Saturday, April 12, 2014

like a golden galleon

I feel like this is sort of a sequel to yesterday's poem. Somebody on tumblr (I think it was sea-tidesofthesoul) posted this poem earlier in the month, and it seems like a good one for today, when the sun is shining, and I am about to put on a pretty dress and go have afternoon tea and then go to the theatre.

O gift of God! O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!
Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.
I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where through a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,
Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts.
Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!
Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!
O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), "A Day of Sunshine," from Birds of Passage, 1863.

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