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THE ENDLESS DREAM
by John Galsworthy.
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CONTENTS
PRAISED BE THE SUN!
TO BEAUTY
SPRING
PEACE IN THE WORLD
BURY HILL
SO MIGHT IT BE!
THE MOMENT WAITING
MOON-NIGHT
AMBERLEY WILDBROOKS
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PRAISED BE THE SUN!
Actually, it is praise to the Sun, in an old fashioned worship offering, admitting a recognition of all that the Sun does for life on Earth.
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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TO BEAUTY
Galsworthy sings paens to Beauty -
"BEAUTY on your wings — flying the far blue,"
- and gives specific instances of it -
"The gold-cups a-field, the flight of the swallow;
"The eyes of the cow who has calved;
"The wind passing from ash-tree to ash-tree!
"For thee shall I never cease aching?"
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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SPRING
"There’s performed in everything
"A miracle of throat and wing.
"Needs but a swallow to flit by
"And print its pattern on the sky.
"Oh! Smell this air!
"The wind it wanders; everywhere
"It plucks a scent. Ah! Exquisite
"The ache of Spring that comes with it!
"And whence it comes, or where it goes —
"The troubling wind of Spring — who knows?"
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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PEACE IN THE WORLD
On one hand, a backhanded-
" ... banish far
"The incense and the reeking breath,
"The lances and the fame of war,
"And all the devilments of death."
-and on the other, a vision -
"So shall we see the eyes of Peace,
"And feel the wafting of Her wings."
Attaching incense to war, death and so forth, is that Europe being empire, looking down at colonies, or CoE doing so at Rome?
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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BURY HILL
Almost comparable to a miniature of the Beethoven's symphony Pastoral, in its paen to the beauty of Sussex downs, with sheep and grass and hills down to sea under a clear sky.
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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SO MIGHT IT BE!
Galsworthy wrote his first Interlude in Forsyte Saga with a wish for himself -
"DEATH, when you come to me, tread with a footstep
"Light as the moon’s on the grasses asleep,"
And
"Death, when you come to me, let there be sunlight,"
With
"Flowers in the fields and the song of the blackbird —
"Spring in the world when you fetch me away!"
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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THE MOMENT WAITING
Galsworthy goes on with beauty of Sussex Downs between sea and sky,
"FOLDED is every sheep, the sunlight’s gone,
"A lonely bird re-takes its evening flight;
"Warmth on the downs, and colour, there is none,
"And yet a Presence — in this lingered light
"Conjured of sky and the green-coated chalk,
"Of air no longer sunlit, and so still —"
but now his vision takes wings, soaring beyond -
"We of the life ephemeral can bow In recognition of eternity.
"Sun and the moon and stars are sequestrate,
"And time — it is not dawn nor noon nor night;
"All is unbounded, and each mortal date
"So little set as thistledown in flight."
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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MOON-NIGHT
Galsworthy continues with the wish he wrote up as the first Interlude of the Forsyte Saga -
"THE moon shines full, the elm-trees stand
"Like sentinels, and shadows spill,
"And up that quiet, unearthly land
"The sheepbells with their tinkling fill
"A silence reaching to the sky;
"The rounded farm-stacks that were gold
"Now moon-lit and unreal lie;
"And all is magical and cold.
"But here, beneath my window, one
"Magnolia flower blooms, alight, Moon-glinted, lovely, and alone,
"As fastened in the hair of night,
"And from it to my nostrils creep
"Such spicy odours as might move
"To raptured waking all who sleep,
"The very moon herself, to love."
- hoping
"It will be dream-like, and goodbye
"Will not be harder than it must;
"For life will leave me with a kiss
"Upon my brow of moonlit dust —
"If night be beautiful like this!"
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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AMBERLEY WILDBROOKS
Galsworthy continues on Sussex beauty -
"Here when in winter-time the wild brooks brimmed
"And with their salty flood annulled the earth,
"Till with a lake the dreaming down was rimmed,
"And wandering water-beauty came to birth,
"With floating birds, and the green icy sky,
"And far the sun so pale and pitying shone;"
and connecting it to his end -
"Man is a dreamer, waking for a day,
"Until the wild brooks of oblivion brim;
"’Tis well his waking self should slip away,
"And momentary dreaming comfort him;
"For so he learns, before the long sleep comes,
"That in himself revolves the starry scheme,
"In him the winter’s mute, the summer hums,
"Just as it will be in the endless dream."
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August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.
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