With a biretta tip to the Laudator:
Wei Yingwu (737–792), East of the Town, tr. Witter Bynner:
From office confinement all year long,
I have come out of town to be free this morning
Where willows harmonize the wind
And green hills lighten the cares of the world.
I lean by a tree and rest myself
Or wander up and down a stream.
…Mists have wet the fragrant meadows;
A spring dove calls from some hidden place.
…With quiet surroundings, the mind is at peace,
But beset with affairs, it grows restless again…
Here I shall finally build me a cabin,
As T’ao Ch’ien built one long ago.
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Beautiful. Reminds me of:
Post Catholic: Much like, indeed. Some things are universal, across cultures and centuries, aren’t they?
Indeed. You might like Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” too. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html
PostCatholic – one of my confreres just said the very same. I think Anuna (uhn-oo-nah) – from an Uaithne Irish for the ‘Fates’- have a beautiful version of the poem but alas I can’t find a version of it on YouTube to link to.
At them moment I am sitting at the top of the county to the north of Sligo, Donegal, on its North-Western coast, with the rain teeming down. This is typical of the West of Ireland. I guess he wasn’t thinking of that when he wrote the poem. Beautiful piece of work though.
If you like Yeats as an Irish poet then try Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke, Thomas Kinsella among many others if you haven’t done so already.
Yeats was quoted as saying after several years of giving poetry recitals, that he would agree to one, if he did not have to read “Innisfree”. He was thoroughly sick of it. Here is one from Henry Vaughan, one of the Mystical Poets and a Welshman.
The Waterfall
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.
Dear stream! dear bank, where often I
Have sate and pleas’d my pensive eye,
Why, since each drop of thy quick store
Runs thither whence it flow’d before,
Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
Who came, sure, from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any more
That what God takes, he’ll not restore?
O useful element and clear!
My sacred wash and cleanser here,
My first consigner unto those
Fountains of life where the Lamb goes!
What sublime truths and wholesome themes
Lodge in thy mystical deep streams!
Such as dull man can never find
Unless that Spirit lead his mind
Which first upon thy face did move,
And hatch’d all with his quick’ning love.
As this loud brook’s incessant fall
In streaming rings restagnates all,
Which reach by course the bank, and then
Are no more seen, just so pass men.
O my invisible estate,
My glorious liberty, still late!
Thou art the channel my soul seeks,
Not this with cataracts and creeks.
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)
supertradmum,
THANKS for that poem! I had not read Vaughn, but I’m about to . . . :-)
Thus Kipling, quoting Tusser:
My friend, if cause doth wrest thee,
Ere folly hath much oppressed thee,
Far from acquaintance kest thee
Where country may digest thee . . .
Thank God that so hath blessed thee,
And sit down, Robin, and rest thee.
. . . the story that goes with it, “An Habitation Enforced”, is worth reading.
Lovely, the snippet you sent, and apropos today.
I’m a tremendous reader of poetry, Br. Tom Forde OFM Cap. My favorite Irish poets at the moment are Patrick Galvin and Caitriona O’Reilly.