Daffodils and Celandines with William Wordsworth

Wordsworth was born on April 7th, the right time of year for someone who wrote so beautifully about daffodils!

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance...

Just down the road from Shrewsbury, where I live, is a tiny but beautiful village called Atcham, where I took a shot of these lovely, cheerful flowers that are still shouting their yellow hoorays everywhere in the UK at the moment…

Wordsworth also wrote about a less well-known wild flower, that is one of the first to bloom – the lesser celandine:

There is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again!

Here are some beautiful bright celandines, from a walk near Hanwood, Shropshire:

There is such a beautiful world around us, and there is something amazingly cheerful in these bright yellows – I don’t know why!

Perhaps it reminds me of the brightness and yellowness of the sun, our source of light and heat, without which neither daffodils, celandines nor humans could live?

The wild flowers seem to shout out, with Wordsworth – “Life Is For Good!”

New Life

Whoever decided to time Easter with springtime in the UK was a genius!

Easter is about new life, and all around us in Shropshire in Staffordshire new lambs are tottering, frisking, staying close to mum, or basking in the sun (or the snow!).

I’ve had some delightful encounters with new families like this…

…this…

…and this…

What brings us new life?

The sight of new life seems to move us instinctively with a warm heart-connection with the fragile, vulnerable young life we see before us – whether animal or human. After all, we were all there once!

Perhaps it is also the heart movement of hope. We see a new life with opportunities ahead of him or her. We are reminded that life is open, about potential, about what is good.

In the spring in the UK in rural Shropshire this is so easy. We are blessed with beautiful countryside all around.

But perhaps the seeds of new life are everywhere potentially if we look closely enough?

Take a look around yourself now.

Are you inspired by hope in anything you see?

The Blossoming of Human Life

Blossom is everywhere in Shropshire at the moment.

I have been reading a book called Wayfaring by Margaret Silf, and some of her words got me thinking about how human life is a kind of blossoming:

“Each human life reflects the same pattern as the universe itself – beginning from a single point, infinitesimally small, and expanding outwards, constantly revealing more and more of its immeasurable potential”
Wayfaring, p.1

There has been the deadness of winter, and now life starts again in the world of trees, bushes and wild flowers. The warmth and light of our distant star, the sun, miraculously calls forth a response from life here on earth.

And we also come from nothing. We depend on the love of others, not a distant star, and yet we also long for “light” of a different kind – the light of hope, the light of relationships, the light of love.

Enjoy the blossoming of human life!

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring” – with Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring”
from ‘Spring’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

In Shropshire it is a beautiful spring, beautiful in colours, in the morning…

…and in the evening…

Life is for good, and it is good to celebrate the beauty we see around us in the colours of dawn, day and evening.

You can read Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem about spring here.

What are you grateful for today?

Sunsets and Moonrises with William Wordsworth

As a teenager I used to cycle home from school. Gazing up at the sky, I would notice the vivid oranges, purples and reds of a beautiful sunset, and one evening I vividly remember being in awe at an enormous rising harvest moon.

I also noticed how many other people walking on the streets did not seem to be aware of these amazing sights, and I was saddened that they did not look beyond themselves at the beauty that was all around them in the sky.

About this time I discovered the poetry of William Wordsworth, and I vividly remember reading these lines from his poem about Tintern Abbey:

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration…
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

Here was someone who did look beyond!

Wordsworth saw “those beauteous forms” and he writes about what in his experience was hard to put into words:

“that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened”

For me, that captured my own experience – the experience of the transcendent I would now call it. An authentic, and quite common, experience, it seems. A spiritual experience.

The experience of looking beyond.

Beyond a Bird, with Gerard Manley Hopkins

What takes you beyond your own concerns, beyond your own feeling, beyond your own life?

For me, once it was simply watching a bird of prey hovering over a reservoir where I had been taken as a child. The bird was a kestrel (see image above), which I knew from an interest I had developed in ornithology, and I was amazed at the way its wings seem to ripple and tremble as it hung in the air, as if magically suspended.

I was transported out of my own self-pity and gloom into a fascination with one of nature’s mysteries. I was taken beyond, into a life beyond my own, a life beyond even human life.

Later in life, I came across this poem, also about a kestrel, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, called “The Windhover” (another name for a kestrel).

It’s not an easy poem to understand at first reading, but I was captivated by the play that Hopkins makes with sounds. You really do need to read the poem out loud (even if quietly!) to hear all the echoes and rhyming sounds. And it is a poem about what is beyond, about revelation.

Hopkins was a Jesuit, and for him the beauty of the bird is a revelation to his heart – a revelation of God, who is “a billion times told lovelier”. He describes the “fire” that “breaks” from God – the fire of the Spirit, the energies of God.

A bird took him, and me, beyond. What takes you beyond?

Here is the full poem:

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
⁠dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
⁠Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,
⁠As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
⁠Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
⁠Buckle! and the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

⁠No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
⁠Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins/The Windhover – Wikisource, the free online library

To Live Is To Be

To live

Is to be

That is the blossoming

Of a great mystery.

Watching Garden Birds with Emily Dickinson

There’s a poem by Emily Dickinson which I love, which begins like this:

A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw

A few weekends ago in the UK, it was “The Big Garden Birdwatch”, organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and I was there, with thousands of others, eagerly waiting to see what would appear on a drizziliy and sleety January Saturday morning.

Every day the birds bless us with their presence. They come, without being asked, and fly overhead, or perch on a wall, or hop around the bushes.

I think Emily Dickinson, the nineteenth century American poet, also loved birds, because in another poem she describes Hope as a bird:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

It makes life good for me when I notice our beautiful bird life in around Shrewsbury. We see red kites, dippers, kingfishers…the list goes on.

Their gift of flight is something we can only achieve by technology. Emily Dickinson’s poem about birds ends with this beautiful description of flying:

Then he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home –

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam

You can read the two poems referred to in this post by following these links:

‘A Bird Came Down The Walk’

‘Hope Is The Thing With Feathers On‘

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay

Raindrops, and the “Little World Made Cunningly” of John Donne

“I am a little world made cunningly”
John Donne

The other day it was raining in Shrewsbury, and I as I approached my bedroom window my eye was caught by something extraordinary.

Not by the view over the houses on the other side of the street towards the trees of the nearby nature reserve of Rea Brook, not by the dismal grey skies, but by the tiny water droplets clinging to the window pane.

Each was “a little world made cunningly“.

This wonderful phrase comes from a poem by John Donne which begins like this:

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite
John Donne, ‘Holy Sonnets’

John Donne saw in himself “a little world”, a worthy, valuable existence, an existence with the potential for good. He saw in himself “sprite” (not the fizzy drink!) – we would say “spirit” today. It is true that he also saw in himself conflict, and if you are interested in this, you can read the whole poem here.

In each raindrop, I saw the same image of the road reflected, each time in a slightly different way. It was like an infinity of different perspectives that infinitely expanded the view from my own eyes.

A day that had appeared so grey and empty of interest suddenly seized me with interest. I lived in a “world made cunningly“.

Wouldn’t life be good if we could adopt this vision of John Donne’s more frequently, and see “a little world made cunningly” in everyone we meet and in everything we see?

Singing for Hope with Thomas Hardy

In the darkness of a January morning in Shropshire I heard a song thrush calling.

It’s easy to recognise because of its beautiful and strong repetitive song.

You can listen to its song here.

There’s a great poem by Thomas Hardy called ‘The Darkling Thrush’, which I always think about in the darkness December and January, which ends like this:

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.
~
So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.
from ‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Thomas Hardy

Well, there can sometimes seem “so little cause…written on terrestrial things” for hope at the moment. And yet despite the darkness, even in the darkness, we still can find things to appreciate and enjoy.

Many psychologists recommend keeping a Gratitude Journal to help us focus on the good things in life. And maybe it makes Lif4Gd if we can manage to stay focused on moments of joy whilst also accepting the suffering around us.

See if you can notice a few things that bring you joy today. It’s a great discipline to try to find a few things every day.

If you would like to read the full version of Thomas Hardy’s poem, it is available here.