Bright Star

Frederic Edwin Chruch

The Star in the East

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient sleepless eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors;

No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever or else swoon to death.

~ John Keats ~

Dawn

Vincent Van Gogh

Wheat Field with Rising Sun

Dawn

An angel, robed in spotless white,

Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.

Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.

Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.

~ Paul Laurence Dunbar ~

Poem in Thanks

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Landscape

Poem in Thanks

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air

I'm about to in- and exhale, this hutch

in the woods, the wood for fire,

the light-both lamp and the natural stuff

of leaf-back, fern, and wing.

For the piano, the shovel

for ashes, the moth-gnawed

blankets, the stone-cold water

stone-cold: thank you.

Thank you, Lord, coming for

to carry me here -- where I'll gnash

it out, Lord, where I'll calm

and work, Lord, thank you

for the goddamn birds singing!

~ Thomas Lux ~

It Is the Hour

Maxfield Parrish

Twilight

It Is the Hour

It is the hour when from the boughs

The nightingale's high note is heard--

It is the hour--when lovers' vows

Seem sweet in every whisper'd word--

And gentle winds and waters near

Make music to the lonely ear.

Each flower the dews have lightly wet,

And in the sky the stars are met:

And on the wave is deeper blue,

And on the leaf a browner hue--

And in the Heaven, that clear obscure

So softly dark--and darkly pure,

That follows the decline of day

As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

~ Lord Byron ~

Crossings

Ralph Earl

Looking East from Denny Hil

Crossings

Between forest and field, a threshold

like stepping from a cathedral into the street—

the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured

into weeds where woods once were.

Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:

there’s a standing invitation to lie back

as sky’s unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment

after leaving a forest, before entering

a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

~ Ravi Shankar ~

A Blessing

Franz Marc

Little Blue Horses

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

~ James Wright ~

Barn Owl

John James Audubon

Barn Owl

A Barred Owl

The warping night-air having brought the boom
Of an owl's voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
"Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?"

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

~ Richard Wilbur ~

when faces called flowers float out of the ground...

Grant Wood

Spring Plowing

when faces called flowers float out of the ground...

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-

but keeping is downward and doubting and never-

it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!

yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly

yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be

(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound

and wishing is having and having is giving-

but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense

-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!

now the pretty birds hover so she and so he

now the little fish quiver so you and so i

(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found

and having is giving and giving is living-

but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing

-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!

all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky

all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea

(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

~ e. e. cummings ~

My Heart Leaps Up

Grandma Moses

A Beautiful World

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

~ William Wordsworth ~

Carmel Point

Elisha Kent Kane Wetherill

Sag Harbor

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!

This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses-

How beautiful when we first beheld it,

Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rock-heads-

Now the spoiler has come: does it care?

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide

That swells and in time will ebb, and all

Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty

Lives in the very grain of the granite,

Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

~ Robinson Jeffers ~

O sweet spontaneous

Martin Johnson Heade

The Newbury Marshes

O sweet spontaneous

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

fingers of

prurient philosophers pinched

and

poked

thee

,has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

beauty .how

oftn have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

~ e. e. cummings ~