Happy 27th Birthday to Quotemail: A Poetical Quintet

Hello everyone – 

This past Tuesday, November 8^th, marked the 27^th birthday of the RHC Fortnightly Quotemail emailing list! 😊 The list now known as the RHC Quotemail began during my graduate school days in the German Department at the University of Illinois. Its original name was REEL – Rob’s Eclectic Edutainment List. It was primarily aimed at friends and colleagues in the German Department, but it began to expand slowly but surely as my worksites changed over the years. When I moved to the Graduate College Information Office in 1997, this list became the “Quote of the Week,” and when I moved to the ACES James Scholar Honors Program in 2000, it was simply called “Quotemail.” Today, this list can boast over 100 members who receive snippets of poetry and prose, mixed in with some inspiration and humor, every other week.

In honor of this auspicious occasion, I’d like to share with you a quintet of poems that evoke fond memories of my childhood days. Key themes include my ever-increasing sense of wonder at the world around me; my parents reading to me every day; my maternal grandmother’s magical storytelling times with me; and last but not least, my desire to know and understand what lies beyond the visible world that we can perceive with our everyday senses.

 

“Wonder”

By Thomas Traherne (1637-1674)

 

How like an angel came I down!

How bright are all things here!

When first among his works I did appear

O how their glory me did crown!

The world resembled his eternity,

In which my soul did walk;

And everything that I did see

Did with me talk.

 

The skies in their magnificence,

The lively, lovely air;

Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!

The stars did entertain my sense,

And all the works of God, so bright and pure,

So rich and great did seem,

As if they ever must endure

In my esteem.

 

A native health and innocence

Within my bones did grow,

And while my God did all his glories show,

I felt a vigor in my sense

That was all spirit. I within did flow

With seas of life, like wine;

I nothing in the world did know

But 'twas divine.

 

Harsh ragged objects were concealed,

Oppressions tears and cries,

Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes

Were hid, and only things revealed

Which heavenly spirits, and the angels prize.

The state of innocence

And bliss, not trades and poverties,

Did fill my sense.

 

The streets were paved with golden stones,

The boys and girls were mine,

Oh how did all their lovely faces shine!

The sons of men were holy ones,

In joy and beauty they appeared to me,

And everything which here I found,

While like an angel I did see,

Adorned the ground.

 

Rich diamond and pearl and gold

In every place was seen;

Rare splendors, yellow, blue, red, white and green,

Mine eyes did everywhere behold.

Great wonders clothed with glory did appear,

Amazement was my bliss,

That and my wealth was everywhere:

No joy to this!

 

Cursed and devised proprieties,

With envy, avarice

And fraud, those fiends that spoil even Paradise,

Flew from the splendor of mine eyes,

And so did hedges, ditches, limits, bounds,

I dreamed not aught of those,

But wandered over all men's grounds,

And found repose.

 

Proprieties themselves were mine,

And hedges ornaments;

Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents

Did not divide my joys, but all combine.

Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteemed

My joys by others worn:

For me they all to wear them seemed

When I was born.

 

“The Fairy Book”

By Norman Gale (1862-1942)

 

In summer, when the grass is thick, if Mother has the time,

She shows me with her pencil how a poet makes a rhyme,

And often she is sweet enough to choose a leafy nook,

Where I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairy-book.

 

In winter when the corn’s asleep, and birds are not in song.

And crocuses and violets have been away too long,

Dear Mother puts her thimble by in answer to my look,

And I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairy-book.

 

And Mother tells the servants that of course they must contrive

To manage all the household things from four till half-past five,

For we really cannot suffer interruption from the cook,

When we cuddle close together with the happy Fairy-book.

 

“The World Of Faery”

By Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914)

 

I. When in the pansy-purpled stain

Of sunset one far star is seen,

Like some bright drop of rain,

Out of the forest, deep and green,

O'er me at Spirit seems to lean,

The fairest of her train.

 

II. The Spirit, dowered with fadeless youth,

Of Lay and Legend, young as when,

Close to her side, in sooth,

She led me from the marts of men,

A child, into her world, which then

To me was true as truth.

 

III. Her hair is like the silken husk

That holds the corn, and glints and glows;

Her brow is white as tusk;

Her body like a wilding rose,

And through her gossamer raiment shows

Like starlight closed in musk.

 

IV. She smiles at me; she nods at me;

And by her looks I am beguiled

Into the mystery

Of ways I knew when, as a child,

She led me 'mid her blossoms wild

Of faery fantasy.

 

V. The blossoms that, when night is here,

Become sweet mouths that sigh soft tales;

Or, each, a jeweled ear

Leaned to the elfin dance that trails

Down moonrayed cirques of haunted vales

To cricket song and cheer.

 

VI. The blossoms that, shut fast all day,

Primrose and poppy, darkness opes,

Slowly, to free a fay,

Who, silken-soft, leaps forth and ropes

With rain each web that, starlit, slopes

Between each grassy spray.

 

VII. The blossoms from which elves are born,

Sweet wombs of mingled scent and snow,

Whose deeps are cool as morn;

Wherein I oft have heard them blow

Their pixy trumpets, silvery low

As some bee's drowsy horn.

 

VIII. So was it when my childhood roamed

The woodland's dim enchanted ground,

Where every mushroom domed

Its disc for them to revel 'round;

Each glow-worm forged its flame, green drowned

In hollow snow that foamed

 

IX. Of lilies, for their lantern light,

To lamp their dance beneath the moon;

Each insect of the night,

That rasped its thin, vibrating tune,

And owl that raised its sleepy croon,

Made music for their flight.

 

X. So is it still when twilight fills

My soul with childhood's memories

That haunt the far-off hills,

And people with dim things the trees,

With faery forms that no man sees,

And dreams that no man kills.

 

XI. Then all around me sway and swing

The Puck-lights of their firefly train,

Their elfin reveling;

And in the bursting pods, that rain

Their seeds around my steps, again

I hear their footsteps ring;

 

XII. Their faery feet that fall once more

Within my way; and then I see,

As oft I saw before,

Her Spirit rise, who shimmeringly

Fills all my world with poetry,

The Loveliness of Yore.

 

“The Song of Wandering Aengus” (1899)

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

[Note: The Editor wishes to dedicate this poem to R.L.P., a kindred spirit from my childhood days.]

 

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

 

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

  

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the Moon,

The golden apples of the Sun.

 

27 years ago, in November 1995, Pioneer XI – the first space probe to explore Saturn – lost contact with NASA after leaving the Solar System in 1990. It is now traveling through interstellar space, carrying a plaque with a pictographic message for any extraterrestrial civilization that might encounter it in the distant future. (Image Credit: Public Domain – NASA)

 

“On Reading Lord Dunsany’s Book of Wonder”

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

 

The hours of night unheeded fly,

And in the grate the embers fade;

Vast shadows one by one pass by

In silent daemon cavalcade.

 

But still the magic volume holds

The raptured eye in realms apart,

And fulgent sorcery enfolds

The willing mind and eager heart.

 

The lonely room no more is there —

For to the sight in pomp appear

Temples and cities poised in air

And blazing glories — sphere on sphere.

 

Happy 27^th birthday to Quotemail, AND a very Happy 27^th birthday to a special listmember extraordinaire, my cousin Zenaida. 😊

 

Until next time –

Rob