things of beauty

There ought to be gardens for all months in the year,
in which, severally, things of beauty,
may be then in season.


Sir Francis Bacon

out of the blue XX

New Year

AMBROSIA wishes all friends a HAPPY NEW YEAR

Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops...at all.


Emily Dickinson

Christmas Greetings

Heap on the wood! - the wind is chill
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
...
Sir Walter Scott


Wishing visitors and friends a happy and peaceful Christmas

nothingness

Earth, mountains, rivers - hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness - earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.


Saisho

from the winter garden

Come said the wind to the leaves one day,
Come o're the meadows and we will play.
Put on your dresses scarlet and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold.


A children's song of the 1880's

december rose

Oh, this is he joy of the rose;
That it blows,
and goes.


Willa Cather

fog in november

Fog in November, trees have no heads,
Streams only sound, walls suddenly stop
Half-way up hills, the ghost of a man spreads
Dung on dead fields for next year's crop.
I cannot see my hand before my face,
My body does not seem to be my own,
The world becomes a far-off, foreign place,
People are strangers, houses silent, unknown.


Leonard Clark - Fog in November

out of the blue XIX

the cloud

I saw two clouds at morning
Tinged by the rising sun,
And in the dawn they floated on
and mingled into one.


John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

starlight

In the rain the pavement shines like silver
all lights are misty in the river,
in the darkness, the trees are full of starlight
...
On my own * Les Miserables

appointed time

"There is an appointed time for everything.
And there is a time for every event under heaven
A time to give birth, and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted."


Ecclesiastes, 3:1-2

delicious autumn

"Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."


George Eliot

out of the blue XVIII

perfumes

"Perfumes are the feelings of flowers"
Heinrich Heine

the light

They give birth astride of a grave,
the light gleams an instant,
then it's night once more.


Samuel Beckett

september

" By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
with summer's best of weather
and Autumn's best of cheer " 


Helen Hunt Jackson, September

eternity

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.


Khalil Gibran

the river

De Linge (By Leerdam)


I do not know much about gods;
But I think that the river 
is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable.


T.S.Eliot  "Four Quartets" in The Dry Salvages

late summer

"A late summer garden has a tranquility found no other time of the year".


William Longgood

colors

All colors are the friends of their neighbors
and the lovers of their opposites.


Marc Chagall

out of the blue XVII

ducks

Ducks are strange animals.
The way they squat and squabble.
Sometimes they talk to you as if you understand 
what they are saying...
And sometimes they are right.


Bill Murphy

the rose II

Flowers of all hue,
and without thorn the rose.


John Milton

on the way

No meio do caminho


No meio do caminho tinha uma pedra
tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho
tinha uma pedra
no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra.


Nunca me esquecerei desse acontecimento
na vida de minhas retinas tão fatigadas.

Nunca me esquecerei que no meio do caminho
tinha uma pedra

Tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho
no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

beauty

"What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth".


John Keats

out of the blue XVI

into the rose garden

Footfalls echo in the memory,
down the passage which we did not take,
towards the door we never opened
into the rose-garden.


T.S.Elliot

jardim de areia

Para a minha irmã com admiração e reconhecimento Casa Branca Casa branca em frente ao mar enorme, Com o teu jardim de areia e flores marinhas E o teu silêncio intacto em que dorme    O milagre das coisas que eram minhas. A ti eu voltarei após o incerto Calor de tantos gestos  recebidos Passados os tumultos e o deserto Beijados os fantasmas, percorridos Os murmúrios da terra indefinida. Em ti renascerei num mundo meu E a redenção virá nas tuas linhas Onde nenhuma coisa se perdeu Do milagre das coisas que eram minhas.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen in Poesia I (1944)

let us be silent

"Let us be silent that we may hear the whisper of God"


Ralph Waldo Emerson

the fate of flowers

If there were nothing else to trouble us,

the fate of flowers would make us sad.

John Lancaster Spalding  -  Aphorisms and Reflections

abstract II

about June

What is one to say about June,
the time of perfect young summer,
the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months,
and with as yet no sign to remind one
that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.

Gertrude Jekyll

out of the blue XV

tendernesses

Early Spring

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.

Rainier Maria Rilke

around the lake

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.


Wallace Stevens

Dutch tulips

Dutch tulips from their beds
Flaunted their stately heads.

Montgomery  -  The adventure of a star

out of the blue XIV

green

Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;

To-day the glint of green is there;

Tomorrow will be leaflets spare;

 I know no thing so wondrous fair,

 No miracle so strangely rare.

 I wonder what will next be there!

L.H. Bailey

all's right with the world

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven-
All's right with the world!

Robert Browning

beneath the kisses of the night

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
and the young winds fed it with silver dew,
and it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of the night.

Percy Bysshe Shelley  "The Sensitive Plant" 1820

primavera

Não é nos largos campos ou nos jardins grandes que vejo chegar a primavera. É nas poucas árvores pobres de um largo pequeno da cidade. Ali a verdura destaca como uma dádiva e é alegre como uma boa tristeza.

Fernando Pessoa - Livro do Desassossego por Bernardo Soares

time to go

Up rose the wild Winter-King,
And shook his beard of snow;
"I hear the first young hard-bell ring,
T'is time for me to go!
North ward o'er the icy rocks,
North ward o'er the sea,
My daughter comes with sunny locks:
This land's too warm for me! "

Charles Godfrey Leland

the evening beam

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life,
the evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

Lord Byron

abstract I

Reflections on water

ausência

 Ausência

Num deserto sem água
Numa noite sem lua
Num país sem nome
Ou numa terra nua

Por maior que seja o desespero
Nenhuma ausência é mais funda do que a tua.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

poetry

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

John Keats

spring weather

Dear beautiful spring wheather, I miss you.
Was it something I said?

Kim Carbin "Skipper"

winter drawings

These winter nights against my window-pane

Nature with busy pencil draws designs

Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines,

Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines,

Which she will make when summer comes again

Quaint arabesques in argent

flat and cold

Like curious Chinese etchings.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Frost-work

out of the blue XIII