Friendship

I think awhile of Love, and while I think, 
Love is to me a world, 
Sole meat and sweetest drink, 
And close connecting link 
Tween heaven and earth. 

I only know it is, not how or why, 
My greatest happiness; 
However hard I try, 
Not if I were to die, 
Can I explain. 

I fain would ask my friend how it can be, 
But when the time arrives, 
Then Love is more lovely 
Than anything to me, 
And so I'm dumb. 

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, 
But only thinks and does; 
Though surely out 'twill leak 
Without the help of Greek, 
Or any tongue. 

A man may love the truth and practise it, 
Beauty he may admire, 
And goodness not omit, 
As much as may befit 
To reverence. 

But only when these three together meet, 
As they always incline, 
And make one soul the seat, 
And favorite retreat, 
Of loveliness; 

When under kindred shape, like loves and hates 
And a kindred nature, 
Proclaim us to be mates, 
Exposed to equal fates 
Eternally; 

And each may other help, and service do, 
Drawing Love's bands more tight, 
Service he ne'er shall rue 
While one and one make two, 
And two are one; 

In such case only doth man fully prove 
Fully as man can do, 
What power there is in Love 
His inmost soul to move 
Resistlessly. 

______ 

Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side, 
Withstand the winter's storm, 
And spite of wind and tide, 
Grow up the meadow's pride, 
For both are strong 

Above they barely touch, but undermined 
Down to their deepest source, 
Admiring you shall find 
Their roots are intertwined 
Insep'rably. 


-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . 

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . . 

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . 

I am water rushing to the wellhead, 
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . . 

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .


I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . . 

I am the heart contracted by joy. . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . . 

I am there in the basket of fruit 
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening 
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . . 

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . 


-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from The Iowa Review, 12:2 (1981)

Not By Might Nor By Power

O Lord, may we never become complacent, faltering in our effort to build a world of peace for Your children. Let the nations know and understand that justice and right are better than conquest and dominion; may they come to see that it is not by might nor by power, but by Your spirit, that life prevails.

--Shabbat prayer from Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayer Book, Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1975, p. 233.

Sonnet 104 (To Me, Fair Friend, You Can Never Be Old)

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold 
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen, Three
April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.


-- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Annunciation: The Birth of Kool

Annunciation: The Birth of Kool, by Jack Anderson, American

To a Friend

I ask but one thing of you, only one, 
That always you will be my dream of you; 
That never shall I wake to find untrue 
All this I have believed and rested on, 
Forever vanished, like a vision gone 
Out into the night. Alas, how few 
There are who strike in us a chord we knew 
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone 
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. 
The world is full of rude awakenings 
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, 
Yet still our human longing vainly clings 
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. 
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs! 

-- Amy Lowell (1874-1925), from A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912)

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles 
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995). from Let Evening Come (1990)

Thinking of a Friend at Night

In this evil year, autumn comes early...
I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,
The wind on my hat...And you? And you, my friend? 

You are standing- maybe- and seeing the sickle moon
Move in a small arc over the forests
And bivouac fire, red in the black valley.
You are lying- maybe- in a straw field and sleeping
And dew falls cold on your forehead and battle jacket.

It's possible tonight you're on horseback,
The farthest outpost, peering along, with a gun in your fist,
Smiling, whispering, to your exhausted horse.
Maybe- I keep imagining- you are spending the night
As a guest in a strange castle with a park
And writing a letter by candlelight, and tapping
On the piano keys by the window,
Groping for a sound...

- And maybe
You are already silent, already dead, and the day
Will shine no longer into your beloved
Serious eyes, and your beloved brown hand hangs wilted,
And your white forehead split open- Oh, if only,
If only, just once, that last day, I had shown you, told you
Something of my love, that was too timid to speak! 

But you know me, you know...and, smiling, you nod
Tonight in front of your strange castle,
And you nod to your horse in the drenched forest,
And you nod to your sleep to your harsh clutter of straw,
And think about me, and smile.
And maybe,
Maybe some day you will come back from the war,
and take a walk with me some evening,
And somebody will talk about Longwy, Luttich, Dammerkirch,
And smile gravely, and everything will be as before,
And no one will speak a word of his worry,
Of his worry and tenderness by night in the field,
Of his love. And with a single joke
You will frighten away the worry, the war, the uneasy nights,
The summer lightning of shy human friendship,
Into the cool past that will never come back.

-- Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), from Poems, 1970  (translated by James Wright)


Photo: Lt. Col Hermann Hesse of the Cheshire Regiment in World War I from https://diversenarratives.com/2015/01/27/lt-colonel-hermann-hesse/

For the interim time

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come. 

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

-- John O'Donohue (1956-2008), from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 2008

Evening Winter light at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville

Hearth Keeper Prayer

Brigid of the Mantle, encompass us,
Lady of the Lambs, protect us,
Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us.
Beneath your mantle, gather us,
And restore us to memory.
Mothers of our mother, Foremothers strong.
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how to kindle the hearth.
To keep it bright, to preserve the flame.
Your hands upon ours, Our hands within yours,
To kindle the light, Both day and night.
The Mantle of Brigid about us,
The Memory of Brigid within us,
The Protection of Brigid keeping us
From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness.
This day and night,
From dawn till dark,
From dark till dawn.

-- From the Order of St. Brigid of Kildare (453-525), one of the patron saints of Ireland. Her feast day is today, February 1.