A pursuit of a pursuit forever

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A m   I   B l u e

Capernaum Cemetery

Denmark, South Carolina

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He is no fugitive -- escaped, escaping.

No one has seen him stumble looking back.

His fear is not behind him but beside him

On either hand to make his course perhaps

A crooked straightness yet no less a straightness.

He runs face forward. He is a pursuer.

He seeks a seeker who in his turn seeks

Another still, lost far into the distance.

Any who seek him seek in him the seeker.

His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.

It is the future that creates his present.

All is an interminable chain of longing.

= Robert Frost =

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Happy Friday

The amber of water

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W i n t e r   W e e d s

Back Yard

Columbia, South Carolina

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Sending
In delinquency
To disappoint
The amber of water
At a high soul

= Henry David Thoreau =

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Happy Thursday

Call to the hours

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W i s p  -  e r s

Campbell's Covered Bridge

Greenville County, South Carolina

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Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?
Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day --
Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou are she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say -- 'Ah! loveliest friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home, and thee!'
Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one.
The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalméd bark,
Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.

And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow, he pursues!

= Samuel Taylor Coleridge =

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Happy Tuesday

The sparkling river is flowing

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S u n d r o p s

Finlay Park

Columbia, South Carolina

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Oh what glory awaits me in Heaven's bright city

When I get there such sights I'll behold

A million scenes of rare beauty

Will demand that I view them

But Jesus will outshine them all.

Mansions will glisten on the hills of glory

Happy reunions on streets of gold

Angel choirs singing glad praises forever

But Jesus will outshine them all.

The sparkling river is flowing, happy faces all glowing

Land of splendor where night never falls

The golden glass gives reflection

To that city's perfection

Still Jesus will outshine them all.

= Gordon Jensen =

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And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon,

to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it,

and the Lamb is the light thereof.

And the nations of them which are saved

shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth

do bring their glory and honour into it.

Revelation 21:23-24

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Happy Sunday

Its thirst of blessing

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L i g h t   S n o w   o n   t h e   I v y

Winter 2016

Columbia, South Carolina

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True Love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty’s law of plainness and content;
A simple, fire-side thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth’s poorest hovel to a home;
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,
Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth
In bleak November, and, with thankful heart,
Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit,
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes
As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring.
Such is true Love, which steals into the heart
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn
That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,
And hath its will through blissful gentleness, --
Not like a rocket, which, with savage glare,
Whirrs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night
Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes;
A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,
Now with flaw-seeking eyes like needle-points,
But, loving kindly, ever looks them down
With the o’ercoming faith of meek forgiveness;
A love that shall be new and fresh each hour,
As is the golden mystery of sunset,
Or the sweet coming of the evening-star,
Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,
But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer,
Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness,
A love that in its object findeth not
All grace and beauty, and enough to sate
Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good
Found there, it sees but Heaven-granted types
Of good and beauty in the soul of man,
And traces, in the simplest heart that beats,
A family-likeness to its chosen one,
That claims of it the rights of brotherhood.
For Love is blind but with the fleshly eye,
That so its inner sight may be more clear;
And outward shows of beauty only so
Are needful at the first, as is a hand
To guide and to uphold an infant’s steps:
Great spirits need them not; their earnest look
Pierces the body’s mask of thin disguise,
And beauty ever is to them revealed,
Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay,
With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze,
Yearning to be but understood and loved.

= James Russell Lowell =

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Happy Saturday