I spent a wonderful evening with my brother's family and couldn't help but think of William Blake's poem, Nurse's Song, as the children chased one another far into the evening light. If you haven't read it before, you're in for a treat: When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is …
Category: Observations on Life
Full of Life, Now
Full of Life, Now by Walt Whitman Full of life, now, compact, visible, I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States, To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence, To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you. When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible; Now it is …
Seek the Gold
The Moon is Up by Alfred Noyes The moon is up, the stars are bright. the wind is fresh and free! We're out to seek the gold tonight across the silver sea! The world is growing grey and old: break out the sails again! We're out to see a Realm of Gold beyond the Spanish …
A Song of Life
If nothing else, your life should be an inspiration to others less fortunate than you. I do not imagine that the man, woman or child who, squatting beneath the crush of humanity, gasping for fresh air, scratching for his or her next morsel is fortunate enough to read, let alone read this post online. Given …
Live in Peace
Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, …
Know Thyself
Know Thyself by Alexander Pope Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between; in …
Every Man a Word
If, as James A. Garfield wrote, "The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word", then Garfield himself left an ineffaceable word of victory, of the triumph of truth over deception, upon the pages of the history of man. His approach was …
Friendship’s Altar
One of the greatest lessons you can teach child is that he is a custodian of the earth. I've learned over time that to be an effective steward you must possess a variety of qualities and skills, chief among them is compassion. You cannot really teach compassion; you can, however, point it out. If the …
Unfurling Love’s Creation
I recently introduced two dear friends to the remarkable musical compositions of the writer, composer, Christian mystic and visionary, Hildegard von Bingen. Saint Hildegard, or Sybil of the Rhine as she is also known, was a Benedictine abbess who founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg and Eibingen in the 1100s. Among other things, Saint Hildegard left …
The Day is Done
THE DAY IS DONE By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me …
Gregory Hake 