THE MERMAID

by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Illustration by Warwick Goble.

I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,
'Who is it loves me? who loves not me?'

I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall
Low adown, low adown,
From under my starry sea-bud crown
Low adown and around,

And I should look like a fountain of gold
Springing alone
With a shrill inner sound
Over the throne
In the midst of the hall;

Till that great sea-snake under the sea
From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps
Would slowly trail himself sevenfold
Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate

With his large calm eyes for the love of me.
And all the mermen under the sea
Would feel their immortality
Die in their hearts for the love of me.

(originally posted by Winifred Adams in the Poets Illustrated FB group)

Photos:

High above Jupiter's Clouds, a photo from NASA

A Kamchatka photo, by Denis Budkov

Astronomy and Philosophy:

Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan, from Brain Pickings

Medicine and Applied Psychology:

Things to say to a friend with a serious illness

(instead of, "Everything will be OK", "Stay strong", and "Everything happens for a reason"...)

"Showing up", another article on the proper way to provide support, from the Option B website

Option B website, on how to build resilience, and help others, with personal stories

What depression is really like, from Brain Pickings

[psych] Attitude: an excellent analysis of the importance of attitude and the truth behind the Law of Attraction, from siderea

Two dying memoirists wrote bestsellers about their final days. Then their spouses fell in love.

(about John Duberstein and Lucy Kalanithi, from The Washington Post)

How Blue Eyes Get Their Color, from Science Alert (and how other eye colors are generated, as well)

Poetry:

Tennyson's Sea Fairies and Other Poems, a scan of the beautifully illustrated 1890 edition

Much-Loved Poems: An Anthology of some of the English-Speaking World's Favorite Poetry

Vastness

MANY a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face,
Many a planet by many a sun may roll with a dust of a vanish’d race.

Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,—
What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn’d by the Wise,
Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies;

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,
Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;

Innocence seeth’d in her mother’s milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame;
Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name;

( Read more... )

"Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! Who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.
Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last."

( Willows whiten, aspens quiver, / Little breezes dusk and shiver... )

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
( I am a part of all that I have met... )

Now sleeps the crimson petal


'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

'Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

'Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

'Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

'Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.'

Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-92

                                                  Vastness

MANY a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face,
Many a planet by many a sun may roll with a dust of a vanish’d race.

Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,—

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?


Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn’d by the Wise,
Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies;


Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,
Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;


Innocence seeth’d in her mother’s milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame;
Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name;


Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools;
Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow’d up by her vassal legion of fools;
( Trade flying over a thousand seas,... )

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

[Error: unknown template qotd]I do not know...not without Divine intervention, I'm afraid...

"...Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world’s annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm’d with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?
....
After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro’ the days I shall not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier—all for each and each for all?
.....
Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue—
I have seen her far away—for is not Earth as yet so young?—

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill’d,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till’d,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then—
All her harvest all too narrow—who can fancy warless men?

Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?..."

"Mr. Spock, the women on your planet are logical. That's the only planet in the galaxy that can make that claim."
.....

"Weakness to be wroth with weakness!
Woman's pleasure, woman's pain,
Nature made them blinder notions
Bounded in a shallower brain"...
......
***
Споря с женщиной, мужчина
Блещет силой убеждений,
Ищет доводы, причины
Для логичных построений,
Чтобы их потом унёс
Шквал истерики и слёз!
(Mirza-Shafi)

When arguing with a woman, a man
Demonstrates the brilliance and strength of his convictions,
Seeks the arguments and causes
For building logical syllogisms,
And all so that, afterwards,
A tempest of hysterics and tears could carry it all away!
(Mirza-Shafi)

CVI.


Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

This is Tennyson's Locksley Hall and Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After (which was, in fact, written some forty years later)--two of my favourite poems :)

Enjoy!
Cat

 

( Both poems here for length: )

One of my long-time favourites:

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)