Monday Morning Poetry: "The Pulley" (Herbert)

 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.


So I'm tired and feel a nagging sense of discontent?  Well, here's George Herbert's take on it, echoing St. Augustine's ("Our hearts are restless 'til they rest in Thee"):

"The Pulley," by George Herbert

When God at first made man, 

Having a glass of blessings standing by, 

“Let us," said he, “pour on him all we can. 

Let the world’s riches, which disperséd lie, 

Contract into a span.” 

So strength first made a way; 

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure. 

When almost all was out, God made a stay, 

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, 

Rest in the bottom lay. 

“For if I should," said he, 

“Bestow this jewel also on my creature, 

He would adore my gifts instead of me, 

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature; 

So both should losers be. 

“Yet let him keep the rest, 

But keep them with repining restlessness. 

Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 

May toss him to my breast.”

"Let him be rich and weary..."  That's parents all over, right?  Filled to the brim, and utterly exhausted!

Wishing everyone a happy Monday and a smooth week!  

Monday Morning Poetry: "Slicing the Bread" (Trochimczyk)

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.

This one isn't a classic-- yet-- but it's from a volume that I'm anticipating: Slicing the Bread, a collection of poetry that offers a child's perspective on war-torn Poland.  The concept grabs me, as my mother and uncle-- children of Polish forced laborers-- had been born in a displaced person's camp after World War II.  What was it like? The perennial question.

Maja Trochimczyk, Slicing the Bread(publication: October 25, 2014)

From the title poem:

"Every week, her mother ate dziad soup –

fit for a beggar, made with crumbled wheat buns,

stale sourdough loaves, pieces of dark rye

soaked in hot tea with honey.

She liked it. She wanted to remember

its taste."

I love the humility of this memory-- its basic, fundamental level.  (The food!)  My own childhood memories are a series of smells, tastes, still images, songs on the radio... 

What was it like?  Perhaps poetry offers the best possible answer.

"October," by Robert Frost

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.

"Begin the hours of this day slow..."   I'm begging here, kids!  Stay in bed for just fifteen minutes longer... Let me blink my eyes open, finish this cup of coffee, gaze out of the window.  Check the weather forecast online, peek at the headlines... No, no, that's pushing it!  All I need is one more moment.    One more, before the onslaught of potties and sippy cups.  One more deep breath, one more slice of silence.  Just one.  More. 

Please?

Where is this place?  ...Never mind.  Pretending.
[Image:  Evgeni Dinev, Freedigitalphotos.net]

From "October" by Robert Frost

"O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow! "


Wishing you a slow, smooth Monday!

Monday Morning Poetry~ Shakespeare as Folk Music [Shakespeare's Fool]

 

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.

When I saw that Hope (Worthwhile Books) has been rereading Shakespeare, I had the sudden urge to share this, my favorite Shakespeare-set-to-music!  I'd found the MP3 album Songs From the Plays (by Jason Feddy and the band Shakespeare's Fool) last year, while searching Amazon for simple songs that might familiarize my little daughters with bits of Shakespeare from an early age.  And while this album isn't a preschool curriculum per se, I've certainly fallen for it-- or at least, for a set of four songs that I play over and over and over again...  

Because I like them.  They're unpretentious, folksy, human... It surprises me how modern the sixteenth and seventeenth-century lyrics can sound when coupled with acoustic guitar and a voice that (yes) reminds me of Bob Seger!  I'm just so used to considering Shakespeare's songs as precious, the stuff of Elizabethan lutes and formal Victorian choirs... But Shakespeare's Fool interprets his lyrics as not only classics, but popular classics with mass appeal.   As sung by Feddy, even this guy-with-a-lute song might have been written today:

"O Mistress Mine" from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Act II Scene iii

"O Mistress mine where are you roaming?

O stay and hear, your true love's coming,

      That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further pretty sweeting.

Journeys end in lovers' meeting,

      Every wise man's son doth know. . . ."

The music's quick-paced, breezy-- catching that youthful optimism, that sense that life's a smorgasbord and God's out there clothing the lilies of the field.  "Journeys end in lovers' meeting..."

(While Feddy does add a few extra lines to form a refrain, these blend so seamlessly-- to my ear, at least--that I had to look up the original poem to confirm that, yes, they are indeed additions.)

I also love love love the bluesy rendition of "Sigh No More, Ladies"!  (Really-- a blues song?  It totally works!)  "Hey Ho the Wind and the Rain" has more of a Celtic-folk vibe, while "Blessings on You" (from The Tempest) is warm and wistful.

....And just last week my 3-year-old looked out at a gray sky and sighed, "The rain it raineth every day."  I had to smile!

Monday Morning Poetry~ "Mont Blanc" and Laundry

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.

                                           

                                "The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
                                 Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
                                 So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
                                 But for such faith, with Nature reconcil'd;
                                 Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
                                 Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
                                 By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
                                 Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel."

                                ~ From "Mont Blanc" by Percy Blythe Shelley

Not "blanc," but surely a "mont"-- here in my dining room,
atop pictures that I never hung.  "[A]ll seems eternal now."

Ok, here goes... There's a type of Mont Blanc on my dining room table. 

Surely it teaches "awful doubt."  Surely, also, it can "repeal large codes of fraud and woe" in that its simple demands (for folding and putting away) tend to cut through my pretensions... Give me "faith so mild," please?  I need reconciliation with all of this wild, uncontrolled Nature in our living space!

If only endeavors to "interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel" my laundry could likewise make me "wise, and great, and good"...!

Happy Monday.  Is this a laundry day for you?  

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.