Out of the best books

I've been on a Mary Oliver kick recently.

So, for your Sunday refinement, here is a beautiful poem and a pretty picture:

Mysteries, Yes
by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

Happy Sabbath.

Come the May, I say

It's May.

That beautiful month filled with the scent of
sunshine
grass
and lilacs.

The beginning of summer,
yet not too hot
and not too cold--
just right for a girl with
hopes and dreams
that even darkest winter cannot kill.

The May is here
with ribbons on her pinafore
and flowers in her hair.

from sarah jane studios. 

a thing of beauty

I just feel like posting a poem from one of my favorite poets: 

When You Are Old

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Take what you want from this.

Read too much into it, if you desire. 

That's the beauty of a poem. 

Hope is the thing with feathers

Poesy Thursdays continue!

Here's a classic:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
                                    ~Emily Dickinson

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

This is one of my favorite poems. Thank you, Gerard Manley Hopkins for your beautiful words:

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded 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 áll trádes, 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.