In comfort fresh and strong

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G r e e n   L i g h t   G o

Ivy and Clematis

Columbia, South Carolina

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There will come that which ever pleases Thee;

For surely Thou dost love the good of men.

Help me to make the things that beauty hold

Amid these veering lines and diverse shades,

That cheer will bring to sad and solemn men

And tired women in their dreary haunts,

That youth will not forget on highways hard

With troubled years, when somber night is on,

And when no kindly light leads through the way,

That joy and love may dawn like newborn days

In hearts where long the chambers have been dark.

Let lowly life and dusty daily toil

Come near me evermore and day by day,

That I forget not them that still are kind

Though tried by years of unrequited toil,

Alas! and sometimes want and age and pain.

Let me not love my pictures more than men,

Nor follow the wild lead of some mad dream,

Nor see myself as if above the crowd

Commanding that they all bow low their heads;

Instead, with kindly heart and gentle hand

And smiles upon my face, let me serve them

Whose muscles ache in evening's twilight hour,

While mine in comfort still are fresh and strong.

May all these be not empty, idle words,

But all the burden of my life's sweet task.

And when Thou seest that my work is done,

Let me feel Thy soft evening shadows fall,

As when I climbed into my nursery bed

With childish faith, in time's old long ago;

And let the kiss of peace lie on my lips.

= Max Ehrmann =

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Happy Friday

Never for the mean

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W o u n d   T i g h t

My Mother's Garden

Greenville, South Carolina

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Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse, --
Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent:
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward, --
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor, --
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.

= Ralph Waldo Emerson =

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Happy Thursday

The sunlight about you

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D i m m i n g   B u t   N o t   D i m i n i s h e d

Laurelwood Cemetery

Rock Hill, South Carolina

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Did you ever see an alligator

Come up to the air from the mud,

Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?

Have you seen the stabled horses at night

Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?

Have you ever walked in darkness

When an unknown door was open before you

And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles

Of delicate wax?

Have you walked with the wind in your ears

And the sunlight about you

And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor?

Out of the mud many times,

Before many doors of light,

Through many fields of splendor,

Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters

Like new-fallen snow,

Will you go through earth, O strong of soul,

And through unnumbered heavens

To the final flame!

= Edgar Lee Masters =

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Happy Monday

Silent as a stone

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W i g g e d   O u t

J's Mega Mart :: South Gay Street

Knoxville, Tennessee

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The moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat North
Suddenly hid Love's moon away.

Believing every word I said,
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.

We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she'd not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that Love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.

= William Butler Yeats =

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Happy Friday

In that long moment

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P e e k   T i m e

Ellis Square

Savannah, Georgia

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How time slowed when any thought

or apprehension of the next instant

vanished (no obligation, then or later),

how in that long moment, all at once,

yet without surprise, how what was close

was present in a sudden suspense,

as such things rarely exist

as they did then, each apart from all,

seen as it might be truly,

and gave way to a pleasure

that had long been missing,

to expleasure, as if I were akin

to the smallest things -- ribs

of a leaf, penny on a dresser --

of a saving stillness, doubtless

always here, just beyond

the scrim of what calls us

from that silent astonishment,

the more so since the feeling

dissolves with its presence of detail

merging with a distant seeing,

as when I walk through a room

and nothing is equal there to the calm

from the simply seen.

= James Brasfield =

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Happy Thursday