Monday Morning Poetry~ "The Marshes of Glynn" (Lanier)

I was never a morning person; and I'm definitely not a Monday morning person!  However, I'm trying to ease what is (for me) a rough transition by spending a few minutes with a classic poem.  Call it preemptive therapy.  Or call it "Monday Morning Poetry," which sounds much prettier, right?  Right.

Have you ever run across the St. Simon's Island series by Eugenia Price?  When I was in middle school, my grandparents traveled on vacation to coastal Georgia, where they bought the three historical novels as presents for me.  As I remember, the trilogy is pretty good in itself-- but I mainly remember it for introducing me to Lanier's "The Marshes of Glynn" as the favorite poem of a doomed bride.

Since then "The Marshes of Glynn" has been a favorite of mine, too.  I know this excerpt by heart...

                     From "The Marshes of Glynn" by Sidney Lanier:

  "Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free 

    Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! 

    Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, 

    Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won 

    God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain 

    And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 

  "As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 

    Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: 

    I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 

    In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies: 

    By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 

    I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: 

   Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within 

   The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn."

....and I spied this marsh-hen at work in our kitchen!

Wishing everyone a great day and week.