A Radiant Dawn is Breaking

When, on my eve of life,
a radiant dawn is breaking
and whispering winds
from Heaven's bright plains
are blown,

 

I hear,
from out the sunrise,
voices calling
my feet to brighter paths,
untried,
unknown.

E.E.L.

 Emily Emerson Lantz 

1862 ~ 1931

For as long as this place remains

You see,
I believe that when we leave a place,
part of it goes with us
and part of us remains.

Go anywhere in the station,
when it is quiet,
and just listen.

After a while,
you will hear the echoes
of all our conversations.

Every thought
and word
we've exchanged.

Long after we're gone,
our voices
will linger in these walls
for as long as this place remains.

But I will admit
that the part of me that is going
will very much miss
the part of you that is staying.

Ambassador G-Kar, Babylon 5

Sentimental Sunday :: Remembering the Grandmas

Remembering the Grandmas on Mother's Day . . .




I hear the voices of my grandmas
Calling out from a distant past
"Please do not let us be forgot.
Record our stories that we may last."


Tell the children of our wanderings
Let the kinfolk hear the tales
How we braved the new horizons
How we blazed the olden trails.


How we buried too many babies
How we struggled to keep them fed
How we caressed the hands of our loved ones
As they lay dying on their beds.


How we endured many a hardship
With an eye to the future goal
To create a more promising future
And to keep our family whole.


They were as different from each other
As the scraps in a crazy quilt
Yet once the pieces were sewn together
Another generation they had built


I can sense them calling out to me
From the gloaming of my past
"Please do not let us be forgot.
Record our stories that we may last."

The above family poem was composed by me back in 2009 in response to a challenge posted at Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Poetry and Genealogy . . . and the Wordle (name cloud) was created at wordle.net . . .

Unvisited Tombs

And now having inscribed this brief record, I realize how difficult it is to write history.


A few names have been mentioned,
a few dates noted,
but how many threads must be dropped,
how many facts unwritten,
how many persons forgotten.

Faces vanish,
voices are hushed,
footsteps heard no more.

It may be events important in their results,
names potent for good or ill,
have found no place in this simple story . . .

And we deeply feel the truth of that beautiful saying of George Eliot:

The growing good of the world
is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;
and that things are not so ill
with you and me
as they might have been,
is half owing to the number
who lived faithfully a hidden life,
and rest in unvisited tombs.

Charles P. Kane (1850-1918)

The Spirit of Christmas

   I question if Christmas can ever be “merry”
Except to the heart of an innocent child.
For when time has taught us the meaning of sorrow
And sobered the spirits that once were so wild,
When all the green graves that lie scattered behind us
Like milestones are marking the length of the way,
And echoes of voices that no more shall greet us
Have saddened the chimes of the bright Christmas Day, -—

  We may not be merry, the long years forbid it,
The years that have brought us such manifold smarts;
But we may be happy, if only we carry
The Spirit of Christmas deep down in our hearts.
Three fold is the Spirit, thus blending together
The Faith of the Shepherds who came to the King,
And, knowing naught else but the angels' glad message,
Had only their faith to His cradle to bring;

The Hope of the Wise Men that rose like the day star

To lighten the centuries' midnight of wrong,

And the Love of the Child in the manger low-lying,

So tender and patient, so sweet and so strong.

Hence I shall not wish you the old “Merry Christmas,”

Since that is of shadowless childhood a part,

But one that is holy and happy and peaceful,

The Spirit of Christmas deep down in your heart.

Written

by

Annie Johnson Flint

(24 December 1866 ~ 08 September 1932)

Published

in

The Independent, Hawarden, Iowa, December 21, 1933, Page 9

Time that is gone

I am leaving behind me fifty years of memory.

Memory . . . Who shall say what is real and what is not? 

Can I believe my friends all gone when their voices are a glory in my ears? 

No. 

And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain a living truth within my mind. 

There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. 

You can go back and have what you like of it . . . 

So I can close my eyes on my valley as it was . . . 

from Huw's opening monologue in the movie, How Green Was My Valley