Morning Has Broken

Franz Von Stuck

Spring Dance

Morning Has Broken

Morning has broken, like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning

Praise for them springing fresh from the word

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven

Like the first dew fall, on the first grass

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness, where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

Born of the one light, Eden saw play

Praise with elation, praise every morning

God's recreation of the new day

~ Eleanor Farjeon ~

The Summer Day

Claude Monet

femme assise dans le jardin

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver ~

Iris

Vincent Van Gogh

Irises

Iris

What is it about irises

in the garden

whether blue flag or yellow,

deep purple, white with red

why do they catch the attention, the imagination

more than lesser blooms?

A certain allure

that Georgia O’Keeffe didn’t taint

a beauty that draws you in

to ponder and marvel on

a delicacy that is real

but a perennial that wears well

the seasons in New England too

bitter cold and short summers

a herald for the Spring

whether in bog or flower bed

~ Raymond A. Foss ~

The garden with its little gate of green

The garden with its little gate of green

The garden with its little gate of green,
Invites you to enter, and view mysteries unseen,
Its vine laden bowers and overhanging trees,
The air filled with sweetness, the hum of the bees,
The flagged walks with Iris galore,
Of most beautiful coloring, unknown before,
Pink, white, purple, yellow, azure blue,
Mixed and mingled of every hue,
You come away wondering, can more beauty be seen
Than in the garden with its little gate of green.

~ Unknown ~

Iris

Christian Schad

Im Irisgarten

Iris

White Iris, how pure, how lovely,

Like a virgin

In her starched lawn fete dress

Iris, pallid blue, gold veined,

And as if coloured from dawn chills,

Or from the yellow-fingered touching

Of curious starlight

Purple Iris,

Streaked with amethystine memories of the night,

Health-glossed and firm are those ripe wings

Of Oriental butterflies

So in my garden

Undulating ranks of Iris,

Slimly holding their broad flat blooms

(Like tripods of incense)

Aloft towards the moist spearing

Of morning sunlight.

~ Michael Strange ~

The Wild Iris

Georgia O’’Keeffe

Black Iris Number Two

Georgia O’’Keeffe

Light Iris

Georgia O’’KeeffeDark

Dark Iris Number Two

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little. And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure sea water.

~ Louise Glück ~

On a Squirrel Crossing the Road in Autumn, in New England

Amadeo de Souza Cardoso

The Leap of the Rabbit

On a Squirrel Crossing the Road in Autumn,

in New England

It is what he does not know,

Crossing the road under the elm trees,

About the mechanism of my car,

About the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,

About Mozart, India, Arcturus,

That wins my praise. I engage

At once in whirling squirrel-praise.

He obeys the orders of nature

Without knowing them.

It is what he does not know

That makes him beautiful.

Such a knot of little purposeful nature!

I who can see him as he cannot see himself

Repose in the ignorance that is his blessing.

It is what man does not know of God

Composes the visible poem of the world.

. . . Just missed him!

~ Richard Eberhart ~

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

Stapleton Kearns

Vermont Village in the Snow

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.

The only things moving are swirls of snow.

As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.

There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.

Driving around, I will waste more time.

~ Robert Bly ~

Trees

Pablo Picasso

House in a Garden

Trees

I think that I shall never see,

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest,

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast.

A tree who looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray.

A tree who may in summer wear,

A robin's nest upon her hair.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain,

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

~ Joyce Kilmer ~

High treason

Grant Wood

Stone City Iowa

High treason

I do not love my country.

Its abstract splendor is beyond my grasp.

But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life

for ten places in it, for certain people,

seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,

a run-down city, gray, grotesque,

various figures from its history,

mountains
(and three or four rivers).

~ José Emilio Pacheco ~

Forgotten Language

Edvard Munch

Red House

Forgotten Language

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,

Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,

Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,

And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed.

Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets,

And joined the crying of each falling dying flake of snow,

Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .

How did it go?

How did it go?

~ Shel Silverstein ~

In Louisiana

Edgar Degas

The Rape

In Louisiana

The long, gray moss that softly swings
In solemn grandeur from the trees,
Like mournful funeral draperies,--
A brown-winged bird that never sings.
A shallow, stagnant, inland sea,
Where rank swamp grasses wave, and where
A deadliness lurks in the air,--
A sere leaf falling silently.
The death-like calm on every hand,
That one might deem it sin to break,
So pure, so perfect,--these things make
The mournful beauty of this land.

~ Albert Bigelow Paine ~

Monet's Waterlilies

Claude Monet

Water Lilies

Monet's Waterlilies

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

~ Robert Hayden ~

from An Essay On Man

Roy Lichtenstein

Preparedness

from
An Essay On Man

Cease, then, nor Order imperfection name;
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit: in this or any other sphere,
Secure to be as bless'd as thou canst bear;
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art unknown to thee;
All chance direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

~ Alexander Pope ~

Birds of Prey

Remedios Varo

Aves

Birds of Prey

Their shadow dims the sunshine of our day,

As they go lumbering across the sky,

Squawking in joy of feeling safe on high,

Beating their heavy wings of owlish gray.

They scare the singing birds of earth away

As, greed-impelled, they circle threateningly,

Watching the toilers with malignant eye,

From their exclusive haven--birds of prey.

They swoop down for the spoil in certain might,

And fasten in our bleeding flesh their claws.

They beat us to surrender weak with fright,

And tugging and tearing without let or pause,

They flap their hideous wings in grim delight,

And stuff our gory hearts into their maws.

~ Claude McKay ~

The Owls

René Magritte

The Companions of Fear

The Owls

Under the overhanging yews,

The dark owls sit in solemn state,

Like stranger gods; by twos and twos

Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.

Motionless thus they sit and dream

Until that melancholy hour

When, with the sun's last fading gleam,

The nightly shades assume their power.

From their still attitude the wise

Will learn with terror to despise

All tumult, movement, and unrest;

For he who follows every shade,

Carries the memory in his breast,

Of each unhappy journey made.

~ Charles Baudelaire ~

Even So

Andrew Wyeth

Winter 1946

Even So

It was December,

and the sky

was shaggy and chill.I wandered alone

across a stubbled field,

my body

bitter with cold,

the ragged trail

of my footprints

crisp as a longing

on the new snow.

In the clogged branches

somewhere above me,

a woodthrush-

left behind for some reason

I couldn't guess

after its fellows were gone

-decorated the air

with one liquid note.

And I knew

that the season

was not about magi or angels,

but the joy that abides

in the triumphant wail of birth:

we hurt, and are not healed;

even so, we sing.

~ Robert Lavett Smith ~

Pied Beauty

Vincent Van Gogh

Wheat Field Under Threatening Skies

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things -

For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced -fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins ~

The Villian

Paul Cezanne

The Abduction

The Villian

While joy gave clouds the light of stars,

That beamed wher'er they looked;

And calves and lambs had tottering knees,

Excited, while they sucked;

While every bird enjoyed his song,

Without one thought of harm or wrong--

I turned my head and saw the wind,

Not far from where I stood,

Dragging the corn by her golden hair,

Into a dark and lonely wood.

~ W. H. Davies ~

Who Has Seen The Wind?

Henri Rousseau

Spring in Bievre Valley

Who Has Seen The Wind?

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling

The wind is passing thro'

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads

The wind is passing by.

~ Christina Georgina Rossetti ~