Let me confess that the first link that literally leapt into my mind at ‘long’ was Longfellow –
Into each life some rain must fall
Some days must be dark and dreary.
And of course! -
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time.
And hard on their heels came some of the lines
from one of the longest lyric poem in the English language, written by S.T. Coleridge
He
prayeth best who loveth best
All
creatures great and small
For
the dear God who loveth us
He
made and loveth all.
And
from there I somehow, why somehow? - quite logically actually, ended up at Mariposa by Edna St Vincent Millay –
Butterflies
are white and blue
In
this field we wander through
Suffer
me to take your hand
Death
comes in a day or two
All
the things we ever knew
Will
be ashes in the hour
Mark
the transient butterfly
How
he hangs upon the flower
Suffer
me to take your hand
Suffer
me to cherish you
Till
the dawn is in the sky
Whether
I be false or true
Death
comes in a day or two.
Not a single L-word in there, but the
long and short of it is - love is forever linked with loss. Like it or not, there's no getting away.
Hari OM
ReplyDelete... I hear your grief in that last para, Nila... and honour your feeling, but must beg to differ.
Love, if it is genuine, is never lost. Wr, however, forget its eternal nature and it causes us to build attachment. It is in the breaking of those attachments that we feel loss. If we can accept that the Love remains, our grief is softened, melted, attentuated...
Therefore I say, Love is not linked to loss, but lingers for us to be able to remember the lost. Love becomes remembrance.
Sending Love your way... YAM xx
LOVE YAM'S comment. Love and loss are often linked, but to avoid the pain of loss of necessity means passing up on the love. Which I refuse (even if it were possible) to do.
ReplyDeleteOh, I so love so many poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay! My C post was a poetry from called Centro, which included lines from 21 different poems of hers, including Mariposa's "In this field we wander through."
ReplyDeleteexcellent poem choices to convey loss, love, life.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting on my Guest Post today, Nila.
ReplyDeleteMy mum was a great fan of Longfellow's Hiawatha. That's about all I know of his poetry, I'm afraid. But I knew parts of that by heart!
Jemima Pett
Hi Nila - what a wonderful post liaising with each of the parts ... I'll have to look up more about Millay's work ... fascinating to read - all the best - Hilary
ReplyDelete