Wednesday 14 April 2021

L is for ... Long ... n ... Links ..

 



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. 

 


A-Z Challenge 2021   

6 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    ... 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

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  2. 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.

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  3. Oh, 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."

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  4. excellent poem choices to convey loss, love, life.

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  5. Thanks for commenting on my Guest Post today, Nila.
    My 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

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  6. 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

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