"the wild echoes flying"

[browngirl]

I had forgotten just how early, and dark, it is in the morning, when I must get up for schooldays. I had forgotten. As I staggered along towadrs the T, I was mopily thinking "summer is over, summer is over", when I looked up and saw the dawn rising in glowing rose and gold --- and then looked across the blue bowl of sky to the moon, profile to me and facing the Sun. That made things a little better.

So, instead of a mournful 'Moo', here is a poem about the long richly-hued light poured across the landscape by the rising sun. (OK, it's really about sunset, but whatever.)



The Splendor Falls

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.

O love they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field, or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Comments

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

I was always kind of relieved when school started again. No more crappy summer job!

I hope I never ever ever ever ever have to scrub another goddamn toilet again, unless it's my own.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Would you believe that as a kid I never had summer jobs? Just a quirk of my life history.

I can certainly see why you'd want school instead of toilet scrubbery!

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

When I was fourteen my Mom insisted I get one, because it was what was done at that age. My first wasn't bad, I helped out at a library. At some point I got downright bitter at hardly getting a proper holiday at all.

[danachan.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that poem is beautiful.

*hug* (So are you.)

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*beams and huggles you* Thank you, sweetie.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous.

And the poem's not bad either.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodness, I am blushing. Thank you. :)

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Isaac Rosenberg may have had Tennyson's poem in the back of his mind when he wrote Returning, We Hear the Larks (http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/isaac_rosenberg/poems/16338).

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

That's a really, really beautiful poem. Thank you for linking me to it.

[vass]

Tennyson! *heart*

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I know! *clutches him to my bosom*