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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Pagan Poetry


Spring has finally sprung though the days of showers and cold winds of March and April are ahead, me I'm looking forward to a summer breeze, amazing the things you can miss, crave and yearn for.  The soft moss is on the barks of trees and the grass is growing.  I haven't noticed much foliage on the trees yet through.  I should look more closely tomorrow.  Spring, ah yes, remember Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem:

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; 5
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning 10
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning

It's also Seachtain na Gaeilge so I've been taking more notice of the language and looking up some seanfhocail. 

Dá fhada an lá
tagann an tráthnóna.
(However long the day,
the evening will come.)

&

Is glas iad na cnoc
i bhfad uainn.
(Distant hills
look green)

Aren't these a little similar to the Japanese haiku?



And next week it will be St. Patrick's Day.  What of the shamrock, with its three leaves representing the father, the son and the holy spirit.  I hope to visit Tara at the weekend. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1nUC45MKzo

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