With what deep murmurs through time's silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose retinue stay'd
Ling'ring, and were of this steep place afraid;
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
All must descend
Not to an end,
But quicken'd by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.
-Henry Vaughan ,The Water-fall, 1650
|
Hymn
(Yosemite)
As a white candle in a holy place,
So is the beauty of an aged face.
-Joseph Campbell,
The Old Woman
|
Poem
(Yosemite)
A poem should not mean
But be.
-Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica
|
Fortissimo
(Yosemite)
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
-Shakespeare, Sonnets, LV
|
Rapture
(Yosemite)
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.
-William Blake, Eternity
|
Excitement
(Devil's Postpile)
Be not hurried away by excitement, but say,
"Semblance, wait for me a little. Let me
see what you are and what you represent..."
-Epictetus,
How the Semblances of Things
are to be combated
|
Roar
(King's Canyon)
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.
-Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller
|
Ice Tears
(North Cascades)
|
Her welked face with woeful tears besprent, Her colour pale, and, as it seem'd her best, In woe and plaint reposed was her rest; And as the stone that drops of water wears, So dented were her cheeks with fall of tears. -Baldwin,The Mirror for Magistrates: The Induction,1563 |
|
Phantasies in the Mist
(Niagara)
|
And others came . . . Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies, Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies; And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, 1821 |
|
Solemn Harmony
(Niagara)
|
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear--an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptur'd image; the strange sleep Which when the voices of the desert fail Wraps all in its own deep eternity; -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni, 1817 |
|
Moonlit Blessings
(Niagara)
|
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; -William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798 |
|
The Two Springs
(Niagara)
Dedicated to the memory of a special friend...
| Les Deux Printemps |
The Two Springs |
| Ses yeux sont deux printemps | Her eyes like two springs |
| Qui me font sourire et ça me fait rire | Make me smile, and make me laugh |
| Ses joues sont des torrents | Her cheeks like torrents |
| Les miennes s'y baignent mais encore pire | Mine swimming in hers, but worst |
| Son coeur est une fête | Her heart like a celebration |
| Le mien ne veut plus en sortir | Mine doesn't want to get out |
| Elle est la plus belle saison de ma vie | She's the most beautiful season of my life |
| La plus belle saison de ma vie |
The most beautiful season of my life |
| -Daniel Bélanger, Quatre saison dans le Désordre |
-Marilyn St-Louis, Translation |
|
Farewell, too little, and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own; For sure our souls were near allied, and thine Cast in the same poetic mold with mine. One common note on either lyre did strike, And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike. -John Dryden, To the Memory of Mr. Oldham |
| À Une Passante |
In Passing |
| Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant, | And trembling like a fool, I drank from eyes |
| Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan, | as ashen as the clouds before a gale |
| La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue. | the grace that beckons and the joy that kills. |
| Un éclair... puis la nuit! - Fugitive beauté | Ligthening . . . then darkness! Lovely fugitive |
| Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître, | whose glance has brought me back to life! But where |
| Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité? | is life - not this side of eternity? |
| Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être! | Elsewhere! Too far, too late, or never at all! |
| Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais, | Of me you know nothing, I nothing of you - you |
| O toi que j'eusse aimé, ô toi qui le savais! |
whom I might have loved and who knew that too! |
| -Charles Baudelaire | -Richard Howard, Translation |
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