Janet Fogg's Blog, page 29

Interest your heart in everything

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within the span of his little life by him who interests his heart in everything. ~ Laurence Sterne.

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Photo by Richard Fogg

Only the mountain remains

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

~ Li Bai.

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Photo by Richard Fogg

Nobler than a dream

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Photo by Richard Fogg

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,


flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!


Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion


its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!


I remember! I’ve seen all, flower, furrow, fountain,


swoon beneath its look, like a throbbing heart…


–Let’s run quickly, it’s late, towards the horizon,


to catch at least one slanting ray as it departs!
~ Charles Baudelaire.

There is another sky

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Photo by Richard Fogg

There is another sky,

Ever serene and fair,

And there is another sunshine,

Though it be darkness there…

Never mind faded forests,

Never mind silent fields –

Here is a little forest,

Whose leaf is ever green.

~ Emily Dickinson.

The sun made me adore it

“Life. This morning the sun made me adore it. It had, behind the dripping pine trees, the oriental brightness, orange and crimson, of a living being, a rose and an apple, in the physical and ideal fusion of a true and daily paradise.” ~ Juan Ramón Jiménez.

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Photo by Richard Fogg

The patterns we perceive

“The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.” ~ John Verndon.

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Taste the beauty

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Photo by Richard Fogg

Go out, go out I beg of you

And taste the beauty of the wild.

Behold the miracle of the earth

With all the wonder of a child.

~ Edna Jaques

Thou art but a tinted ecstasy

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O fluttering, gauzy mystery,

Frail-winged creature, glimmering, fleeing,

Thou art but a tinted ecstasy,—

A joy with life and a tireless being.

Thou hast no purpose to guide thy flight,

Nor does thy folly demand forgiving.

Thy wings must beat with thy heart’s delight

In the glorious rapture of merely living!

~ Ruby Archer.

Patience Taught By Nature

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Photo by Richard Fogg

“O Dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”

And still the generations of the birds

Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds

Serenely live while we are keeping strife

With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife

Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds

Unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards

Unweary sweep: hills watch, unworn; and rife

Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees,

To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass

In their old glory. O thou God of old!

Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these;—

But so much patience, as a blade of grass

Grows by contented through the heat and cold.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Friendship without envy

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Photo by Richard Fogg

Where in this wide world can man find

nobility without pride,

friendship without envy,

or beauty without vanity?

Here where grace is laced with muscle

and strength by gentleness confined.

~ Ronald Duncan.