Brighter visions beam afar

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I t   F i g u r e s

Elmwood Cemetery

Charlotte, North Carolina

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Angels from the realms of glory

Wing your flight o'er all the earth

Ye who sang creation's story

Now proclaim Messiah's birth

Shepherds in the fields abiding

Watching o'er your flocks by night

God with man is now residing

Yonder shines the infant light

Sages leave your contemplations

Brighter visions beam afar

Seek the great desire of nations

Ye have seen His natal star

Saints before the altar bending

Watching long in hope and fear

Suddenly the Lord descending

In His temple shall appear

Though an Infant now we view Him
He shall fill His Father’s throne
Gather all the nations to Him
Every knee shall then bow down

All creation join in praising
God the Father, Spirit, Son
Evermore your voices raising
To th’ eternal Three in One

Come and worship

Come and worship

Worship Christ the newborn King.

= James Montgomery =

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And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude

of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:13-14

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Happy Sunday

Some perfect year

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W a r m   C h r i s t m a s

Columbia, South Carolina

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’Twas just this time, last year, I died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms —
It had the Tassels on —

I thought how yellow it would look —
When Richard went to mill —
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how Red — Apples wedged
The Stubble’s joints between —
And the Carts stooping round the fields
To take the Pumpkins in —

I wondered which would miss me, least,
And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father’d multiply the plates —
To make an even Sum —

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me —

But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year —
Themself, should come to me —

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday

Round an incredible star

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A l i g h t

Columbia, South Carolina

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There fared a mother driven forth

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless

All men are at home.

The crazy stable close at hand,

With shaking timber and shifting sand,

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay on their heads in a foreign land

Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,

And chance and honour and high surprise,

But our homes are under miraculous skies

Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,

Where the beasts feed and foam;

Only where He was homeless

Are you and I at home;

We have hands that fashion and heads that know,

But our hearts we lost -- how long ago!

In a place no chart nor ship can show

Under the sky's dome.

This world is wide as an old wives' tale,

And strange the plain things are,

The earth is enough and the air is enough

For our wonder and our war;

But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings

And our peace is put in impossible things

Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening

Home shall men come,

to an older place than Eden

And a taller town than Rome.

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless

And all men are at home.

= G.K. Chesterton =

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Happy Friday ~ Happy Weekend ~ Merry Christmas

Full of sound and shadow

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L o o k i n g   B a c k

Glenwood Cemetery

Tupelo, Mississippi

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In the month of the long decline of roses
I, beholding the summer dead before me,
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
Moving tremulous under feet of angels
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
Heard between them a voice of exultation,
“Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
All the fruits of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
All are taken away; the season wasted,
Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
When low light was upon the windy reaches
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever.”

= Algernon Charles Swinburne =

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Happy Thursday ~ Happy Thanksgiving

Cast your nets anew

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L o o k   A g a i n

Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery

Greenville, South Carolina

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The words I write
The lines I draw
The people I assure
The rest of them too
I got no fortune
I hold no sway
But I do what I am able
For them and for you
And we'll hold on best we can
That'll be the plan

Stand tall my dear
You've spent most of your year
In the highest and truest
Way you knew how
And knowledge is nice
But knowledge can kill us
And we should have died
A thousand deaths by now
But we'll hold on best we can
That'll be the plan

We'll wish and imagine
For what could have been 
And quietly miss
What never came to be
Lend me your voice
Lift up these stones
And cast your nets anew
Into the deep blue sea
And we'll hold on best we can
Hold on the best we can
Hold on the best we can
That'll be the plan

= Daniel Martin Moore =

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Happy Wednesday