Longing by Friedrich von Schiller
Could I from this valley drear,
Where the mist hangs heavily,
Soar to some more blissful sphere,
Ah! how happy should I be!
Distant hills enchant my sight,
Ever young and ever fair;
To those hills I’d take my flight
Had I wings to scale the air.
Harmonies mine ear assail,
Tunes that breathe a heavenly calm;
And the gently-sighing gale
Greets me with its fragrant balm.
Peeping through the shady bowers,
Golden fruits their charms display.
And those sweetly-blooming flowers
Ne’er become cold winter’s prey.
In you endless sunshine bright,
Oh! what bliss ‘twould be to dwell!
How the breeze on yonder height
Must the heart with rapture swell!
Yet the stream that hems my path
Checks me with its angry frown,
While its waves, in rising wrath,
Weigh my weary spirit down.
See–a bark is drawing near,
But, alas, the pilot fails!
Enter boldly–wherefore fear?
Inspiration fills its sails,
Faith and courage make thine own,–
Gods ne’er lend a helping-hand;
‘Tis by magic power alone
Thou canst reach the magic land!
The faint shadow of the morning moon?
Nay, the snow falling on the earth.
The mist of blossoming flowers?
Nay, poetry smiling up the sky.
God’s Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil,
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went,
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
God’s World
Edna St. Vincent Millay
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this:
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, – Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, – let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
“I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful – an endless prospect of magic and wonder.”
“Every day for a week, photograph something you find subtly beautiful: patterns in your sheets when you get up, your dog’s eyelashes, your child’s hands while they draw. At the end of the week, take a few minutes to look at them together.” Source
NOTE: Beauty and happiness surround us. All we have to do is to be awake to experience it. Beauty and happiness is not found in media and corporate messages, but in the simple, ordinary things that we take for granted: A child’s smile. The love-filled expression of seeing a loved one after a day at work. A dog excited to see one return home. We are surrounded by beauty and happiness. Discover it.
