One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon The Strand

From an AMAZING Blog - http://wanderlustscarlett.blogspot.com/

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Love in the Sand

“Vain man”, said she, “that dost in vain assay

A mortal thing so to immortalize,

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eek my name be wiped out likewise.”

Jeniffer Sams, 2007

“Not so” quod I, “let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name.

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

1595, Edmund Spenser

(Pickering et al. 1994)

I happened upon a blog titled 'From the Shores of Introspection and Retrospect' and I just love the blog, the poetry, the art, and and and so please check it out.... An AMAZING Blog - http://wanderlustscarlett.blogspot.com/

Poem from: Pickering, J.H., and J. D. Hoeper. Questions To Ask About Poetry. Literature. Edited by D. Anthony English. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994.

The Broken Heart

El Abrazo, Oil on Canvas, 2006, Santiago Carbonell

He is stark mad, whoever says,
    That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
    But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
    Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
    I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
    If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
    To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
    By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
    He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

Don't You Remember, Ryan DeLaurentis His Weblink

If 'twere not so, what did become
    Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
    But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
    More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
    At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
    Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
    Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
    My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
    But after one such love, can love no more.

~ John Donne

Love at first sight, in an instant can affect us and make our world feel whole and complete.... make a flash ('a flash of powder burn a day) feel like eternity until love destroys the heart that feels love, but like a mirror shattered on the floor a broken heart ('Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show - A hundred lesser faces....') shattered shows love even in the shattered heart.... It is part of the broken hearted only amplified and reflected hundreds of times over.  The heart of the love lost remains, but in painful shards. After such a strong, passionate, love at first sight and whole love described Donne writes 'But after one such love, can love no more.' - perhaps it is not that love is not possible, but this kind of love is a once in a lifetime love, not shattered and painfully gone.

Lost Footsteps

Lost Footsteps, Charcoal, Zindy D. Nealson 

I can't feel you anymore
Time has erased our past
Nothing but a memory
But I'll keep looking
Forever I'll be searching
For your lost footsteps. 

~ From Zindy's FB page... this is just beautifully profound

Charcoal, 30x40 cm | 12x16"

I love how we are all so connected even though we are all scattered around the world.... I came across Zindy's work by way True Art Gallery which I found by way of another friend, Brian aka Pixel Chemist and I was just awestruck by this drawing. I linked her website to her name in the caption so that if you enjoy her work as much as I did and want to purchase any you may find her there.  To see more and read more she also has a Facebook page under Zindy S. D. Nielsen. Thank you all for sharing your art and thereby your hearts and souls with us.... the girl named fred

Ode - The Past and Present Dreamers of Dreams

Ode

Golden Dreams, Richard Johnson

We are the music makers, 
And we are the dreamer of dreams, 
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
And sitting by desolate streams; 
World-losers and world-forsakers, 
On whom the pale moon gleams: 
Yet we are the movers and shakers 
Of the world for ever, it seems. 

With wonderful deathless ditties, 
We build up the world's great cities, 
And out of a fabulous story 
We fashion an empire's glory: 
One man with a dream, at pleasure, 
Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 
And three with a new song's measure 
Can trample an empire down. 

Le Danse de la Sylphide, Richard Johnson 

We, in the ages lying 
In the buried past of earth, 
Built Nineveh with our sighing, 
And Babel itself with our mirth; 
And o'erthrew them with prophesying 
To the old of the new world's worth; 
For each age is a dream that is dying, 
Or one that is coming to birth. 


A breath of our inspiration, 
Is the life of each generation. 
A wondrous thing of our dreaming, 
Unearthly, impossible seeming- 
The soldier, the king, and the peasant 
Are working together in one, 
Till our dream shall become their present, 
And their work in the world be done. 

They had no vision amazing 
Of the goodly house they are raising. 
They had no divine foreshowing 
Of the land to which they are going: 
But on one man's soul it hath broke, 
A light that doth not depart 
And his look, or a word he hath spoken, 
Wrought flame in another man's heart. 

Break of Day, Richard Johnson

And therefore today is thrilling, 
With a past day's late fulfilling. 
And the multitudes are enlisted 
In the faith that their fathers resisted, 
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow, 
Are bringing to pass, as they may, 
In the world, for it's joy or it's sorrow, 
The dream that was scorned yesterday. 


But we, with our dreaming and singing, 
Ceaseless and sorrowless we! 
The glory about us clinging 
Of the glorious futures we see, 
Our souls with high music ringing; 
O men! It must ever be 
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, 
A little apart from ye. 

For we are afar with the dawning 
And the suns that are not yet high, 
And out of the infinite morning 
Intrepid you hear us cry- 
How, spite of your human scorning, 
Once more God's future draws nigh, 
And already goes forth the warning 
That ye of the past must die. 

Evening Comes, Richard Johnson

Great hail! we cry to the corners 
From the dazzling unknown shore; 
Bring us hither your sun and your summers, 
And renew our world as of yore; 
You shall teach us your song's new numbers, 
And things that we dreamt not before; 
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, 
And a singer who sings no more. 

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

Richard S. Johnson Fine Arts - http://rjohnson.fineartstudioonline.com/

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. 

Tristan and Isold, Rogelio de Egusquiza Image at Bonzasheila

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . 


One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . . 

A Nymph in the Forest, Charles Amable Lenoir (1860-1929). 
Oil on Canvas. 138.4 x 90.8 cm. Copyright Christies Images Ltd.

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned 
earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. 








And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul! 




We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

The Rapture (Abduction) of Psyche (Le Ravissement de Psyche), 1895. William Bougereau (1825-1905)

by Oscar Wilde

Bond and Free - Frost & Francois Boucher

'Fountain of Venus', 1756, Francois Boucher, French Oil on Canvas
CopyRight at bottom of page from Cleveland Museum of Art

Bond and Free


Love has earth to which she clings 
With hills and circling arms about-- 
Wall within wall to shut fear out. 
But Though has need of no such things, 
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings. 


On snow and sand and turn, I see 
Where Love has left a printed trace 
With straining in the world's embrace. 
And such is Love and glad to be 
But Though has shaken his ankles free. 


Though cleaves the interstellar gloom 
And sits in Sirius' disc all night, 
Till day makes him retrace his flight 
With smell of burning on every plume, 
Back past the sun to an earthly room. 


His gains in heaven are what they are. 
Yet some say Love by being thrall 
And simply staying possesses all 
In several beauty that Thought fares far 
To find fused in another star.


~Robert Frost, 1916

The Toilet of Venus, 1751, Francois Boucher, French, Oil on Canvas
Copy Rights at the end of this post from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Boucher utilized earth tones for the background and drapery around Venus so that when he used his delicate tones on Venus the viewer is immediately drawn to her.  The diagonal lines and implied lines draw the viewers' eyes around the canvas noting every detail of her toilet.  Boucher is famous for his use of color to portray a mythical event which invites the viewer into a world which is only achievable through art.  


Boucher's portrayal of Venus, the goddess of love, is in her toilet and as a fountain (in the painting above) grounding in earth and in earthly things.  This is quite common in portraying Venus after her 'birth'.  In relation to Frost's poetry the two artists are actually portraying a similar theme.... love exists here, on earth.... grounded by nature and our human needs and desires...


Frost initially compares love as being bound and confined while thought is free.... Love leaves marks as in the sand and snow... Thought has shaken it's ankle free.... By the 4th stanza Frost begins to show that thoughts must travel to the stars "And sit in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight..." while love in stanza 5 does not have to leave to effect anyone, it possesses all without ever going anywhere... Frost is emphasizing the importance of love and gentleness as thought is shackled without love...




Fountain of Venus, Boucher - This image was provided by The Cleveland Museum of Art. Contact information: Kathleen Kornell, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd., Cleveland OH 44106, (216) 707-2498 (ph), (216) 421-8815 (fax), Kkornell@clevelandart.org. 

The Toilet of Venus, Boucher -This image was provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Contact information: Image Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028, (212) 396-5050 (fax), Scholars.License@MetMuseum.org Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Tennyson's New Year's Eve juxtaposed to our 2011

Australian Scott Jones kisses Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas after she was knocked to the ground by a police officer's riot shield in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Getty Images/Rich/Lam)

I chose this photograph for this poem to represent so much of what is going on in the world right now and I cannot say as much as a photograph can..... so may 2012 be more peaceful and head in a more loving direction for all....

In Memoriam

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,    

The flying cloud, the frosty light:    

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:    

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind    

For those that here we see no more;    

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,    

And ancient forms of party strife;    

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,    

The faithless coldness of the times;    

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in. 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,    

The civic slander and the spite;    

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;    

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;    

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free,    

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;    

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

~by Lord Alfred Tennyson