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larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
A Sermon, Margaret Sackville
There’s room for most things: Tropic seas,
Poll-parrots, beer, the Vicar’s teas,
June nights, transparent Winter dawns,
Tulips ablaze on Summer lawns,
Queer jungle fruits of mammoth size,
And gay Brazilian butterflies;
Chalk cliffs built up of tiny shells,
Delicate mist and faint bluebells,
The sparrow’s brown, the peacock’s tail,
Cathedrals, Florence Nightingale,
Gaby Deslys, Paris, the small
Village tucked snugly round the Hall.—
Yes, room for all if only each
Will live content, nor strive to preach
Its own perfection as the end
Towards which the Universe should tend.
As long as daisies don’t complain
The whole world’s not a daisy-chain,
Or flaunting tropic birds condemn
To ridicule the sober hen;
As long as each with his own shape
Is satisfied—nor tries to ape
Another’s: When the crow puts on
The peacock’s plumes, his charm is gone.
Will o’ the Wisp though shining bright
Won’t keep your kitchen fires alight;
Tame wolves are not domestic cats,
Or fauns less fauns for bowler-hats.
Let neither Faun nor Saint reprove
Others for different ways of love,
Life and delight—there’s room for wings
And feet, for wine and water-springs,
For things that walk and things that dance,
For Iceland and the South of France,
For lake and village-pump and sea,
For You—but also room for Me!
Sackville (1881-1963), the daughter of an earl and so honorifically Lady Margaret, wrote children’s books as well as poetry. She never married, though she had a fifteen-year affair with Ramsay MacDonald, a span that included his first term as Prime Minister. Interestingly, she was a committed and public pacifist during WWI, which said affair also spanned.
(Footnotes: Gaby Deslys was a wildly popular singer and actor of the early 20th century. The fable of the crow and the peacock, sometimes called “The Bird in Borrowed Feathers,” is part of the Phaedrus collection of Aesop. And I now cannot imagine Mr. Tumnus going bare-headed without a bowler hat. I just can’t!)
—L.
Subject quote from Treat People With Kindness, Harry Styles.
A Sermon, Margaret Sackville
There’s room for most things: Tropic seas,
Poll-parrots, beer, the Vicar’s teas,
June nights, transparent Winter dawns,
Tulips ablaze on Summer lawns,
Queer jungle fruits of mammoth size,
And gay Brazilian butterflies;
Chalk cliffs built up of tiny shells,
Delicate mist and faint bluebells,
The sparrow’s brown, the peacock’s tail,
Cathedrals, Florence Nightingale,
Gaby Deslys, Paris, the small
Village tucked snugly round the Hall.—
Yes, room for all if only each
Will live content, nor strive to preach
Its own perfection as the end
Towards which the Universe should tend.
As long as daisies don’t complain
The whole world’s not a daisy-chain,
Or flaunting tropic birds condemn
To ridicule the sober hen;
As long as each with his own shape
Is satisfied—nor tries to ape
Another’s: When the crow puts on
The peacock’s plumes, his charm is gone.
Will o’ the Wisp though shining bright
Won’t keep your kitchen fires alight;
Tame wolves are not domestic cats,
Or fauns less fauns for bowler-hats.
Let neither Faun nor Saint reprove
Others for different ways of love,
Life and delight—there’s room for wings
And feet, for wine and water-springs,
For things that walk and things that dance,
For Iceland and the South of France,
For lake and village-pump and sea,
For You—but also room for Me!
Sackville (1881-1963), the daughter of an earl and so honorifically Lady Margaret, wrote children’s books as well as poetry. She never married, though she had a fifteen-year affair with Ramsay MacDonald, a span that included his first term as Prime Minister. Interestingly, she was a committed and public pacifist during WWI, which said affair also spanned.
(Footnotes: Gaby Deslys was a wildly popular singer and actor of the early 20th century. The fable of the crow and the peacock, sometimes called “The Bird in Borrowed Feathers,” is part of the Phaedrus collection of Aesop. And I now cannot imagine Mr. Tumnus going bare-headed without a bowler hat. I just can’t!)
—L.
Subject quote from Treat People With Kindness, Harry Styles.
no subject
Date: 26 December 2023 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 December 2023 03:25 pm (UTC)