A habit of light

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G o d s p e e d

Old Sheldon Church Ruins

Yemassee, South Carolina

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A day like any day. Though any day now
We expect death. The sky is overcast,
And shuddering cold as snow the shoreward blast.
And in the marsh, like a sea astray, now
Waters brim. This is the moment when the sea
Being most full of motion seems motionless.
Land and sea are merged. The marsh is gone.
And my distress
Is at the flood. All but the dunes are drowned.
And brimming with memory I have found
All hours we ever knew, but have not found
The key. I cannot find the lost key
To the silver closet you as a wild child hid.

Having heard the bare word that you had died,
All day I have lingered in this lofty room,
Locked in the light of sea and cloud,
And thought, at cost of sea-hours, to illume
The hours that you and I have known.
Hours death does not condemn, nor love condone.
And I have seen the sea-light set the tide
In salt succession toward the sullen shore
And while the waves lost on the losing sand
Seen shores receding and the sands succumb.
The waste retreats; glimmering shores retrieve
Unproportioned plunges; the dunes restore
Drowned confines to the disputed kingdom
Desolate mastery, since the dark has come.
The dark has cornel I cannot pluck you bays,
Though here the bay grows wild. For fugitive
As surpassed fame the leaves this sea-wind frays.
Why should I promise what I cannot give?
I cannot animate with breath
Syllables in the open mouth of death.
Dark, dark. The shore here has a habit of light.
O dark! I leave you to oblivious night!

From The Hours

=John Peale Bishop=

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=Dedicated to the memory of John Peale Bishop=

May 21, 1892 - April 4, 1944

Long did I live,

Consistent, lonely, proud,

Not death, but fear of death

Restores us to the crowd.

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Today that cannot last

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I   W o u l d   T o o

Bonaventure Cemetery

Savannah, Georgia

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If I might see another Spring
I'd not plant summer flowers and wait:
I'd have my crocuses at once
My leafless pink mezereons,
My chill-veined snow-drops, choicer yet
My white or azure violet,
Leaf-nested primrose; anything
To blow at once, not late.

If I might see another Spring
I'd listen to the daylight birds
That build their nests and pair and sing,
Nor wait for mateless nightingale;
I'd listen to the lusty herds,
The ewes with lambs as white as snow,
I'd find out music in the hail
And all the winds that blow.

If I might see another Spring --
Oh stinging comment on my past
That all my past results in ‘if’ --
If I might see another Spring
I'd laugh today, today is brief
I would not wait for anything:
I'd use today that cannot last,
Be glad today and sing.

=Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)=

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Dedicated to the memory of Dale Wilson Johnson

July 24, 1918 - April 3, 1953

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Curious still

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F a d i n g   N o t

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

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So long as my spirit still

Is glad of breath

And lifts its plumes of pride

In the dark face of death;

While I am curious still

Of love and fame,

Keeping my heart too high

For the years to tame,

How can I quarrel with fate

Since I can see

I am a debtor to life,

Not life to me?

=Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)=

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A flower expected everywhere

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P i n k   D o g w o o d s   o f   S p r i n g w o o d

Springwood Cemetery

Greenville, South Carolina

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An altered look about the hills,

A Tyrian light the village fills;

A wider sunrise in the dawn;

A deeper twilight on the lawn;

A print of a vermillion foot;

A purple finger on the slope;

A flippant fly upon the pane;

A spider at his trade again;

An added strut in chanticleer;

A flower expected everywhere;

An axe shrill singing in the woods;

Fern-odors on untravelled roads,

All this, and more I cannot tell,

A furtive look you know as well,

And Nicodemus' mystery

Receives its annual reply.

=Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)=

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