One of my favourite places to photograph is the Toronto Necropolis, as odd as that may sound. I love the Gothic feel and sense of history there. A few weeks ago I was shooting in the Necropolis when I came upon the Columbarium. I paused to read the inscription on the tower: The lines were credited to Longfellow, but I was not familiar with this particular poem. As I found…
They that have power to hurt and will do none,That do not do the thing they most do show,Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,They rightly do inherit heaven’s gracesAnd husband nature’s riches from expense;They are the lords and owners of their faces,Others but stewards of their excellence.The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,Though to itself it only live and die,But if that flower…
Continuing in a Yeats vein, I’ve always enjoyed his poem Among School Children. I look upon the poem as a commentary on growing older and, hopefully, wiser. I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;A kind old nun in a white hood replies;The children learn to cipher and to sing,To study reading-books and history,To cut and sew, be neat in everythingIn the best modern way—the children’s eyesIn momentary wonder stare…
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…” For some unknown reason these words have been going through my head the last couple of weeks. The line is from the poem The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats. I remember some of the poem from required reading of it in English Literature during my university days. Written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War, the poem is also…
Lately I have been reviewing, captioning and posting my travel shots and journal from our 2012 trip to Berlin, Germany. Looking over the pictures we took of the Holocaust memorials and remembering their impact at the time has put me in mind of the powerful First they came… piece of prose. First they came… is the poetic form of a post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller…
The fog was rolling in a couple of days ago, and it put me in mind of the poem we learned in grade school – Fog. I seem to have retained this poem in my long term memory, I guess, due to its simplicity and imagery. I still love it all these years later: Fog The fog comeson little cat feet. It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then…
Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I…
This small excerpt is the last few lines of Tennyson’s Ulysses. It is significant to me because I included it in the eulogy I delivered at my Dad’s funeral. I feel this segment of the poem is all about looking back over a life of hard work and even though it’s now time to rest, we must keep going and keep seeking as the will remains strong. Tho’ much is taken, much abides;…
I’ve always enjoyed Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky and have studied it a couple of times during my education. For me, it conjures up images of monsters and an upside-down, inverted world, such as Alice finds when she passes through the looking glass: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The…
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really…