Happy New Year!

            "And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been."                  Rainer Maria Rilke

Merry Christmas!

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!"    Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.

 

     

Strange Horses

 

I am taking a day off from the blog. In the meantime, you may behold these images of serendipitous urban wildlife...

And ponder a single delicious line from Edwin Muir's poem, The Horses: "Late in the evening, the strange horses came."

Wishing for Snow

 

Andrew Wyeth: "I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape -- the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

Aristotle: "To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand outside in the cold." Click to enlarge.

 

Lewis Carrol: "I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'"

Mary Oliver: "Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness."

Stewart Stafford: "At the darkest time of year, Lord Yule laid down his beard of snow and cloak of frost and ice to illuminate the gloom."

John Greenleaf Whittier asked: "What miracle of weird transforming is this wild work of frost and light, this glimpse of glory infinite?"

And Sammy Cohn: "Let is snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"

Rainy Day

 

It is wet and chilly outside and the last of the leaves are ready to fall -- just perfect for a melancholy autumn poem.

 

Autumn Day 

by Rainer Maria Rilke 

translated by Scott Stewart 

 

"It is time, Lord. 

Summer was grand.


Now lay your shadow on the day,


and bathe your fields in the wind.

Let the late harvest linger.


Give it two more southern days.


Make it full and bring her


final sweetness into those heavy vines.

If you have no house now, you never will have one.


If you are alone now, you will always live alone,


Reading late in the fading light. Writing letters with no end.


Wandering dark alleys.
 Restless and uneasy. A leaf on the wind."

 

Click to enlarge.