Sometimes the air is so pure
And beauty’s store
Becomes too much.
At such
Moments the heart is full
And a dull
Ache
Will not me forsake.
Tears fall on the tranquil lake.
The sun awakes.
I will go
And see the rainbow
Shine
And ponder on what some call nature
And others the divine.
I gazed upon a flower, a thing of beauty.
A scientist said, “It is my duty
To explain it’s purpose,
Let us look beneath The petals surface”.
I watched how the light did slant
Throwing dancing beams upon the plant.
But the scientist ranted
About the structure of that flower, so lovingly planted.
Is not a poem a thing of beauty?
Yet the critic sees it as his duty
To deconstruct every line.
Oh what happened to the poet’s verse divine?!
Why spend hours
Analysing poems and flowers
When we can revel in beauty
Forgetting “duty”?
Birds sing.
The air on this spring
Evening carries scents unknown
As I stroll home
Alone.
That scent, is it hay?
All this will pass away.
Yet I am content to breathe this sweet air
And, for a time, forget my care.
Beauty with sadness lives
And gives
A melancholy delight
To me, as I walk home, on this spring night.
Do you think of me
As you stare at a tree?
Beauty makes us free
If we can see
Beyond the tree.
As I walked through the trees
a soft breeze
Stirred the fallen leaves.
A girl was there
with golden hair.
Light as a feather she flew
into mine arms true.
The scent of the forest she wore.
Her clothes blended with the woodland’s russet floor.
“I can not stay
for my father, winter is on his way”,
she did say.
The sky turned grey
and winter did bay
As a ravenous wolf
who would the earth engulf.
I felt her father’s icey hand
laid firm upon the land.
His command
is law.
I must see his daughter no more.
But winter must sleep
And out his children will creep.
The lover I adore
I will see her once more!
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Time, as the shower runs away.
Will she not stay?
Each line upon the face,
Speaks of her fading grace.
The girl’s plaster smile.
He is in denial.
“Will you remain a while?”
He asks.
“No, this can not last.
I see the chasm yawning vast.
The hours,, like sand run away.
The dawn rises, I can not stay”.
I must confess to not being a lover of all Wordsworth’s poetry. I do, however derive considerable pleasure from the poet’s “The Solitary Reaper”:
“Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending;—
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.”
Beautiful butterflies flitting in and out of my life,
Here,for a moment, then gone in a trice.
An interlude of pleasure, thence you hurry away,
Lovely creature will you not stay?
A girl on a crowded train. Her scent, jasmine oil fills my senses, carrying me back to yesteryear.
Your long dark hair scented with jasmine. Your perfume lingering on, engrained in pillows long after you where gone.
K Morris - Poet 