From the morning watch until night.

prayer, Psalms, ,

PSALM 129

Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord;
O Lord, hear my voice.

Let Thine ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplication.

If Thou shouldest mark iniquities,
O Lord, O Lord, who shall stand?
For with Thee there is forgiveness.

For Thy name’s sake
have I patiently waited for Thee, O Lord;
my soul hath waited patiently for Thy word,
my soul hath hoped in the Lord.

From the morning watch until night,
from the morning watch let Israel hope in the Lord.

For with the Lord there is mercy,
and with Him is plenteous redemption,
and He shall redeem Israel
out of all his iniquities.

 

Orcas are light-hearted.

animals, humanity, poetry, ,

IN PRAISE OF SELF-DEPRECATION

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

-Wislawa Szymborska

When others slept…

love, poetry, prayer, ,

BY NIGHT WHEN OTHERS SOUNDLY SLEPT

By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.

I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bow’d his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.

My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Love him to Eternity.

-Anne Bradstreet

Meeting at Night

poetry, ,

Robert Browning composed this poem during his courtship of Elizabeth Barrett, which her father forbad. The couple eventually eloped and settled in Italy; Elizabeth was never able to reconcile with her father.

            MEETING AT NIGHT

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

-Robert Browning

Portraits by Thomas Buchanan Read, 1852.