The Daily Maine

Maine Speaks ME

One of the coolest times of year is the transition from one season into the next.

That is happening now in our hemisphere and in theirs.

It is always like that, while we are leaving Summer, they are entering Fall.

Which brings to mind some of the beauty of Maine, and some thoughts of the poetry of John Keats et alia.

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When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

--by John Keats--

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

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Various Verses

--by W.B. Yeats

We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three,
Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,
On a morning misty and mild and fair.
The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees,
And in the blossoms hung the bees.
We rode in sadness above Lough Lean,
For our best were dead on Gavra's green.
...
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck.
...
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!
...
Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
...
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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