Kissing Tennyson...or any of our dear, old poets

Always on the lookout to add to my poetry collection...

We cannot touch

Miles, years apart

Save for the brush

Of heart to heart

Fingers and lips

May never meet

Your kiss of words

Bitter and sweet

Yet, without salvaged

Madrigal

We never would

Have met at all

© Janet Martin

I love reading old poetry...today at YDP they are featuring a beaut by James Whitcomb Riley.

...but, it was this poem The Brook by Alfred Tennyson that first captured my heart when I was a wee girl and sparked a lifelong love for lyrical poetry...

The Brook

COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

 

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

 

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

 

With many a curve my banks I fret

by many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

 

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may comeand men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I wind about, and in and out,

with here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

 

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silver water-break

Above the golden gravel,

 

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

 

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

 

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my cresses;

 

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

 

Gargantuan Gate

Ah, daring, unbarring of thought

Its gate a quiescent quill

Sparring with all that yet is not

Gargantuan want and will

How can one extricate

Or trace thought’s phantom form

Or usher through this meager gate

The impact of its storm

The bard bent on intent

Of compositions where

The music of the mind is rent

With footnotes of despair

…is like a beggar, oft

Bartering with the rain

Where bits of babble drift aloft

Like notes in a refrain

We grapple with a sea

Amorphous anthems spill

Where art of reining in its plea

To fit inside a quill

…draws us into the night

To dare to bare its weight

Twenty-four-seven appetite

Barred by a meager gate

© Janet Martin

My sister-in-law told me she is at her boss's beck and call twenty-four seven. I wanted to tell her 'me too!'...but I didn't;)

Cricket-canticle

One night I heard it start

A prelude, faint and far

Of lone minstrel strumming the dark

Beneath the evening star

But now, the passageway

Of summer into fall

Is serenaded by a lay

Of cricket-canticle

Beneath leaf-laden vine

And petal-portico

These weary-less songsters incline

Our thoughts to letting go

The heart’s reluctant urge

Cannot restrain the clock

Is it a madrigal or dirge

That fills the garden-walk?

An hour seems discrete

And insignificant

Yet slows the scamper in child-feet

Where seasons ever chant

…one night I heard it start

Where now the air is full

Of Time’s betrothal to the heart  

And cricket-canticle

© Janet Martin

Bigger Than Circumstance

God’s plan is not a game of chance

Nor thwarted by mere circumstance

The dreamer cannot dream away

What God hath said of judgement day

Nor can the schemer with flawed scheme

Usurp I AM, nor we esteem

Our understanding better than

God’s wise and providential plan

God’s plan unfolds in spite of us

There is no flippant ‘just because’

Where Love and mercy, hope and grace

Supersedes evil’s dying place

And Faith is our sole defense

No one exceeds Omnipotence

His changeless Charter bigger than

The bravest brainchild of a man

God’s plan is oft misunderstood

We cannot always see the good

As we the face-value assay

Of circumstance; of gold and gray

But God, before the days of man

Knew every tittle of His plan

We who are wise should place our trust

In He who holds our frames of dust

© Janet Martin

 Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare. Ps. 40:5

But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. Ps. 33:11

LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago. Isa. 25:1

Yesterday our message was entitled the Perfect Plan; its 'messenger' a young, 'new' member in the congregation; Andreas Dimond who moved here from Germany. Listen here to be taught and encouraged! 
You can click on the links to previous messages as well. We are blessed to have a great variety of godly speakers at our church, in many stages/ages of life!

All the While the Hours Smile...

…and all the while the hours smile

Filling the day with cricket lay

The dust that long harbored our trust

Is wild and sweet with wheat and hay

The morning dark forsook the lark

He heralds fairer climes somewhere

We drink the ink of bronze and pink

Splayed on the brink of Here to There

August befriends musk-misty blends

Awareness keened upon its sheen

Where happiness puts on a dress

Of gold and blush  and chartreuse-green

The pond beyond lush bracken- frond

Is filled with noise of carefree boys

Life’s startling truth, so kind to youth

Disguised in summer-setting joys

As all the while the hours smile

And blooms beguile the eye with art

Before the leaf-lorn silence mourns

August, in tempests of the heart

© Janet Martin