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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51002/spring-56d22e75d65bd

Spring

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)
Related

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13818697-200-mind-body-modes-of-mind-what-have-small-children-playing-with-dolls-in-as-edinburgh-nursery-got-to-do-with-buddhism-one-psychologist-says-she-has-found-a-link/

. “It is
in the second half of the book, however, that Donaldson asks herself that
‘very important question’: do the emotions develop in parallel with the
intellect?

She takes as her starting point the fact that many people report intense
emotional responses to works of art or to nature and, further, that many
also report having powerful ‘spiritual’ experiences. These kinds of experiences
interest her because, like the thinking of the advanced intellectual modes,
they seem relatively free of entanglement in ‘narrow personal goals’.

But such experiences are rarely the subject of scientific scrutiny.
So to study them, she is forced to look at how they have been perceived
in the past and how the world’s great religions, especially Buddhism, evaluate
and attempt to cultivate them.

She concludes that there are indeed advanced modes of development for
the emotions. Since these emotions are deeply significant for the people
who experience them, she calls them ‘value-sensing’. She identifies a ‘value-sensing
construct mode’, which is the realm of the arts and of religious myth and
ritual, and mirrors the intellectual construct mode with its scientific
thought. And then there is a ‘value-sensing transcendent mode’ which is
the realm of spiritual experience, and mirrors the intellectual transcendent
mode with its mathematics.

She describes these modes as ‘advanced in the developmental sense, in
that you can’t get them in the early stages of living. They are also perhaps
advanced in another sense, in that they have to be cultivated more than
the early ones. There may be flashes of either emotional or intellectual
insight, but to cultivate them you have to be systematic and disciplined
and you rely more heavily on teaching.’

Her ideal is to be able to move from one mode to another at will. We
may choose to think logically about a problem, for example, when that is
useful to us. In the same way, it can be useful to have transcendent emotional
experiences. ‘They put our personal goals into some sort of perspective.
By being more aware of our emotions and valuing them more, we might live
more happily and society might work better.’

She concludes by speculating on the possibility of a ‘dual enlightenment’
in which intellect and emotion are equally valued. If that happens, ‘we
may come to feel less embarrassed about and suspicious of transcendent emotion,
seeing it as no more ‘weird’ than the capacity for mathematical thought’.
Each of these, she says, is ‘a normal, though generally ill-developed, power
of the human mind’.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/paul-laurence-dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

I was always aware that meeting people who enjoyed conversation was good for generating new ideas for writing and for living in new ways and that it is two way
But I find, in addition, writing to friends can have a bigger impact than I would have believed.One of my friends I knew at University and we have quite a lot on common including coming from the same part of England.Yet because our interests only overlap, each of us might say something unexpected or new which makes the other think
Another friend is Australian and the vocabulary there is slightly different.However his background in terms of religion and being another “lapsed” Catholic gives us common ground.I find that without conscious effort both of these people affect the words I use when I am writing.I am surprised what a big effect it can have.
Yet I have another friend who is not a lapsed Catholic and who is interested in the meaning of life and has studied and written about things I would find very painful like trauma and the holocaust.Yet his ideas give me new trains of thought and remind me of how different friends can be.He is still a Christian in a meaningful way.
I have one school friend and it’s really nice to talk to someone who has the same accent and knows about your adolescent years
The ideal seems to be someone who is different but not too different and that you need to feel a sense of trust with them.And they need to have an interest in you and what you do
As we get older we might mix less with people unlike ourselves so I’d advise people to at least talk to people with different ideas,views, religion or lack of.
I have a very close friend who is stunningly knowledgeable about both Art and Music and we share a common interest in cooking and music.I have someone I can ask for help or information as I am not very well up in Art History.
I imagine again it is easy to stay friends with people who are very similar to you.I am lucky as I taught people from many parts of the world so I am happy now to meet people who have moved here from other countries or people who have a different ethnic background.Because even a slightly different perspective on the world is beneficial especially if you want to write
My husband was critical of writing and he sometimes said to me if I read him one of my poems
Did YOU write that?
I think he didn’t believe that starting to write poetry after being a mathematician was a very bright idea.But on the whole he did encourage me, mainly to make me write more stories about Stan and his cat Emile and Dave the paramedic
I also recall now writing a long poetic email to a foreign friend.He wrote back,Where have you copied this writing from?
I answered,I wrote it myself.He never responded
I had the same thing when I wrote a poem about numbers which I sent to a mathematical friend.He wrote back saying,I wonder who wrote that
Don’t let it get you down if people unintentionally seem a bit surprised you can do things they didn’t know you could.
But, on the other hand, be aware some people might be envious if you learn new skills and they may say really offensive words to you.So ignore them.
I imagine then that since talking/writing to others affects my poetry it must affect our minds and so I think it’s a good idea to do new things or even walk a different way to town and go into different shops.Go to see a film that is not the type you usually see
Take an interest in people of different religions/ occupations; difference, even slight, improves how our minds work
Even using social media helps our brains as we age.So I read.
Naturally we want stability and familiarity in our lives so I am only talking of adding to that or even talking about a different topic than you usually do.Women are interested in more than recipes and men can be interested in cookery or sewing or mathematics as well as politics and drinking whiskey
The more different people and views, the better we learn always remembering a basis of trust,kindness and respect for the other person’s privacy and need for private time even if you live with them.We all need our “sacred space”
If you are shy, tell yourself people will benefit from meeting you if you can join in a conversation with just a few words.Lots of us blush or get weak knees in certain settings.Recall most people don’t notice as much as we imagine and that a lively spirit makes one beautiful

Anxiety’s a sickness like a cough
There’s no reason for the nerves and butterflies
So,we should all enjoy a gruesome laugh
When we read Trump’s tweets and hear his lies

His finger on a button like a plate
At any moment nuclear war might start
We feel the terror in our very hearts
As we feed out children,quite distraught

He said his button like his manhood’s large
We can’t see the monkey playing ball
Will he share a selfie, gross image?
Will he like an apple take a fall?

Every day we see the fruits of war
Children screaming,starving filled with fear
Will it ever end until we are
Blown up by a bomb in someone’s car

Then we see our leaders fight like snakes
Poisoning each other as they speak
Forgetting that more evil may awake
Wishing to ensnare the poor and meek

“Ruling” a democracy,they lie
They are there to steal and kill. we cry
If we choose one evil,one still hides
Waiting till it too can get onboard

Ignorant, we vote against our selves
Imagining the Empire still remains
Ignoring, we make worse the nation’s health
And makes us suffer panic and self blame

Is it sick to see reality
To be nervous when jobs are cruelty?
A courier died for he had to be
Out delivering parcels DPD’s

The poor live as if forever tense
Some poor folk are better at pretense
Hands most always tight with fingers clenched
While flight and fight make nonsense of our sense

From screen to scream the mind receives impacts
A murder or a rape or Trump’s strange tweets.
No reverie or dream survives intact

So we enjoy the hit and torture wracked?
At any hour excitement will one greet
From screen to scream the mind receives impact

And into human minds this dross is packed;
It leaves no space for silence or retreat
No reverie or dream survives intact

We will no longer suffer from our lacks
The enemy, old boredom, we defeat
From screen to scream the mind receives impact

Will one day the screen take a great crack
We will see that nothing dwells beneath
No reverie or dream survives intact

Allow us all to suffer life’s own griefs
Before we fall to earth like old brown leaves
From screen to scream our heart with pain contracts
No reverie or dream survives intact

I see the old fall and the new erupt
Like new growth in plants from rain and heat
But what is new may also be corrupt

Transitions need not be so stark,abrupt
But like a gentle tide they kind can sweep
I see the old drop and the new erupt

Life does better when shocks don’t disrupt
Though evil in disguise may stealthy creep
All that’s new may also be corrupt

Are we in this race for power still trapped
When nowhere may security take sleep
I see the old fall and the new erupt

From our hearts and minds, good will is sucked
So we lose the power to think and act
All that’s new may also be corrupt

No longer are we agents armed with maps
Agency first slumped and then it lapsed
I see the old doomed and the new excite
But what is new or strange may not be right

https://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_lakoff

BLVR: Can you explain to me in layman’s neuroscience terms how September 11 changed the way we think?

GL: It reshaped our brains. That’s why they had to keep showing the towers falling over and over and over again. The imagery meant that the towers were people. The planes going in are like bullets going through your brain, the people falling are you falling. Here’s a picture of you dying. The other thing was it was framed in terms of war, instead of crime. Then it was not just war, but metaphorical war, where the enemy is this abstract thing: terror. Terror, which is in you. That’s what’s sort of weird. The enemy is inside America. It’s terror, not terrorists, the outside guys. Of course, by saying ña war on terrorî you can never feel safe. The locus of the war is in you.

BLVR: Are the conservatives who formulated all of these terms aware of these other meanings?

GL: Yeah. I suspect Karen Hughes is smart enough to understand that.

BLVR: Really?

GL: Sure. Think about the image of those towers falling. Think about your empathic response. What you see there you feel in your body. You feel that the terror is in you. You feel that the destruction is in you. Just by looking at it over and over and over, it’s come into you, it’s changed your brain. And so you become the war. It’s not over there in Iraq. Now, you justify the war by saying, “It’s better that it’s fought there than here,” which is the relief. But of course, metaphorically, it’s here. There are people all over the Midwest worrying about the war, especially women, who are empathic, feeling it themselves, worrying that the war is going to come to Peoria, Illinois.

BLVR: Karl Rove’s strategy seems to be to take a Democratic candidate’s greatest strength and manage to turn it into their greatest weakness. He’s good at it. They did it with John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary, and with the Swift Boat thing. Is Kerry finally learning that lesson?

GL: That’s the idea. That’s just what happened. He’s learned exactly that lesson. In fact, he’s learned three of those lessons. They came out in that speech the other night. One lesson is to go after Iraq. Two is to go after Bush’s character by questioning his honesty. And three is to bring up the issue of weakening the country. And he finally started doing all three in the same speech and it was thrilling.

BLVR: Were you impressed with the tightness of the Republican convention?

GL: Incredible. Very impressive. What the Republicans did was craft a new complex frame bringing everything together. They had a job for each night. The job for the first night was to take the war on terror and generalize it to include Iraq, to say the Iraq war is an inherent part of the war on terror and is not only necessary, but inseparable. And then to generalize that to say “This is the great calling of our generation.” So you had lots of FDR, Lincoln and Reagan. Over and over again. It was weird to see FDR being pushed by conservatives who want to get him off the dime.

BLVR: Have there honestly been proposals to take him off the dime?

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sent-to-coventry.html

Quote:

The first known citation of the allusory meaning is from the Club Book of the Tarporley Hunt, 1765:

“Mr. John Barry having sent the Fox Hounds to a different place to what was ordered … was sent to Coventry, but return’d upon giving six bottles of Claret to the Hunt.”

By 1811, the then understood meaning of the term was defined in Grose’s The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

To send one to Coventry; a punishment inflicted by officers of the army on such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial. The person sent to Coventry is considered as absent; no one must speak to or answer any question he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same place. On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.

A well-known example of someone being sent to Coventry is Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), after his falling out with the Liddell family. Dodgson had developed a close relationship with the Liddell’s daughter Alice. In 1863, when Alice was 11, something happened to cause the family to ostracize him. Whatever it was we can’t now be sure as, although Dodgson recorded it in his diary at the time, the entry was later cut out by a Dodgson family member. This has led to widespread but unproven speculation that the relationship between Dodgson and Alice was inappropriate in some way – possibly what would now be called paedophilic.

The inner coil and tangle of the wild,
Where rose run mad and holly are as one
Ensure that nature’s heart is undefiled

To these depths, the winter bird’s beguiled
Until the red dawn’s fetched by lowly sun
Through the coil and tangle of the wild.

On the path’s side, brown-green leaves are piled
A thousand beetles search for food within
A hidden space where nature’s undefiled

The cat is waiting, acting like the mild
Then dancing, hunting, acting like his kin
At ease in coil and tangle of worlds wild.

The sun is setting, and the night clouds pile
As lovers kiss, so smiles the holy one,
Living all his natures undefiled.

Now, at last, the darkness has begun
The trees unmoving shield the riots within
The inner coil and tangle make the wild,.
Is the space for soul still undefiled?

http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/?utm_source=American+Life+in+Poetry&utm_campaign=d6f4095c69-ALP_671&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_48be47dc96-d6f4095c69-187922245

The sap is rising in the trees nearby
Till the blossom bursts like mother’s milk
When the baby gives her carnal cry
Wishing for the breast, the feel of silk

Soon the great magnolia will please
And the Tudor walls will warm and dry
In the soil, the worms find wriggled ease
The centipedes and beetles heed blue skies

Fruit trees pruned into archaic forms
Line the pavements bulging with their roots
Old men murmur, feeling struck, forlorn,
With no wife to gentle their pursuits

Nature pregnant,uncontained and wild
Obeys no man’s instruction to be mild

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_personal_names#Single_names_and_names_within_families

Extract
Compound names
Demosthenes is compounded from two ordinary Greek roots (a structure at least as old as proto-Indo-European):[8] demos “people” and sthenos “strength”. A vast number of Greek names have this form, being compounded from two clearly recognizable (though sometimes shortened) elements: Nikomachos from nike “victory” and mache “battle”, Sophokles from sophos “wise, skilled” and kleos “glory”, Polykrates from poly “much” and kratos “power”. The elements used in these compounds are typically positive and of good omen, stressing such ideas as beauty, strength, bravery, victory, glory, and horsemanship. The order of the elements was often reversible: aristos and kleos give both Aristokles and Klearistos. Such compounds have a more or less clear meaning. But as was already noted by Aristotle,[9] two elements could be brought together in illogical ways. Thus the immensely productive hippos “horse” yielded, among hundreds of compounds, not only meaningful ones such as Philippos “lover of horses” and Hippodamas “horse-tamer”, but also Xenippos “stranger horse” and Andrippos “man horse”.

Ironing

by Vicki Feaver
I used to iron everything:
My iron flying over sheets and towels
like a sledge chased by wolves over snow;

the flex twisting and crinking
until the sheath frayed, exposing
wires like nerves. I stood like a horse

with a smoking hoof,
inviting anyone who dared
to lie on my silver padded board,

to be pressed to the thinness
of dolls cut from paper.
I’d have commandeered a crane

if I could, got the welders at Jarrow
to heat me an iron the size of a tug
to flatten the house.

Then for years I ironed nothing.
I put the iron in a high cupboard.
I converted to crumpledness.

And now I iron again: shaking
dark spots of water onto wrinkled
silk, nosing into sleeves, round

buttons, breathing the sweet heated smell
hot metal draws from newly-washed
cloth, until my blouse dries

to a shining, creaseless blue,
an airy shape with room to push
my arms, breasts, lungs, heart into.

From The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart (Particular, £12.99). Poem courtesy of Vicki Feaver and Jonathan Cape

When we wonder whether life is good
Disaster, death, misfortune gather near
As if to come inside us if they could

The poisoned thoughts infiltrate our own blood
Makes it difficult for us to steer
When we wonder whether life is good

Who decided most  news must be gloom?
And we’d even pay to have a leer
As if to take it in us if we  could

Tell us  of   more murders and monsoons,
Literacy’s fruit is haunted fear
So we wonder whether life is good

Yet some learn to  hear more joyful tunes
Allow the glad to enter inner ears
So take it in us as we rightly should

Too many thoughts may make gloom  persevere
Empty heads are joyous and sincere
When we wonder whether life is good
Rumination  tortures with its ” should”

In winter we  are angry with less  light
We feel our troubles more when in the dark
The sun will rise  yet too soon sinks in spite

We envy God who does what deeds he likes
He leaves us kin to Job with vision stark
In winter we’d appreciate more light

Angry, claiming we have done what’s right
We   think that God has now become a shark
The sun will rise  yet too soon sinks in spite

Bow to Nature’s  overwhelming might
Be grateful for the fire lit by one spark
In winter we appreciate the light

Oh,send us humour for the human plight
We are never sated by one lark
The sun looms in the sky  like a red heart

As the cats miaow and dogs all bark
At least we are not trapped in Noah’s Ark
In dark winter  bored with the long nights
The sun will rise  again  golden and bright

Oh, cradle my soul in your light
As I am in darkness tonight.
Fill me with your love
On earth,not above.
Your touch is both gentle and bright.

Seeing and feeling are one.
As senses conjoin yet are none.
I know it is so
The darkness shall glow
You are both god and person.

It seems like the heavens are weeping
Rain and snow fall while we’re sleeping
The clouds are grey black
As Northward they trek.
As for records, are they all we are keeping?

We dwell in a body of flesh
With others we love to enmesh.
Let’s get up and dance now
Love shows us how…
We dance to the tunes that refresh

We humans need meaning to create.
The meaningless often agitate.
But stories abound.
Pick the best you have found.
Get in there and start to narrate.

In nature time goes round and round
Life’s a spiral, the wise one has found.
Each time I pass you
I see you anew
Until gently we are laid in the ground.

The end is the beginning,they say.
So say what’s important today.
For time flows like a stream
What is ,soon has been.
So we are foolish to attempt to delay

Addiction can be learned at any age
There is just  the content  and the choice
Why not do it now,it’s all the rage?

For me,it’s mainly  words on one book page
Ideally spoken by a human voice
Addiction can be learned at any age

Once your will is to your mind engaged
Forget your human eyes were ever moist
Why not scream  right now,it’s all the rage?

Beauty,truth and love can be debased
It’s popular right now to practice  lies
Addiction can be learned at any age

Nothing is true or false or it’s erased
Reality by dream is well advised
Why not kill it now,it’s off the page?

Children grow up and out of toys
Why should the addict be de-voiced?
Addiction can be learned at any age
Does even a baby love their cage?

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/5452/auto/0/A-DEAD-TREE-FULL-OF-LIVE-BIRDS

Why does nobody seem to call their child Plato?
Plato Chips
Plato Bred
Since Adam and Eve are popular why not Euclid?

Euclid May

Who are Eucliding?

Moses  is a famous prophet and indeed is still a popular name
Moses Might

In the UK nobody is called Jesus but Joshua is popular

I was only joshing you

Jewish  names are common and we didn’t know in the UK

Michael Mary Ann Ruth Rebecca
David
Joseph
John

Herod is not common

But Greek names are not

Socrates Spatt
Oedipus Wrecks
Aristotle Lears
Plato Tarts
Electra Ruin
Eros Again O’Lord
What about Roman names?They are popular
Augustine O’Cummin
Julius O’Jokes
Julia McGenerates
Playme O’video
Gemma G’eneralise’d
Brutus B’erates
Crime N’Punishment ; that’s not Latin,editor.Stop!

What I  thought was glowing evening sun
Turns out to be a neon light come on too soon
And what imagination sees a gun
Where there is but a fine toothed hair comb?

The mind is waiting with a bunch of signs
To fit perceptions into  ready truths
Though I’ve not seen  a  gun nor made designs
Nor used a  nit comb since I was a youth

What we see is what will interact
What we desire,we love, or what we hate
From all the memories that are well packed
Into minds with  independent states

And so we quarrel , murder, go to war
With those who  look from different  coloured doors

Grief  and love are linked by  metal chains
Imagination cannot  foresee change
When love’s killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

In our wanderings in our mind’s domains
The  furniture  appears,is rearranged
Rage and love are linked by a  steel chain

The mind itself can change the human brain
The one most strong may be the one insane
When love dies, its shadow will  remain

The hate of loss  is like the mark of Cain
The rational one can be almost deranged
Grief  and love are linked by a  strong chain

What is lost will  heal in its due time
Murderous love   comes from the most estranged
When love’s killed its  ghost will  cause  much pain

Suffering most acute is now in place
Chronic losses cause a pale strained face
Grief  and love are linked by a  gold chain
When love’s killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

I have a piece of apple wood
I have my whittling knife.
I want to make a gift for you,
That will commend your life.
Apple wood is sweet and sound
The tree grew here by me.
I chose the best part I could find
From the virtue of the tree.
Apple wood is a rare gift
We must make something whole,
For if you touch my apple wood
You can feel its soul.
The sweetness of the fruit of love
Is there within the wood.
So all who touch the apple here
Will be moved to good.
What knowledge did the tree conceal
That Eden was destroyed?
This is a good metaphor
Yet why was it employed?