Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Here's a poem for today...

Let's not talk about the books
hardback, paperback, on shelves, floors, tables, desks,
heavy lumps of rotting thoughts
eaten slowly by invisible pests
vapid tomes clung to
like war-time letters from forgotten lovers
without faces
Don't mention the books.

-Rachel Carter

1 comment:

  1. THE TABLES TURNED
    AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT

    UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
    Or surely you'll grow double:
    Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
    Why all this toil and trouble?

    The sun, above the mountain's head,
    A freshening lustre mellow
    Through all the long green fields has spread,
    His first sweet evening yellow.

    Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
    Come, hear the woodland linnet,
    How sweet his music! on my life,
    There's more of wisdom in it.

    And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
    He, too, is no mean preacher:
    Come forth into the light of things,
    Let Nature be your teacher.

    She has a world of ready wealth,
    Our minds and hearts to bless--
    Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
    Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

    One impulse from a vernal wood
    May teach you more of man,
    Of moral evil and of good,
    Than all the sages can.

    Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
    Our meddling intellect
    Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
    We murder to dissect.

    Enough of Science and of Art;
    Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart
    That watches and receives.
    Wordsworth 1798.

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