences make good neighbours.”

Robert Frost

Rememberance; Paint the town...

Red

Rememberance

❡ And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing

which would infinitely enrich your life:

the powerful, uniquely uncommon,

the awakening of dormant stones,

depths that would reveal you to yourself.

In the dusk you notice the book shelves

with their volumes in gold and in brown;

and you think of far lands you journeyed,

of pictures and of shimmering gowns

worn by women you conquered and lost.

And it comes to you all of a sudden:

That was it!
And you arise, for you are

aware of a year in your distant past

with its fears and events and prayers.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by ⎆ Albert Ernest Flemming




Sir, I thank you everso kindly... for I love Rilke; if not for your translating...

Upon living the peloponnese war

Living the peloponnese war, originally uploaded by M'sheArt2❤

Dicaeopolis

Be not surprised, most excellent spectators,

If I that am a beggar have presumed

To claim an audience upon public matters,

Even in a comedy; for comedy

Is conversant in all the rules of justice,

And can distinguish betwixt right and wrong.

The words I speak are bold, but just and true.

Cleon at least cannot accuse me now,

That I defame the city before strangers,

For this is the Lenaean festival,

And here we meet, all by ourselves alone;

No deputies are arrived as yet with tribute,

No strangers or allies: but here we sit

A chosen sample, clean as sifted corn,

With our own denizens as a kind of chaff.

First, I detest the Spartans most extremely;

And wish that Neptune, the Taenarian deity,

Would bury them in their houses with his earthquakes.

For I've had losses--losses, let me tell ye,

Like other people; vines cut down and injured.

But among friends (for only friends are here),

Why should we blame the Spartans for all this?

For people of ours, some people of our own,--

Some people from among us here, I mean:

But not the People (pray, remember that);

I never said the People, but a pack

Of paltry people, mere pretended citizens,

Base counterfeits,--went laying informations,

And making a confiscation of the jerkins

Imported here from Megara; pigs, moreover,

Pumpkins, and pecks of salt, and ropes of onions,

Were voted to be merchandise from Megara,

Denounced, and seized, and sold upon the spot.

Well, these might pass, as petty local matters.

But now, behold, some doughty drunken youths

Kidnap, and carry away from Megara,

The courtesan, Simaetha. Those of Megara,

In hot retaliation, seize a brace

Of equal strumpets, hurried forth perforce

From Dame Aspasia's house of recreation.

So this was the beginning of the war,

All over Greece, owing to these three strumpets.

For Pericles, like an Olympian Jove,

With all his thunder and his thunderbolts,

Began to storm and lighten dreadfully,

Alarming all the neighborhood of Greece;

And made decrees, drawn up like drinking songs,

In which it was enacted and concluded

That the Megarians should remain excluded

From every place where commerce was transacted,

With all their ware--like 'old Care' in the ballad:

And this decree, by land and sea, was valid.

Then the Megarians, being all half starved,

Desired the Spartans to desire of us

Just to repeal those laws: the laws I mentioned,

Occasioned by the stealing of those strumpets.

And so they begged and prayed us several times;

And we refused: and so they went to war.

(the fools)


❦


Brink Of Eternity

In desperate hope I go and search for her
in all the corners of my room;
I find her not.

My house is small
and what once has gone from it can never be regained.

But infinite is thy mansion, my lord,
and seeking her I have to come to thy door.

I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky
and I lift my eager eyes to thy face.

I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish
---no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.

Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean,
plunge it into the deepest fullness.
Let me for once feel that l ost sweet touch 
in the allness of the universe.




Rabindranath Tagore 

We are led to believe a lie - When we see not through the eye

The Birds

He. Where thou dwellest, in what grove,
Tell me Fair One, tell me Love;
Where thou thy charming nest dost build,
O thou pride of every field!
She. Yonder stands a lonely tree,
There I live and mourn for thee;
Morning drinks my silent tear,
And evening winds my sorrow bear.

He. O thou summer's harmony,
I have liv'd and mourn'd for thee;
Each day I mourn along the wood,
And night hath heard my sorrows loud.

She. Dost thou truly long for me?
And am I thus sweet to thee?
Sorrow now is at an end,
O my Lover and my Friend!

He. Come, on wings of joy we'll fly
To where my bower hangs on high;
Come, and make thy calm retreat
Among green leaves and blossoms sweet.

William Blake

Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

title inspired by this lovely poem - by William Blake

Watch how you conduct yourself..

you being in love will tell who softly asks in love, am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean: entirely having in my careful how careful arms created this at length inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several persons: believe me that strangers arrive when i have kissed you into a memory slowly, oh seriously -that since and if you disappear solemnly myselves ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile and how do i prefer this face to another and why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend" they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive this absurd fraction in its lowest terms with everything cancelled but shadows -what does it all come down to? love? Love if you like and i like,for the reason that i hate people and lean out of this window is love,love and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason that i do not fall into this street is love." by e.e. cumming

feet up & frosty bits

I love your feet only because they walked upon
the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

~ Pablo Neruda ~

Frosty bits remembered, & are cooling me in this very hot summer.

It's a colourful life

It's a colourful life,
originally uploaded by M’s❤2.

"I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift."

Shauna Niequist (Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life)

☯