It's not the water, it's the belief you have in it.

-C. B. Gibson,
of the United House of Prayer for All People in
Charlotte, N.C., on the baptism of 2,000 people by fire
hose with help from church elders and firefighters.
Newsweek, (Oct, 1998)





Between the Light and Me (Zion)

With Blue--uncertain stumbling Buzz--
Between the light--and me--
And then the Windows failed--and then
I could not see to see--

-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886),
I heard a Fly buzz--when I died





Angel Hair (Zion)

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    The hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

-Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),
To Helen





Distant Maiden (Zion)

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!--
By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
        Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

-Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),
The Raven





Dim Tears (Zion)

        Morning sought
    Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
    Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aërial eyes that kindle day;

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Voliceless Fountain (Zion)

    Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
        And feeds her grief with his rememberd lay;
    And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
        Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
        Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Silent Leap (Zion)

Than Oars divide the Ocean,--
Too silver for a seam--
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886),
A Bird came down the Walk





Fleeting Hope (Zion)

Till I scarecely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before--
One the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

-Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),
The Raven





Fainting Soul (Zion)

O love, they die in you rich sky,
    They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
    And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
The Splendor Falls





Weeping Cloud (Zion)

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
    Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
    And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

-John Keats (1795-1821),
Ode on Melancholy





Idle Tears (Zion)

    Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
Tears, Idle Tears





Murmur (Zion)

    Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
        Than those for whose disdain she pined away
    Into a shadow of all sounds:--a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Beauty and the Beast (Zion)

Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

-William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939),
Sailing to Byzantium





Caress (Zion)

Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
    That weary, way-worn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

-Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),
To Helen





Dark Valley (Zion)

And travellers, now, within that valley,
    Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
    To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
    Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
    And laugh--but smile no more.

-Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),
The Haunted Palace





Beauty and the Beast (Zion)

      Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;
      Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
      Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
      And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
      The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
      Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;
      Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,
      Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow;
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

-George Gordon Noel Byron
6th Baron Byron (1788-1824),
The Ocean





Pulsating Heart (Zion)

And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

-William Butler Yeats (1865-1939),
Leda and the Swan





Summer Dreams (Zion)

But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

-John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892),
Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl





Mysterious Path (Zion)

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
    We sit beneath their orchard trees,
    We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
    Their written words we linger o'er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
    No step is on the conscious floor!

-John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892),
Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl





Dissolving Memory (Zion)

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
    What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret

-John Keats (1795-1821),
Ode to a Nightingale





Eternal Note (Zion)

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

-Matthew Arnold (1822-1888),
Dover Beach





Quiet Waves (Zion)

Here life has death for neighbour,
    And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
    Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
    And no such things grow here.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
The Garden of Proserpine





Days End (Zion)

Break, break, break,
    At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
    Will never come back to me.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
Break, Break, Break





Evening Bed (Zion)

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
    Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
    Yea, beds for all who come.

-Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894),
Up-Hill





Night Wind (Zion)

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

-Matthew Arnold (1822-1888),
Dover Beach





Dream Tears (Zion)

"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead!
    See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
    Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some dream has loosened from his brain."

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Weeping Rock (Zion)

Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
    The wreath upon him, like an anadem
    Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Faint Words (Zion)

The water hears thy faintest word,
And blushes into wine.

-John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811 - 1875),
Mysterious Is Thy Presence, Lord





Glittering Sail (Zion)

    Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
Tears, Idle Tears





Noonday Dew (Zion)

And a light spear topped with a cypress-cone,
    Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
    Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
    Shook the weak hand that grasped it.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Blind with Tears (Zion)

    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 (1792-1822),
Adonais





Twinkle (Zion)

            Hear the sledges with the bells--
                    Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
                In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
                With a crystalline delight;
            Keeping time, time, time,
            In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
    From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                Bells, bells, bells,--
    From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

-Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849),
The Bells





Sunshine Rain (Zion)

    Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
    Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;
    Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
    Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

-John Keats (1795-1821),
The Eve of St. Agnes





Veils of Morning (Zion)

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

-William Butler Yeats (1865-1939),
The Lake Isle of Innisfree





Silken Mystery (Hawaii)

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
    To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
    And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

-John Keats (1795-1821),
Ode on a Grecian Urn





Burst of Life (Hawaii)

Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,
    A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst,

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Elfland (Hawaii)

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
    And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
    The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
The Splendor Falls





So Much Melody (Hawaii)

In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned--
A cymbal crashed,
And roraring horns.

-Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955),
Peter Quince at the Clavier





Walls of Splendor (Shenandoah)

The splendor falls on castle walls
    And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
    And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle, answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
The Splendor Falls





Awakening Trance (Shenandoah)

    Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
        But grief returns with the revolving year.
    The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
        The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;
        Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;
    The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
        And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
    And the green lizard and the golden snake,
Like unimpresoned flames, out of their trance awake.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Too Lofty to Rage (Shenandoah)

Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.

-Robert Frost (1874 - 1963),
Directive





Grief (Shenandoah)

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
    Her kindling buds; as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
    For whom should she have waked the sullen Year?

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Hide and Seek (Shenandoah)

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
    Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
    The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
    The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
When the Hounds of Spring
Are on Winter's Traces





Dancer (Shenandoah)

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

-William Butler Yeats (1865-1939),
Among School Children, 1927





Courtship (Shenandoah)

The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
The Rhodora
On Being Asked, Whence is The Flower?





Journey (Shenandoah)

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--
The leaves upon her falling light--
Through the noises of the night
    She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
    The Lady of Shalott.

-Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
The Lady of Shalott





Sorrow's Springs (Shenandoah)

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Through worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889),
Spring and Fall





Fishermen (Shenandoah)

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
    Sailed off in a wooden shoe--
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
    Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
    The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
    That live in this beautiful sea;
    Nets of silver and gold have we!"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

-Eugene Field (1850 - 1895),
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod





Escape (Shenandoah)

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

-Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917),
The Owl





Ghostly Dance (Shenandoah)

With mop and mow, we saw them go,
    Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
    They trod a saraband:

-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
The Ballad of Reading Gaol





Beauty and the Beast (Shenandoah)

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

-William Butler Yeats (1865-1939),
Leda and the Swan





Phantom Tryst (Shenandoah)

They glided past, they glided fast,
    Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
    Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
    The phantoms kept their tryst.

-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
The Ballad of Reading Gaol





Passion and Conquest (Shenandoah)

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

-William Butler Yeats (1865-1939),
The Wild Swans at Coole





Quiver (Shenandoah)

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
    Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
    With a clamour of waters, and with might;

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
When the Hounds of Spring
Are on Winter's Traces





Grief of Falling Water (Shenandoah)

For brief as water falling will be death,
and brief as flower falling, or a leaf,
brief as the taking, and the giving, breath;
thus natural, thus brief, my love, is grief.

-Conrad Aiken (1889 - 1973),
And in the Human Heart (1940). Sonnet 6





Grief Forgotten (Shenandoah)

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
    And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
    The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
    Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
When the Hounds of Spring
Are on Winter's Traces





Ripening Stream (Shenandoah)

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
    Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
    From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
    The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
When the Hounds of Spring
Are on Winter's Traces





Glitter (Shenandoah)

The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
    The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
When the Hounds of Spring
Are on Winter's Traces





Tears and Laughter (Shenandoah)

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

-Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909),
The Garden of Proserpine





Fall Grief (Shenandoah)

    Droop herbs and flowers;
    Fall grief in showers;
    "Our beauties are not ours"

-Ben Johnson (1572-1637),
Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount,
Keep Time with My Salt Tears
,
from Cynthia's Revels





Time and Change (Shenandoah)

O Time and Change!---with hair as gray
As my sire's that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!

-John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892),
Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl





Where are you from? (Shenandoah)

    Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
    And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
                Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
    Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
                Bloom the year long!

-Robert Bridges (1844-1930),
Nightingales





Faith (Shenandoah)

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

-John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892),
Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl





Deck the Season (Shenandoah)

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
    But grief returns with the revolving year.
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
    The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;
    Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Remember (Shenandoah)

Remember me when I am gone away,
    Gone far away into the silent land;
    When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
    You tell me of our future that you planned:
    Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
    And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
    For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
    Than that you should remember and be sad.

-Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894),
Up-Hill





Smiles and Tears (Shenandoah)

        I love thee with the breath.
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861),
How Do I Love Thee?
Let Me Count the Ways





Happy Nest (Shenandoah)

My heart is like a singing bird
    Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

-Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894),
Up-Hill





Leafless Blooms (Shenandoah)

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
The Rhodora
On Being Asked, Whence is The Flower?





Unimprisoned Flames (Shenandoah)

    Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
        But grief returns with the revolving year.
    The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
        The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear;
        Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier;
    The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
        And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
    And the green lizard and the golden snake,
Like unimpresoned flames, out of their trance awake.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





If You Listen (Shenandoah)

The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,
Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;
But go, and if you listen she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal--
Luke Havergal.

-Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935),
Luke Havergal





Waking Dream (Shenandoah)

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
        Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
            In the next valley-glades:
    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
        Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

-John Keats (1795-1821),
Ode to a Nightingale





The voice (Shenandoah)

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard to more again far or near?

    Thus I; faltering forward,
    Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
    And the woman calling.

-Thomas Hardy (1840-1928),
The Voice





Winter Grief (Yosemite)

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
    But grief returns with the revolving year.
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais





Silver Shrine (Yosemite)

    Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest
    After so many hours of toil and quest,
    A famished pilgrim--saved by miracle.
    Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest
    Saving of thy sweet self; if thouh think'st well
To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

-John Keats (1795-1821),
The Eve of St. Agnes





Mind's Work (Yosemite)

And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
The Snow-Storm







previous water pictures
water falls of the columbia river gorge




images © 2000 by Randy Wang
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