Post by donq on Sept 21, 2014 6:53:16 GMT
(Light post on Sunday)
I don’t know much about paintings. But it is very soothing to look at them. When I think about it, (I used to be good at painting when I was a school boy), no matter how good a painter is, how long did it take to finish each painting? There is a magic in this. It’s like an artist stopped time there or condense a long time into just one present moment, his painting.
Somehow I like this painting of Monet. It’s called “Woman with a Parasol”(Madame Monet and Her Son).
It reminded me of epigraph of The Pilgrim Kamanita: A Legendary Romance (A Buddhist Novel) by Karl Gjellerup (Translated from the German by John Logie):
…’twas the moment deep
When we are conscious of the secret dawn
Amid the darkness that we feel is green…
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where…
…beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far‐back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear
In this dark country of the world!
-Stephen Phillips (1868–1915): Marpessa
And the book begins with something like this:
…As the Master drew near to the City of the Five Hills, day was almost over. The benevolent rays of the evening sun lay along the green rice‐fields and meadows of the far‐reaching plain as if they were emanations from a divine hand extended in blessing. Here and there billowing clouds — of purest gold‐dust it seemed — rolled and crept along the ground, showing that farm‐workers and oxen were plodding wearily homeward from their labour in the fields; and the lengthening shadows cast by isolated groups of trees were bordered by a halo, radiant with all the colours of the rainbow.
Framed in a wreath of blossoming gardens, the embattled gateways, terraces, cupolas and towers of the capital shone forth delicately clear as in some ethereal vision; and a long line of rocky out‐crops, rivalling in colour the topaz, the amethyst and the opal, were patterned into an enamel of incomparable beauty.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Another good poem form Stephen Phillips’s that I like:
A Poet’s Prayer
THAT I have felt the rushing wind of Thee:
That I have run before Thy blast to sea;
That my one moment of transcendent strife
Is more than many years of listless life;
Beautiful Power, I praise Thee: yet I send
A prayer that sudden strength be not the end.
Desert me not when from my flagging sails
Thy breathing dies away, and virtue fails:
When Thou hast spent the glory of that gust,
Remember still the body of this dust.
Not then when I am boundless, without bars,
When I am rapt in hurry to the stars;
When I anticipate an endless bliss,
And feel before my time the final kiss,
Not then I need Thee: for delight is wise,
I err not in the freedom of the skies;
I fear not joy, so joy might ever be,
And rapture finish in felicity.
But when Thy joy is past; comes in the test,
To front the life that lingers after zest:
To live in mere negation of Thy light,
A more than blindless after more than sight.
’Tis not in flesh so swiftly to descend,
And sudden from the spheres with earth to blend;
And I, from splendour thrown, and dashed from dream,
Into the flare pursue the former gleam.
Sustain me in that hour with Thy left hand,
And aid me, when I cease to soar, to stand;
Make me Thy athlete even in my bed,
Thy girded runner though the course be sped;
Still to refrain that I may more bestow,
From sternness to a larger sweetness grow.
I ask not that false calm which many feign,
And call that peace which is a dearth of pain.
True calm doth quiver like the calmest star;
It is that white where all the colours are;
And for its very vestibule doth own
The tree of Jesus and the pyre of Joan.
Thither I press: but O do Thou meanwhile
Support me in privations of Thy smile.
Spaces Thou hast ordained the stars between
And silences where melody hath been:
Teach me those absences of fire to face,
And Thee no less in silence to embrace,
Else shall Thy dreadful gift still people Hell,
And men not measure from what height I fell.
I don’t know much about paintings. But it is very soothing to look at them. When I think about it, (I used to be good at painting when I was a school boy), no matter how good a painter is, how long did it take to finish each painting? There is a magic in this. It’s like an artist stopped time there or condense a long time into just one present moment, his painting.
Somehow I like this painting of Monet. It’s called “Woman with a Parasol”(Madame Monet and Her Son).
It reminded me of epigraph of The Pilgrim Kamanita: A Legendary Romance (A Buddhist Novel) by Karl Gjellerup (Translated from the German by John Logie):
…’twas the moment deep
When we are conscious of the secret dawn
Amid the darkness that we feel is green…
Thy face remembered is from other worlds,
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where…
…beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far‐back, of lives in many stars.
O beauty lone and like a candle clear
In this dark country of the world!
-Stephen Phillips (1868–1915): Marpessa
And the book begins with something like this:
…As the Master drew near to the City of the Five Hills, day was almost over. The benevolent rays of the evening sun lay along the green rice‐fields and meadows of the far‐reaching plain as if they were emanations from a divine hand extended in blessing. Here and there billowing clouds — of purest gold‐dust it seemed — rolled and crept along the ground, showing that farm‐workers and oxen were plodding wearily homeward from their labour in the fields; and the lengthening shadows cast by isolated groups of trees were bordered by a halo, radiant with all the colours of the rainbow.
Framed in a wreath of blossoming gardens, the embattled gateways, terraces, cupolas and towers of the capital shone forth delicately clear as in some ethereal vision; and a long line of rocky out‐crops, rivalling in colour the topaz, the amethyst and the opal, were patterned into an enamel of incomparable beauty.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Another good poem form Stephen Phillips’s that I like:
A Poet’s Prayer
THAT I have felt the rushing wind of Thee:
That I have run before Thy blast to sea;
That my one moment of transcendent strife
Is more than many years of listless life;
Beautiful Power, I praise Thee: yet I send
A prayer that sudden strength be not the end.
Desert me not when from my flagging sails
Thy breathing dies away, and virtue fails:
When Thou hast spent the glory of that gust,
Remember still the body of this dust.
Not then when I am boundless, without bars,
When I am rapt in hurry to the stars;
When I anticipate an endless bliss,
And feel before my time the final kiss,
Not then I need Thee: for delight is wise,
I err not in the freedom of the skies;
I fear not joy, so joy might ever be,
And rapture finish in felicity.
But when Thy joy is past; comes in the test,
To front the life that lingers after zest:
To live in mere negation of Thy light,
A more than blindless after more than sight.
’Tis not in flesh so swiftly to descend,
And sudden from the spheres with earth to blend;
And I, from splendour thrown, and dashed from dream,
Into the flare pursue the former gleam.
Sustain me in that hour with Thy left hand,
And aid me, when I cease to soar, to stand;
Make me Thy athlete even in my bed,
Thy girded runner though the course be sped;
Still to refrain that I may more bestow,
From sternness to a larger sweetness grow.
I ask not that false calm which many feign,
And call that peace which is a dearth of pain.
True calm doth quiver like the calmest star;
It is that white where all the colours are;
And for its very vestibule doth own
The tree of Jesus and the pyre of Joan.
Thither I press: but O do Thou meanwhile
Support me in privations of Thy smile.
Spaces Thou hast ordained the stars between
And silences where melody hath been:
Teach me those absences of fire to face,
And Thee no less in silence to embrace,
Else shall Thy dreadful gift still people Hell,
And men not measure from what height I fell.