Showing posts with label John Leafgreen Whittier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Leafgreen Whittier. Show all posts

Thursday, January 19, 2023

Keeping 'Good Old Days' Alive...

It's another buses-cancelled day so no kiddos for childcare...
Leaving some extra opportunity to practice what I poem 😅💕


Pour a second cup, dark umber




Because I start and finish with the same stanza
 this poem can be read from the top down 
or bottom up!

Put a kettle on to simmer
Watch flame-dancers twist and jive
Let the simple joys of winter
Keep the good, old days alive

Ease the angst of hurried lunch-breaks
Like a sabbath middle-day
Count the stars that fall in snowflakes
Wake the child that lost its way

Watch the birds without vain fretting
About what we cannot know
He who feeds sparrows is setting
Tomorrow’s ducks in a row

Let prudence and leisure mingle
Home-sweet-domesticity
While chores, books and gales rekindle
Good old days waiting to be

Pour a second cup, dark umber
It is winter. Sit and nod
Sweat and toil of summer slumber
Aching feet rest, slipper-shod

Taste a bit ‘o Brit tradition
Have a biscuit with your tea
Sometimes happiness is hidden
In plain-sight-simplicity

Let nature nourish and gladden
Gather barren branch bouquets
Plant a bowl-sized indoor garden
Let winter thrill and amaze

Make music with moment measure
Shake a fist at sparrow-hawk
Practice culinary pleasure
Do not haste the hungry clock

Crosswords, puzzles, scrabble, kittens
Paint a pic with poem-ink
Don a parka, hat and mittens
Let frost kisses turn cheeks pink

Savor winter’s favors slowly
Let its flavors steep each sense
With thanksgiving, meek and holy
Drink in argent ambience

Put a kettle on to simmer
Watch flame-dancers twist and jive
Let the simple joys of winter
Keep the good, old days alive


© Janet Martin





Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Agape With Joy (or Faith's Sojourn)

 

I thought this was going to be a roughly 3-stanza poem, maybe 4.
 But each stanza seemed to pour out another
until the Hallelujah climax! 🎵🙏

Nature keeps eyes agape with wonder!
God keeps faith agape with Truth!
And lest we forget, it is God in nature too!

John 1:3
Through him all things were made; 
without him nothing was made that has been made.







Agape with wonder, faith reveres
God’s dominion, scorned by a foe
Fraught with opinion’s pomp and show
Distorting the order of fears
That dash the piers where mercies flow

How false the gods of carnal man
Perched on a fickle pedestal
That death assuredly will fell
What then, without the cross to span
The gap between Heaven and hell

How can we hear if none will preach
The power of the Living Word
Able to train, correct and teach
To bridge the intangible breach
Between the sinner and his Lord

Wonder is but faith’s shadow cast
Beneath the Gates of Paradise
What waits when death opens our eyes
And today’s Day of grace is past
Man’s noblest thought can but surmise

Timeless, the duty God demands
Of we prone to be puffed with pride
The Bridegroom still charges His Bride
‘To fear God and keep His commands’
To test grand boasts with Self denied

Pray, we remember in our youth
The Creator, before we say
We find no pleasure in God’s Way
And disregard life-saving truth
As to sin’s death-traps we fall prey

Since Jesus walked upon this earth
Centuries rise and fall like waves
Across a world stubbled with graves
Yet held in Hope’s Womb of rebirth
Because the name of Jesus saves

Agape with wonder, we profess
God’s faithfulness, steadfast and true
As we cling to His promises
‘I will not leave you comfortless
For I will come to you’

This is the day the Lord has made
The praise of mortal to employ
The foundation that has been laid
Is Jesus Christ. the debt He paid
Leaves faith's sojourn agape with joy


© Janet Martin


Inspired in part by the poem below...

The Over-Heart
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)

“For of Him, and through Him
 and to Him are all things, 
to whom be glory forever.”
PAUL.

ABOVE, below, in sky and sod,
In leaf and spar, in star and man,
Well might the wise Athenian scan
The geometric signs of God,
The measured order of His plan. 

And India’s mystics sang aright
Of the One Life pervading all,—
One Being’s tidal rise and fall
In soul and form, in sound and sight,—
Eternal outflow and recall. 

God is: and man in guilt and fear
The central fact of Nature owns;
Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones,
And darkly dreams the ghastly smear
Of blood appeases and atones. 

Guilt shapes the Terror: deep within
The human heart the secret lies
Of all the hideous deities;
And, painted on a ground of sin,
The fabled gods of torment rise! 

And what is He? The ripe grain nods,
The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers blow;
But darker signs His presence show:
The earthquake and the storm are God’s,
And good and evil interflow. 

O hearts of love! O souls that turn
Like sunflowers to the pure and best!
To you the truth is manifest:
For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean like John upon His breast! 

In him of whom the sibyl told,
For whom the prophet’s harp was toned,
Whose need the sage and magian owned,
The loving heart of God behold,
The hope for which the ages groaned! 

Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery
Wherewith mankind have deified
Their hate, and selfishness, and pride!
Let the scared dreamer wake to see
The Christ of Nazareth at his side! 

What doth that holy Guide require?
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood,
But man a kindly brotherhood,
Looking, where duty is desire,
To Him, the beautiful and good. 

Gone be the faithlessness of fear,
And let the pitying heaven’s sweet rain
Wash out the altar’s bloody stain;
The law of Hatred disappear,
The law of Love alone remain. 

How fall the idols false and grim!
And lo! their hideous wreck above
The emblems of the Lamb and Dove!
Man turns from God, not God from him;
And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love! 

The world sits at the feet of Christ,
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled;
It yet shall touch His garment’s fold,
And feel the heavenly Alchemist
Transform its very dust to gold. 

The theme befitting angel tongues
Beyond a mortal’s scope has grown.
O heart of mine! with reverence own
The fulness which to it belongs,
And trust the unknown for the known.

1859. 



Friday, May 25, 2018

Of Ebb and Flow (and Grace Whereby We Go)


 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands.


I wait and watch before my eyes
Methinks the night grows thin and gray
I wait and watch the eastern skies
To see the golden spears uprise
Beneath the oriflamme of day…
(from The Waiting by John Leafgreen Whittier)



The sky shrugs off its diamond cloth, then satin scarf of blush and gold
It dons the hue of blue on blue; time’s shades of grace and getting old
Where Dreamer dares to take a bow and stare with lover’s eyes toward
A place that stays the same somehow; where hope and hunger’s vault is stored

The doer brushes dirt from knees with hands scored with the war of years
Knowing how soon dawn’s newness turns to noon then dusk, then disappears
As fight twixt wrong and right and faith and fear and want and need
Delivers from the womb of night the Light and love of God to lead

…lest in our haste of touch and taste we overlook what matters most
How bread we break and plan we make on living’s daily Must we host
Is but the Thoroughfare to where we meet the Giver face to face
Aha, then we should kneel in prayer and grasp His Lifeline for this race/chase

The sky shrugs off its cloth of diamond studs and blush and gold
We shrug off blankets; touch down toes/trust upon dawn’s dew-on-dust threshold
Where everyone is growing older in time’s gold-blue ebb and flow
And nothing stays the same it seems, except God’s grace whereby we go

© Janet Martin

...and here is the whole GORGEOUS poem,
The Waiting by John Leafgreen Whittier 

(...the last line, and good but wished, with God is done)