Water is water

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S h i n e   S p a r k l e   S p l a s h

Finlay Park Fountain

Columbia, South Carolina

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Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

Now you tell me what you know.

~Groucho Marx (1890-1977)~

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Here in thy harbors for a while

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H e   W a s   W e a r y

Magnolia Cemetery

Charleston, South Carolina

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With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago. 

How far, since then the ocean streams
Have swept us from that land of dreams,
That land of fiction and of truth,
The lost Atlantis of our youth! 

Whither, ah, whither? Are not these
The tempest-haunted Orcades,
Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore? 

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!
Here in thy harbors for a while
We lower our sails; a while we rest
From the unending, endless quest.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)~

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Happy 214th Birthday, Mr. Longfellow

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There's an hour at the last

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A   S l i g h t   D e l a y

Magnolia Cemetery

Charleston, South Carolina

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Can life be a blessing, 
Or worth the possessing,
Can life be a blessing if love were away?
Ah no! though our love all night keep us waking,
And though he torment us with cares all the day,
Yet he sweetens, he sweetens our pains in the taking,
There's an hour at the last, there's an hour to repay.

In ev'ry possessing,
The ravishing blessing,
In ev'ry possessing the fruit of our pain,
Poor lovers forget long ages of anguish,
Whate'er they have suffer'd and done to obtain;
'Tis a pleasure, a pleasure to sigh and to languish,
When we hope, when we hope to be happy again.

~John Dryden (1631-1700)~

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A deep but dazzling darkness

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A l i g h t

Columbia, South Carolina

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Dear night! This world's defeat;

The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;

The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat

Which none disturb!

Christ's progress, and his prayer time;

The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

God's silent, searching flight:

When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all

His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;

His still, soft call;

His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch,

When spirits their fair kindred catch.

Were all my loud, evil days

Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,

Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice

Is seldom rent,

Then I in Heaven all the long year

Would keep and never wander here.

But living where the sun

Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire

Themselves and others, I consent and run

To every mire,

And by this world's ill-guiding light,

Err more than I can do by night.

There is in God (some say)

A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here

Say it is late and dusky because they

See not all clear;

O for that night where I in him

Might live invisible and dim.

From The Night

~Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)~

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As a fence, it is a masterpiece

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O n   T h e   F e n c e

Columbia, South Carolina

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Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the 

workmen are beginning the fence.

The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that

can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.

As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble

and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering

children looking for a place to play.

Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go

nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.

~Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)~

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