Winter Trees

All the complicated details

of the attiring 

and the disattiring are completed! 

A liquid moon 

moves gently among 

the long branches. 

Thus having prepared their buds 

against a sure winter 

the wise trees 

stand sleeping in the cold.

--William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) American physican and poet

Peter Quince at the Clavier

               I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the selfsame sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna.

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizziccati of Hosanna.


               II

In the green water, clear and warm,
Susannah lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked up on the grass,
Still quavering,
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned –
A cymbal crashed,
And roaring horns.


               III

Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then, the simpering Byzantines
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.


               IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind –
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden’s choral.

Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.


-- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), American lawyer, businessman, and poet


Scriptural reference: Susannah 1:1-64 (Daniel 13)

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way. 

They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be –
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot lookout far.
They cannot look in deep.

But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

-- Robert Frost (1874-1963), American poet and teacher

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits in thunder, 

Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, 

From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country." 

Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: "How pleasant 

To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she scratched 

Her cleft chin's solitary hair. She remembered spinach 

 And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach. 

"M'love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out in thunder 

Today, and it shall be as you wish." He scratched 

The part of his head under his hat. The apartment 

Seemed to grow smaller. "But what if no pleasant 

Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my country." 

Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country. 

Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach 

When the door opened and Swee'pea crept in. "How pleasant!" 

But Swee'pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. "Thunder 

And tears are unavailing," it read. "Henceforth shall Popeye's apartment 

Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or scratched."

 

Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched 

Her long thigh. "I have news!" she gasped. "Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country 

One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment 

And all that it contains, myself and spinach 

In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder 

At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant 

Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant 

Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched 

Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder." 

She grabbed Swee'pea. "I'm taking the brat to the country." 

"But you can't do that—he hasn't even finished his spinach," 

Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment. 

But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment 

Succumbed to a strange new hush. "Actually it's quite pleasant 

Here," thought the Sea Hag. "If this is all we need fear from spinach 

Then I don't mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over"—she scratched 

One dug pensively—"but Wimpy is such a country 

Bumpkin, always burping like that." Minute at first, the thunder 

 Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder, 

The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched 

His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.

--John Ashbery (1927-2017), New York-born poet, poet laureate of New York State 2001-2003, critic, professor, and playwright

Sea-shells

I gathered shells upon the sand,
Each shell a little perfect thing,
So frail, yet potent to withstand
The mountain-waves' wild buffeting.
Through storms no ship could dare to brave
The little shells float lightly, save
All that they might have lost of fine
Shape and soft colour crystalline.
Yet I amid the world's wild surge
Doubt if my soul can face the strife,
The waves of circumstance that urge
That slight ship on the rocks of life.
O soul, be brave, for He who saves
The frail shell in the giant waves,
Will bring thy puny bark to land
Safe in the hollow of His hand.

--  Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), English poet and children's author

In Memoriam (Ring out, wild bells)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 

   The flying cloud, the frosty light: 

   The year is dying in the night; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new, 

   Ring, happy bells, across the snow: 

   The year is going, let him go; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind 

   For those that here we see no more; 

   Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause, 

   And ancient forms of party strife; 

   Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 

   The faithless coldness of the times; 

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes 

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood, 

   The civic slander and the spite; 

   Ring in the love of truth and right, 

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease; 

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 

   Ring out the thousand wars of old, 

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free, 

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 

   Ring out the darkness of the land, 

Ring in the Christ that is to be.


-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) British Romantic Poet and Poet Laureate

Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree

*

O

fury-

bedecked!

O glitter-torn!

Let the wild wind erect

bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect

frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn

all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!

It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect

tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;

bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born

now

now

while ox and ass and infant lie

together as poor creatures will

and tears of her exertion still

cling in the spent girl’s eye

and a great firework in the sky

drifts to the western hill.

--George Starbuck (1931-1996), American poet

Prayer for a Child Who is Ill

O Heavenly Father in whom we live and move and have our being, reach out in Your loving compassion and touch this child. 

Bless her and heal her so that she may grow and develop normally. 

Comfort her in her pain. 

Shine the light of Your face upon her and give her the peace that passes understanding. 

May she abide in Your love and care all her days. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.




found here: https://connectusfund.org/16-good-episcopal-prayers-for-the-sick 

little tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

--e. e. cummings (1894-1962), American poet, painter, and playwright

Christmas Trees

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

                                                “You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

--Robert Frost (1874-1963), American poet

Image- Balsams on a tree farm in Oklahoma, not mine

Christmas Tree Lots

Christmas trees lined like war refugees, 

a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,

they pull themselves up, arms raised.
We drop them like wood;
tied, they are driven through the streets,

dragged through the door, cornered
in a room, given a single blanket,
only water to drink, surrounded by joy.

Forced to wear a gaudy gold star,
to surrender their pride,
they do their best to look alive.

--Chris Green, American poet and professor

Hail

Mary who mattered to me, gone or asleep
among fruits, spilled
in ash, in dust, I did not
leave you.
Even now I can’t keep from
composing you, limbs and blue cloak
and soft hands. I sleep to the sound
of your name, I say there is no Mary
except the word Mary, no trace
on the dust of my pillowslip. I only
dream of your ankles brushed by dark violets,
of honeybees above you
murmuring into a crown. Antique queen,
the night dreams on: here are the pears
I have washed for you, here the heavy-winged doves,
asleep by the hyacinths. Here I am,
having bathed carefully in the syllables
of your name, in the air and the sea of them, the sharp scent
of their sea foam. What is the matter with me?
Mary, what word, what dust
can I look behind? I carried you a long way
into my mirror, believing you would carry me
back out. Mary, I am still 

for you, I am still a numbness for you.

--Mary Szybist (1970-), American Catholic poet and professor, from Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry.

Image: Leonardo DaVinci, The Annunciation, 1472

Long After the Desert and the Donkey

   

                                                            (Gabriel to Mary)

And of what there would be no end

             —it came quickly. 

The wind runs loose, the air churns over us. 

No one remembers. 

But I remember, under the elm’s cool awning, 

watching you watch the clouds. 

Afternoons passed like afternoons, 

and I loved how dull you were. 

Given a bit of bark or the buzz 

of a bright green fly, you’d smile 

for hours. Sweet child, you’d go to anyone. 

You had no preferences. 

I remember the first time coming toward you, 

how solid you looked, sitting and twisting 

your dark hair against your neck. 

But you were not solid. 

From the first moment, when you breathed 

on my single lily, I saw 

where you felt it. 

From then on, I wanted to bend low and close 

to the curves of your ear. 

There were so many things I wanted to tell you. 

Or rather, 

I wished to have things that I wanted to tell you. 

What a thing, to be with you and have 

no words for it. What a thing, 

to be outcast like that. 

And then everything unfastened. 

It was like something was always dissolving 

inside you— 

Already it’s hard to remember 

how you used to comb your hair or how you 

tilted your broad face in green shade. 

Now what seas, what meanings 

can I place in you? 

Each night, I see you by the window— 

sometimes pressing your lips against a pear 

you do not eat. Each night, 

I see where you feel it: 

where there are no mysteries.



--Mary Szybist (1970- ), poet and professor, Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for 2013, from Incarnadine, 2013

Image: Benedetto Gennari II, The Annunciation

SHRIVEN

Childhood Saturday nights found us
in the cloistered dark of the old church
dim lit to save on bills, but menacing still,
with gothic shadows in every corner
fit for scenes from horror on a screen.

We'd line up by fluted columns
that reached to a shadowed ceiling
free of saints, and waited to open up
the spirits vein and bleed out all
our sad litanies of petty crime.

The old priest, half deaf, drew crowds,
making us whole again for the cost
of three mumbled Hail Marys
as we knelt in the dark pews
and scanned the hidden corners for a sign.

Beneath the pews, along the floor,
ran pipes for a heating system old as sin,
and on cold nights they'd hiss and moan,
then commenced the clanging like lost souls
till the whole church trembled with the noise.

In this fit setting, at eight I shuddered,
at thirteen grumbled, and at sixteen
merely mourned the sad irony
beneath the frozen agonies of
a rough cut, varnished Christ.

Years later, that old apartment with
two narrow rooms, high ceilinged,
had ancient radiators with chipped paint
flecks of rust, and constant minor leaks –
late on cold nights, they sang,

saying their raucous organ song, rumbling,
banging, raising all of hell or at least
the demons hidden in their dark,
meandering pipes -- the super would come,
but only after endless calls.

Old and half-deaf, he’d wrench the joints,
And sound his rasping, high pitched laugh
that turned to coughing soon enough –
“had to bleed the bastards-- water leaks
out and air gets in -- got to bleed it out.”

So we went, many nights, till I moved on,
no longer assailed by the angry pipes, but
reassured by the subtle flow of forced air
who soft breath brings near silence –
but in silence, then, what echoes can remain?

Lying awake in the too quiet dark,
regretting the loss song of ancient pipes,
I wonder if this be peace or merely absence.
Where is the loud spirit that once trembled nights,
and who now can bleed away what's trapped within?

--Vincent Casaregola, from Dappled Things, Sts. Peter and Paul 2020- Volume 15, Issue 3

Prayer Before Surgery

 O God the Comfort of Sufferers, we ask that You bless Your servant with peace and calm as s/he is going through this operation. Give the surgeon and the surgical staff skill and wisdom. May the procedure successfully treat the problem, and may You bless Your servant with swift recovery and full healing. Great are You in might and power! Through Him, who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

found here: https://connectusfund.org/16-good-episcopal-prayers-for-the-sick 

Advent

Wind whistling, as it does 
in winter, and I think 
nothing of it until

it snaps a shutter off
her bedroom window, spins
it over the roof and down

to crash on the deck in back,
like something out of Oz.
We look up, stunned—then glad

to be safe and have a story,
characters in a fable
we only half-believe.

Look, in my surprise
I somehow split a wall,
the last one in the house

we’re making of gingerbread.
We’ll have to improvise:
prop the two halves forward

like an open double door
and with a tube of icing
cement them to the floor.

Five days until Christmas, 
and the house cannot be closed.
When she peers into the cold

interior we’ve exposed,
she half-expects to find
three magi in the manger,

a mother and her child.
She half-expects to read
on tablets of gingerbread

a line or two of Scripture, 
 as she has every morning
inside a dated shutter

on her Advent calendar.
She takes it from the mantel
and coaxes one fingertip

under the perforation,
as if her future hinges
on not tearing off the flap

under which a thumbnail picture
by Raphael or Giorgione,
Hans Memling or David

of apses, niches, archways,
cradles a smaller scene
of a mother and her child,

of the lidded jewel-box
of Mary’s downcast eyes.
Flee into Egypt, cries

the angel of the Lord
to Joseph in a dream,
for Herod will seek the young

child to destroy him. While
she works to tile the roof
with shingled peppermints,

I wash my sugared hands
and step out to the deck
to lug the shutter in,

a page torn from a book
still blank for the two of us,
a mother and her child.

--Mary Jo Salter (1954- ),  American poet, editor of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, and essayist,  from Open Shutters: Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)

II (Another Sunday morning comes)

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, or the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun 

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), American farmer, poet, essayist, and agrarian, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997

God Bless the Broken Road

I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you

That every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passin' through
I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You've been there, you understand
It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

And now I'm just a-rollin' home
Into my lover's arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.


--Marcus Hummon, Jeff Hanna, and Bobby Boyd, recorded by Rascal Flatts

Scripture references: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:3-4

The Path

RUNNING along a bank, a parapet 

That saves from the precipitous wood below
The level road, there is a path. It serves
Children for looking down the long smooth steep,
Between the legs of beech and yew, to where
A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women
Content themselves with the road and what they see
Over the bank, and what the children tell.
The path, winding like silver, trickles on,
Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.
The children wear it. They have flattened the bank
On top, and silvered it between the moss
With the current of their feet, year after year.
But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.
To see a child is rare there, and the eye
Has but the road, the wood that overhangs
And underyawns it, and the path that looks
As if it led on to some legendary
Or fancied place where men have wished to go
And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

-- Edward Thomas (1878-1917), British writer, poet, and critic 

Relevant scripture: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:2-3, Advent 2B

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end 

at the last limit of my power,---

that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

--Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali philosopher, mystic, painter, composer, and poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1913.

Scripture references: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:2-3 (Advent 2B)

Psalm 102

              O Lord, my praying hear;
              Lord, let my cry come to thine ear.
Hide not thy face away,
       But haste, and answer me,
In this my most, most miserable day,
       Wherein I pray and cry to thee.

              My days as smoke are past;
              My bones as flaming fuel waste,
Mown down in me, alas.
       With scythe of sharpest pain.
My heart is withered like the wounded grass;
       My stomach doth all food disdain.

              So lean my woes me leave,
              That to my flesh my bones do cleave;
And so I bray and howl,
       As use to howl and bray
The lonely pelican and desert owl,
       Like whom I languish long the day.

              I languish so the day,
              The night in watch I waste away;
Right as the sparrow sits,
       Bereft of spouse, or son,
Which irked alone with dolor’s deadly fits
       To company will not be won.

              As day to day succeeds,
              So shame on shame to me proceeds
From them that do me hate,
       Who of my wrack so boast,
That wishing ill, they wish but my estate,
       Yet think they wish of ills the most.

              Therefore my bread is clay;
              Therefore my tears my wine allay.
For how else should it be,
       Sith thou still angry art,
And seem’st for naught to have advanced me,
       But me advanced to subvert?

              The sun of my life-days
              Inclines to west with falling rays,
And I as hay am dried,
       While yet in steadfast seat
Eternal thou eternally dost bide,
       Thy memory no years can fret.

              Oh, then at length arise;
              On Zion cast thy mercy’s eyes.
Now is the time that thou
       To mercy shouldst incline
Concerning her: O Lord, the time is now
       Thyself for mercy didst assign.

              Thy servants wait the day
              When she, who like a carcass lay
Stretched forth in ruin’s bier,
       Shall so arise and live,
The nations all Jehova’s name shall fear,
       All kings to thee shall glory give.

              Because thou hast anew
              Made Zion stand, restored to view
Thy glorious presence there,
       Because thou hast, I say,
Beheld our woes and not refused to hear
       What wretched we did plaining pray,

              This of record shall bide
              To this and every age beside.
And they commend thee shall
       Whom thou anew shall make,
That from the prospect of thy heav’nly hall
       Thy eye of earth survey did take,

              Heark’ning to prisoners’ groans,
              And setting free condemned ones,
That they, when nations come,
       And realms to serve the Lord,
In Zion and in Salem might become
       Fit means his honor to record.

              But what is this if I
              In the mid way should fall and die?
My God, to thee I pray,
       Who canst my prayer give.
Turn not to night the noontide of my day,
       Since endless thou dost ageless live.

              The earth, the heaven stands
              Once founded, formed by thy hands:
They perish, thou shalt bide;
       They old, as clothes shall wear,
Till changing still, full change shall them betide,
       Unclothed of all the clothes they bear.

              But thou art one, still one:
              Time interest in thee hath none.
Then hope, who godly be,
       Or come of godly race:
Endless your bliss, as never ending he,
       His presence your unchanged place.

--Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621), Elizabethan poet and patron, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, from The Sidneian Psalms, 1599.

Man's Short Life and Foolish Ambition

In gardens sweet each flower mark did I,
How they did spring, bud, blow, wither and die.

With that, contemplating of man's short stay,
Saw man like to those flowers pass away.

Yet built he houses, thick and strong and high,
As if he'd live to all Eternity.

Hoards up a mass of wealth, yet cannot fill
His empty mind, but covet will he still.

To gain or keep, such falsehood will he use!
Wrong, right or truth—no base ways will refuse.

I would not blame him could he death out keep,
Or ease his pains or be secure of sleep:

Or buy Heaven's mansions—like the gods become,
And with his gold rule stars and moon and sun:

Command the winds to blow, seas to obey,
Level their waves and make their breezes stay.

But he no power hath unless to die,
And care in life is only misery.

This care is but a word, an empty sound,
Wherein there is no soul nor substance found;

Yet as his heir he makes it to inherit,
And all he has he leaves unto this spirit.

To get this Child of Fame and this bare word,
He fears no dangers, neither fire nor sword:

All horrid pains and death he will endure,
Or any thing can he but fame procure.

O man, O man, what high ambition grows
Within his brain, and yet how low he goes!

To be contented only with a sound,
Wherein is neither peace nor life nor body found.

--Duchess of Newcastle Margaret Cavendish (1623-1653), Elizabethan poet, from The Cavalier and His Lady

I (I go among trees and sit still)

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
what I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), American farmer, poet, essayist, and agrarian, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997