Gabriel Fielding and Alfred Lord Tenneyson

Dr. Weeks’ Comment:  I have recently learned with delight of this exquisite writer, Gabriel Fielding.  Enjoy!

He encourages:  “The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write.” Gabriel Fielding


 

 

Ever and Again
Ever and again the world recedes in sound
A distant stir of voices knockings cries
Steam whistling from an engine long ago.
So does my life seem now to me
Some murmurings, some broken songs
Coming through a window which will close.Yet green places too so many wet
And gleaming deeps have been my lot
That between each one the joy calls out.A curious claim in dreadful things
Murder most close, outbreaks of love and fire
Great accidents and gaping quakes.All that’s scaled to raging mind
In cracking of an aphid’s wing
Or fission of a city’s heart.

Such hurts as lodge in chambers
Of the skull attending Heaven’s salve

In wide more disinfected light.
All now reduced to quietness
Moon illumined clamour ever and again
Singing from a shadow in the wind.
Ever and again the world recedes in sound
A distant stir of voices knockings cries
Steam whistling from an engine long ago.So does my life seem now to me
Some murmurings, some broken songs
Coming through a window which will close.
                    Gabriel Fielding 1986
for more:  see http://gabrielfielding.com/

 

reminds me of Tenneyson:

 

TERMINUS

by: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Tis time to be old,  to take in sail;  The gods of bounds who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds and said: ”˜No more!

No farther shoot thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament to compass of a tent.

There’s not enough for this and that, make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river, not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms. Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while still plan and smile, and,-fault of novel germs – mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, bad husbands of their fires, who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath the needful sinew stark as once the Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins, inconstant heat and nerveless reins; A

mid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.’

As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: ”˜Lowly faithful, banish fear.

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near, And every wave is charmed.’

 

 

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