thought for the moment
HIGH FLIGHT
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft thro' footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew-
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee
A Battle of Britain pilot who did not survive
This poem was contained in a letter to the Times on April 2nd, 2003 from a lady in Oxfordshire. It reminds some of us Devas of the early days of Mind Set Seminars and Sound thinking Limited when Mark Brown introduced the idea of being ‘erted'. If there was the word ‘inert', how could you make sure that people were ‘ert'?
Her letter was as follows:
‘When I was young in the 1940's, I delighted in this poem found in a Christmas Annual. Called A Very Descript Man, it is attributed to a J.H. Parker.
I am such a dolent man,
I eptly work each day;
My acts are all becilic,
I've just ane things to say.
My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt,
I'm gusting and I'm span:
I look with dain on everyone
And am a pudent man.
I travel cognito and make
A delible impression:
I overcome a slight chalance
With gruntled self-possesion
My dignation would be great
If I should digent be:
I trust my vagance will bring
An astrous life for me.'
Journey of the Magi by T S Eliot
'A cold coming we had of it.
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp
The very dead of winter'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory.
Lying down in the melted snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women.
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the villages dirty and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it
At the end we preferred to travel at night
Sleeping in snatches
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet below the snow line, smelling of vegetation
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness.
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins
But there was no information and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death, There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different: this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
NIGHT MAIL by W.H. Auden
This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily, she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blankfaced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens. Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs,
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands,
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, theboring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or a friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feet himself forgotten?
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have gone away.
From The Scottish Himalayan Expedition by W.H. Murray
Drake's Prayer
'O Lord God,
when thou givest to thy servants to endevour any great matter,
grant us also to know that it is not the beginning but the continuing of the same,
until it be thoroughly finished,
which yieldeth the true glory;
through him for who the finishing of thy work laid down his life for us,
our redeemer,
Jesus Christ. Amen'
As used in the Royal Navy, adapted from a dispatch written by Drake.
We are the music-makers,
And we are dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams,
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams.
Yet we are movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
From An Irish Moment by Terence J. Sheehy
Talking Sense to my Senses
Old ears and eyes, so long my patient friends,
For you this silicon nerve and resin lens.
Guides when I heard and saw, yet deaf and blind
Stumbled astray in the mazes of my mind,
Let me assist you now I've lived to see
Far in the dark of what I have to be.
Shunted outside the hubbub of exchange,
Knowledge arrives, articulate and strange,
Voice without breath, light without sun or switch
Beamed from the pulse of an old awareness which
Tells me to age by love and not to cling
To ears, eyes, teeth, knees, hands - or any thing.
This poem is taken from The Other House by Anne Stevenson, OUP, 1990.
Ithaka
When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.
Ask that your way be long.
At many a summer dawn to enter
- with what gratitude, what joy -
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.
Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hadn't anything else to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.
by C P Cavafy
What Is Success
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better
whether by a healthy child, a garden
patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;
this is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
