Everything has to have meaning. Things have to stand for something.

Poetry for the day:

I have been reading some poems by Frederick Seidel recently and given that the first blush of spring flowers has greeted me in the front-yard, I thought today may be an appropriate time to share this poem.

Ode to Spring
by Frederick Seidel

I can only find words for.
And sometimes I can’t.
Here are these flowers that stand for.
I stand here on the sidewalk.

I can’t stand it, but yes of course I understand it.
Everything has to have meaning.
Things have to stand for something.
I can’t take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep.

I say to the flower stand man:
Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man.
I’ll take a dozen of the lilies.
I’m standing as it were on my knees

Before a little man up on a raised
Runway altar where his flowers are arrayed
Along the outside of the shop.
I take my flames and pay inside.

I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface.

~*~

Music for the day:

Ode to Spring (Ode au printemps), Op. 76 by Joachim Raff, the German-Swiss composer and pianist.

~*~

Art for the day:

From the Almond Blossoms series by Vincent van Gogh, the painting,  Branches with Almond Blossom, painted in 1890 and currently in the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.

Source

When wild notes warbled among leafy bowers

Poem for the day:

It was in Spring 1819 that John Keats wrote many of his major odes and for some reason I thought there was one to Spring but hark; it seems not! The poet wrote a poem in celebration of Autumn later that year but no poem for Spring! And I perused through the many other poems writ in celebration of spring but did not find one that appealed to me for sharing here with thee today.

Then, I found these lines …from the poet whose work, amongst all the Romantics, appeals to me the most. (His nature poems are great but my favorite poem of his is  Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood but more about that some other time. I could have chosen some lines from his poem ‘Lines Written in Early Spring‘ but nope – for now, these are the lines that called out.

A Farewell

by William Wordsworth

And this sweet spring, the best beloved and best;
Joy will be flown in its mortality;
Something must stay to tell us of the rest.
Here, thronged with primroses, the steep rock’s breast
Glittered at evening like a starry sky;
And in this bush our sparrow built her nest,
Of which I sang one song that will not die.

O happy Garden! whose seclusion deep
Hath been so friendly to industrious hours;
And to soft slumbers, that did gently steep
Our spirits, carrying with them dreams of flowers,
And wild notes warbled among leafy bowers;
Two burning months let summer overleap,
And, coming back with Her who will be ours,
Into thy bosom we again shall creep.

Music for the day:

Ode au printemps (Ode to Spring) in G major, Op. 76, by Joachim Raff, a German-Swiss composer

Art for the day:

This painting by Vincent van Gogh, from a series of paintings on Flowering Orchards. According to wikiepedia, Vincent van Gogh painted these in Arles, in southern France in the spring of 1888. “Van Gogh arrived in Arles in February 1888 amid a snowstorm, within two weeks the weather changed and the fruit trees were in blossom. Appreciating the symbolism of rebirth, Van Gogh worked with optimism and zeal on about fourteen paintings of flowering trees in the early spring.”

 

“And this sweet spring, the best beloved and best…”

Orchard with Blossoming Plum Trees – Vincent van Gogh, 1888 (Source).