The Clarity of Crystal Light

The Clarity of Crystal Light, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Then look, who list thy gazeful eyes to feed
With sight of that is fair, look on the frame
Of this wide universe, and therein reed
The endless kinds of creatures which by name
Thou canst not count, much less their natures aim;
All which are made with wondrous wise respect,
And all with admirable beauty deckt.

First th' earth, on adamantine pillars founded,
Amid the sea engirt with brazen bands;
Then th' air still flitting, but yet firmly bounded
On every side, with piles of flaming brands,
Never consum'd, nor quench'd with mortal hands;
And last, that mighty shining crystal wall,
Wherewith he hath encompassed this All.

From An Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty by Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599)

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The Limitless Sky

The Limitless Sky, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Eventually, sometime around the middle of your life,
There’s a moment when the first imagination begins to wane.
The future that had always seemed so limitless dissolves,
And the dreams that used to seem so real float up and fade.
The years accumulate; but they start to take on a mild,
Human tone beyond imagination, like the sound the heart makes
Pouring into the past its hymns of adoration and regret.
And then gradually the moments quicken into life,
Vibrant with possibility, sovereign, dense, serene;
And then the park is empty and the years are still.

I think the saddest memory is of a kind of light,
A kind of twilight, that seemed to permeate the air
For a few years after I’d grown up and gone away from home.
It was limitless and free. And of course I was going to change,
But freedom means that only aspects ever really change,
And that as the past recedes and the future floats away
You turn into what you are. And so I stayed basically the same
As what I’d always been, while the blond light in the trees
Became part of my memory, and my voice took on the accents
Of a mind infatuated with the rhetoric of farewell.

From In the Park by John Koethe (1945 - )

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In The Stillness Of The Light

In The Stillness Of The Light, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Even now, the dream moving towards light, the field of light flowing gently towards me,
I watch myself dreaming, I watch myself dreaming and watching, I watch both watchers together.
~
My vigilance never flags, though; I behold the infernal beholder, I behold the uncanny beheld,
this mind streaming through me, its turbulent stillness, its murmur, inexorable, beguiling.

From Light by C. K. Williams (1936 - )

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Black Swans At Dusk

Black Swans At Dusk, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists … but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.
One single observation or experience can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans (p xvii).

From The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007

Black on flat water past the jonquil lawns
Riding, the black swan draws
A private chaos warbling in its wake,
Assuming, like a fourth dimension, splendor
That calls the child with white ideas of swans
Nearer to that green lake
Where every paradox means wonder.

Though the black swan’s arched neck is like
A question-mark on the lake,
The swan outlaws all possible questioning:
A thing in itself, like love, like submarine
Disaster, or the first sound when we wake;
And the swan-song it sings
Is the huge silence of the swan.

From The Black Swan by James Merrill (1926 - 1995)

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Nature Is A Mirror Of The Soul

Nature Is A Mirror Of The Soul, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

A crisp clear and very still evening, this evening. The water of the Waitohu stream as it reaches the sea where a still and perfect mirror... a mirror of the soul!

That there is another, mirror world, a world of light, and that this world is simply the sky—and a step further, the breath of the sky, the weather, the very air—is a formative belief of great antiquity that has continued to the present day with the godhead becoming brightness itself: dios/theos (Greek); deus/divine/diana (Latin); devas (Sanskrit); daha (Arabic); day (English).

From the book Wolves and Honey by Susan Brind Morrow (2009)

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Reflections in the Silent Stream

Reflections in the Silent Stream, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

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