"All Nature Has A Feeling" - Akaroa

All Nature Has a Feeling

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

John Clare (1793-1864)

"Solitude"

 
  
Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Subtle Beauty Glenorchy

A Golden Day


The subtle beauty of this day
Hangs o'er me like a fairy spell,
And care and grief have flown away,
And every breeze sings, "all is well."
I ask, "Holds earth or sin, or woe?"
My heart replies, "I do not know."

Nay! all we know, or feel, my heart,
Today is joy undimmed, complete;
In tears or pain we have no part;
The act of breathing is so sweet,
We care no higher joy to name.
What reck we now of wealth or fame?

The past--what matters it to me?
The pain it gave has passed away.
The future--that I cannot see!
I care for nothing save today--
This is a respite from all care,
And trouble flies--I know not where.

Go on, oh noisy, restless life!
Pass by, oh, feet that seek for heights!
I have no part in aught of strife;
I do not want your vain delights.
The day wraps round me like a spell
And every breeze sings, "All is well."

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Early Morning Light

Dawn


Day's sweetest moments are at dawn;
Refreshed by his long sleep, the Light
Kisses the languid lips of Night,
Ere she can rise and hasten on.
All glowing from his dreamless rest
He holds her closely to his breast,
Warm lip to lip and limb to limb,
Until she dies for love of him.                         


Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

Paradise Ranch

If I had a ranch, Paradise is the place I would want to be.  Surrounded by mountains with beauty all around.  It is a wonderful scenic drive from Queenstown and a getaway from the tourist and traffic congestion.  Paradise is a rural locality in the Otago region of the South Island of New Zealand. It lies on the eastern side of the Dart River at the head of Lake Wakatipu, close to the settlement of Glenorchy and 45 minute drive from Queenstown.

Sights and Sounds Across the Southern Alps

The TranzAlpine train travels from Christ Church on the East Coast across the Southern Alps to Greymouth on the West Coast.  The train stopped mid way at Arthur's Pass and again for an hour at Greymouth for us to have lunch.  I enjoyed not having to drive. 

"Trees Need Not Walk the Earth"

Trees Need Not Walk the Earth

By David Rosenthal (1920)

Trees need not walk the earth 
For beauty or for bread; 
Beauty will come to them 
Where they stand. 
Here among the children of the sap
Is no pride of ancestry: 
A birch may wear no less the morning 
Than an oak. 
Here are no heirlooms 
Save those of loveliness,
In which each tree 
Is kingly in its heritage of grace. 
Here is but beauty’s wisdom 
In which all trees are wise. 
Trees need not walk the earth
For beauty or for bread; 
Beauty will come to them 
In the rainbow— 
The sunlight— 
And the lilac-haunted rain;
And bread will come to them 
As beauty came: 
In the rainbow— 
In the sunlight— 
In the rain

Mount Fitzwilliam

It was a rainy, foggy day and storm clouds were forming over Mt. Fitzwilliam like a volcanic eruptions.

Clouds over Canterbury Plains

“So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.”

― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse    



Waimakariri River Gorge

That Evening Sun

 

  It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free    

By William Wordsworth      

     

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

"And Into the Forest I go"

And into the forest

I go, to lose my mind

and find my soul.

Unknown

The Road to Paradise

Glow of the evening sky at Lake Wakatipu on the road from Paradise outside of Queenstown, New Zealand.

Hear the Waters of Lake Wakatipu

This is Lake Wakatipu outside of Queenstown New Zealand.  The poem by William Butler Yeats describes the feelings one experiences at this beautiful lake.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in bee-loud glad.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Deep Rivers and Trackless Forests

"Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine - no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.”

 
― Washington Irving, The Sketch Book    

Tangled Woods

 

“Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window... and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time...

But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.”
― Emily Carroll, Through the Woods    

The Lonely Hunter

"The Lonely Hunter"

by Fiona MacLeod

Green branches, green branches, I see you beckon; I follow!

Sweet is the place you guard, there in the rowan-tree hollow.

There he lies in the darkness, under the frail white flowers,

Heedless at last, in the silence, of these sweet midsummer hours.

But sweeter, it may be, the moss whereon he is sleeping now,

And sweeter the fragrant flowers that may crown his moon-white brow:

And sweeter the shady place deep in an Eden hollow

Wherein he dreams I am with him -- and, dreaming, whispers, "Follow!"

Green wind from the green-gold branches, what is the song you bring?

What are all songs for me, now, who no more care to sing?

Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,

But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a shadowy place;

White is the hunter's quarry, a lost-loved human face:

O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow of failing breath,

Led o'er a green hill lonely by the shadowy hound of Death?

Green branches, green branches, you sing of a sorrow olden,

But now it is midsummer weather, earth-young, sun-ripe, golden:

Here I stand and I wait, here in the rowan-tree hollow,

But never a green leaf whispers, "Follow, oh, Follow, Follow!"

O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing:

O never a song I hear now, where one was wont to sing.

Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,

But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

Dwell in the Green Mountain

Green Mountain

By Li Bai

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.