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June
The sun is rich And gladly pays In golden hours, Silver days, And long green weeks That never end. School’s out. The time Is ours to spend. |
There’s Little League, Hopscotch, the creek, And, after supper, Hide-and-seek. The live-long light Is like a dream, And freckles come Like flies to cream. John Updike |
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Reason, indeed, may oft complain For Nature’s sad reality, And tell the suffering heart how vain Its cherished dreams must always be; And Truth may rudely trample down The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:When weary with the long day’s care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost, and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again: Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, While then canst speak with such a tone! So hopeless is the world without; The world within I doubly prize; Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt, And cold suspicion never rise; Where thou, and I, and Liberty, Have undisputed sovereignty. What matters it, that all around Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, If but within our bosom’s bound We hold a bright, untroubled sky, Warm with ten thousand mingled rays Of suns that know no winter days? |
But thou art ever there, to bring The hovering vision back, and breathe New glories o’er the blighted spring, And call a lovelier Life from Death. And whisper, with a voice divine, Of real worlds, as bright as thine. I trust not to thy phantom bliss, Yet, still, in evening’s quiet hour, With never-failing thankfulness, I welcome thee, Benignant Power; Sure solacer of human cares, And sweeter hope, when hope despairs! |
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March Weather
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Wind in pines
wind on water wind in rushes wind on feather |
Sun in leaves
sun on loch sun in reeds sun on duck |
Rain in trees
rain on river rain in moss rain on eider |
All one morning
all together in an hour March weather. Tessa Ransford Published in Sing a Song of Seasons, Fiona Waters, ed |
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The Snow
It sifts from leaden sieves, It powders all the wood, It fills with alabaster wool The wrinkles of the road. It makes an even face Of mountain and of plain, -- Unbroken forehead from the east Unto the east again. It reaches to the fence, It wraps it, rail by rail, Till it is lost in fleeces; It flings a crystal veil On stump and stack and stem, -- The summer's empty room, Acres of seams where harvests were, Recordless, but for them. It ruffles wrists of posts, As ankles of a queen, -- Then stills its artisans like ghosts, Denying they have been. by Emily Dickinson |
The First Christmas
by Michael R. Burch ’Twas in a land so long ago . . . the lambs lay blanketed in snow and little children everywhere sat and watched warm embers glow and dreamed (of what, we do not know). And THEN—a star appeared on high, The brightest man had ever seen! It made the children whisper low in puzzled awe (what did it mean?). It made the wooly lambkins cry. For far away a new-born lay, warm-blanketed in straw and hay, a lowly manger for his crib. The cattle mooed, distraught and low, to see the child. They did not know it now was Christmas day! |
Chanukah Dreams
Judith Ish-Kishor Chanukah I think most dear Of the feasts of all the year. I could sit and watch all night Every twinkling baby light. Father lights the first one—green; Hope it always seems to mean; Hope and Strength to glow anew In the heart of every Jew. Jacob lights the blue for Truth. Pink for Love is lit by Ruth. Then the white one falls to me, White that shines for Purity. How the story of those days Fills my wondering heart with praise! And in every flame one sees The heroic Maccabees. 
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"Hope" is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest sea, Yet never in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. |