Page TWO
THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 1961
Southern Pines
North Carolina
“In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good
paper. We will try to make a little money for all concerned. Wherever there seems to be
an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we will
treat everybody alike.”—James Boyd, May 23, 1941.
An Easter Carol
Spring bursts today,
For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.
Flash forth, thou Sun,
The rain is over and gone, its work is done.
Winter is past.
Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.
Bud, Fig and Vine,
Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.
Break forth this morn
In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.
Uplift thy head,
O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.
Beside your dams
Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.
All Herds and Flocks
Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.
Sing, Creatures, sing,
Angels and Men and Birds and everything.
All notes of Doves
Fill all our world: this is the times of loves.
—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
*In No Strange Land^ Springes Welcome
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air.
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken.
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken.
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O ’tis the ravish’d nightingale.
Jug, jug, jug, tereu! she cries.
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! Who is’t now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven’s gate she claps her wings.
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark with what a pretty throat
Poor robin redbreast tunes his note!
Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing
Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!
Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!
—JOHN LYLY
(1553-1606)
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry:—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
With Beauty
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter.
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems,
And, lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames.
—FRANCIS THOMPSON
Who walks with Beauty has no need of fear:
The sun and moon and stars keep pace
with him;
Invisible hands restore the ruined year,
And time itself grows beautifully dim.
One hill will keep the footprints of the moon
That came and went a hushed and secret hour;
One star at dusk will yield the lasting boon:
Remembered beauty’s white, immortal flower.
Blessing the Kindling
I will kindle my fire this morning
In presence of the holy angels of heaven,
In presence of Ariel of the loveliest form.
In presence of Uriel of the myriad charms,
Without malice, without jealousy, without
envy.
Without fear, without terror of any one
under the sun,
Who-lakes of Beauty wine and daily bread.
Will know no lack when bitter years are lean;
The brimming cup is by, the feast is spread:
The sun and moon and stars his eyes have seen
Are for his hunger and the thirst he slakes:
The wine of Beauty and the bread he breaks.
' —DAVID MORTON
Easter Wings
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
God, kindle Thou in my heart, within,
A flame of love to my neighbor.
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all.
To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth.
To the Name that is highest of all.
—ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL
(From the Gaelic)
To Daffodils
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did beginne:
And still with sicknesses and shame
Though didst so punish sinne.
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine.
And feel this day the victorie;
For, if I imp my wing on thine.
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
—GEORGE HERBERT
(1593-1633)
Blue-Butterfly Day
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you or anything.
We die.
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew.
Ne’er to be found again.
' —ROBERT HERRICK
(1591-1674)
It is blue-butterfly day here in spring.
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on
flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they
hurry.
But these are flowers that fly and all but
sing;
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April
mire.
—ROBERT FROST
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour, as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-calls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; a-dazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
—GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
iii
%
- .
'if ^
^ *
THE MIRACLE OF LIFE ITSELF'
(Springtime scene at Clarendon Gardens, Pinehurst)
ICs Important to Wonder
(Two excerpts from "Come Rain. Come Shine" by John Moore)
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more.
Till he became
Mosl poore:
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously.
And sing this day thy victories:
If you have any children be
tween five and eight, you should
never omit from your seedman’s
order at least one packet each of
mustard and watercress.
You should then, in February
for preference, provide each o^
the children with a saucer and
a small square of flannel. . . The
flannel should be laid in the sau
cers and allowed to soak up as
much warm water as it will. Th.'j
seed should be sprinkled on the
flannel, the cress first, the mus
tard two days later, because the
cress takes a little longer to ger
minate. In due course a sort of'
grey fluff will appear upon the
seeds. Then they will ‘chit’—a
tiny shoot sprouting from eagh.
Within a few days there will be
green leaves, lengthening stalks:
a week later, if your room is a
warm one, the children can eat
mustard-and-cress sandwiches.
Possibly tbs mustard and cress
won’t be so good as it would^ be
if you grew it in earth, in a box
or pan; but it’ll taste fine to the
children. The presence of soil
would detract from the miracle;
even five-year-olds expect
things to grow in the earth. With
the flannel only, they can get a
better view of the sprouts length
ening and the little fibrous
roots forming.
How does th.? stuff grow with
out any “food”? I suppose it has
stored up enough food within the
seed to last it at any rate for a
fortnight. But that's not the mir
acle. The miracle is germination:
life itself.
Now, although your children
watch television, read about
spaceships and so on without
showing the least surprise that
these concepts should be, it is
nevertheless important that they
should know Wonder. If they
can experience Wonder when
they watch the seeds growing,
there’s no great harm in their ac
cepting television as an everyday
happening. You will probably
find it impossible to teach them
th.3 wonder of television, for that
belongs 1,0 your generation and
mine. But unless they can kno'w
som.s Wonder they will lack hu
mility; and the eternal, unchan e-
ing, ever-present Wonder is this
mystery of Life.
It is the completely fundamen-
FOR SPRING
This page today, as in sev
eral past years, is given over
to Spring and to the Easter
season—a time of year that
in the Sandhills provides
natural charm and beauty in
abundance.
Both the message of Easter
—the inspiration of the Res
urrection—and the recurring
rejuvenation of the Spring
have evoked from men and
women, now and in past cen
turies, a deep emotional re
sponse. expressed in all the
arts, but with peculiar effec-
ti'veness, it seems to us, in
poetry. So again we reach
back in time for some of our
comments on the eternal
miracles of Christian sacrifice
and the awakening earth.
tal mystery. That man’s ingenu
ity should harness electricity, in
vent the internal combustion en
gine, build airplanes to fly at 70()
m.p.h., and ultimately drive
rockets to the stars, is not partic
ularly wonderful once you have
accepted the inventiveness and
the questing spirit of man. But
the wonder is that men exist; and
still more that some five hundneS
million years ago a fusion or
combination or creation of mat
ter (have it which way you like)
produced by accident or desigp a
tiny cell which grew—which
grew as the mustard and cress
grows, and proliferated, and, as
it adapted itself to changing con
ditions, itself changed, sprouted
organs, legs, eyes, shells, intes
tines, lungs, tails—giving birth
in time to an infinite variety of
living creatures “multiplex of
wing and eye,” which by a pro
cess of adaptation and inter
necine warfare, living upon each
other, resulted ultimately in
fishes, great lizards, birds, mam
mals, apes, ourselves.
to New York in a few hours, al
though we can Set off a process
of nuclear fission, or fusion, by
which it may be possible to de
stroy all life upon the earth, WE
STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT
LIFE IS.
That’s why I recommend the
mustard and cress as an intro-
, duction to humility; without
which your children will grow
up into the kind of adults you
would not wish to contemplate.
If they wonder when the seed
sprouts, it’s enough; for this is
the wonder that makes all else
commonplace. It even makes the
existence of Martians and Ven-
usians a matter for no surprise.
After all, if the process started
here, it probably started there
too; but the climatic conditions
being so different, the living or
ganisms probably had to be dif
ferent in order to adapt them
selves to it.
All this from the germ; and al
though we can transmit sound
and pictures by a kind of magic
great distances, although we can
transport ourselves from London
And so if a little green man
with antennae like a butterfly’s
or a thinking vegetable, a Triffid,
appears one morning at my back
door, I shall not be really aston
ished. Why should I be? I exper
ienced the true astonishment
forty years ago, when I grew
the mustard and cress on the
flannel.
‘Cuckoo Birds of Golden Hue’
We used to call the wild daf
fodils Affies, and w.a bicycled
across the Severn into the red-
sandstone I country where they
grew and came back with huge
bunches which we hawked ^ound
the neighbors at a tew pence for
a sticky double-handful. The
gypsies, who were on the move
from their winter-quarters, did
likewise but sold smaller bunches
at a higher price.
When the March wind flutters
the daffodils, they seem to come
alive, and you might almost sup
pose them to be winged things,
anchored only by their fragile
stems to the ground. How stolid
by comparison are the marsh
marigolds (which we called king
cups and which were Shake
speare’s “cuckoo-buds of golden
hue”). They have a pleasing bux
omness, and look aggressively
healthy, like farmers’ daughters
in old prints. What pals waifs be
side them are the wood anem
ones, the delicate windflowers, of
which ' Gerard, the herbalist,
wrote so sweetly:
“It hath small leaves very
much snipt or jagged, among
which rises up a stalke bare or
naked almost to the top; and at
the top of the stalke cometh
forth a faire and beautiful floure
which never doth open itself but
when the wind do blow.”
That Sharp Knife
Yes, and in that month when Proserpine comes back and
Ceres’s dead heart rekindles, when all the woods are a tender,
smoky blur, and birds no bigger than a budding leaf dart
through the singing trees, and when an odorous tar comes
spongy in the streets, and boys roll balls of it upon their
tongues, and they are lumpy with tops and agate marbles; and
there is blasting thunder in the night, and the soaking million
footed rain, and one looks out at morning on a stormy sky, a
broken wrack of cloud; and when the mountain boy brings
water to his kinsmen laying fence, and as the wind snakes
through the grasses hears far in the valley below the long wail
of the whistle and the faint clangor of a bell; and the blue
great cup of the hills seems closer, nearer, for he has heard an
inarticulate promise: he has been pierced by Spring, that sharp
knife.
And life unseals its rusty weathered pelt and earth wells out
in tender exhaustless strength, and the cup of a man’s heart
runs over with dateless expectancy, tongueless promise, in
definable desire. Something gathers in the throat, something
blinds him in the eyes, and faint and valorous horns sound
through the earth.
And little girls trot pigtailed primly on their dutiful way to
school; but the young gods loiter: they hear the reed, the oaten
stop, the running goathoofs in the spongy wood, here, there,
everywhere; they dawdle, listen, fleetest when they wait, go
vaguely on to their one fixed home, because the earth is full
of ancient rumor and they cannot find the way.
—THOMAS WOLFE
Crains of Sand
matiNs
Pack, clouds, away; And wel
come, day!
With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark,
aloft.
To give my Love good-ihorrow!
Wings from the wind to please
her mind.
Notes from the lark I’ll borrow,
Bird, prune thy wing!
Nightingale, sing!
To give my love good-morrow!
To give my love good-morrow
Notes from them all I’ll borrow!
—HEYWOOD
NOT FOR SPECIALISTS
The green catalpa tree has turn
ed
All white; the cherry blooms
once rhore.
In one ■Whole year I haven’t
I learned
A blessed thing they pay you
for. . .
Though trees turn bare and girls
turn wives,.
We shall afford our costly sea
sons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its
reasons.
There is a loveliness exists.
Preserves us. Not for specialists.
-W. D. SNODGRASS
PITY ME NOT
Pity me, not because the light of
day
At close of day no longer walks
the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed
away
From field and thicket as the
year goes by;
Pity rtie not the waning of the
moon
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out
to sea.
Nor that a man’s desire is hush
ed so soon
And you no longer look with
love on me.
This have I known always: Love
is no more
Than the wild blossom which
the wind assails.
Than the great tide that treads
the shifting shore
Strewing fresh wreckage gather
ed in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to
learn
What the swift mind beholds at
every turn.
—MILLAY
BY SANDY WATERS
Much have I roved by Sandy
River
Among the spring - bloomed
thyme.
Where love and life go on for
ever
And where I’ve spun my rhyme
Much have I loved by Sandy
River
Girls with the light brown hair;
I thought love would go on for
ever.
Spring be forever fair.
The- spring for mountains goes
forever
But not for us who fade
In love and life by Sandy River
Before our dreams are made . . .
Before our dust goes back forever
To mountain earth we’ve known;
Before the sweet thyme blossoms
hither
Among the gray sandstone.
I pray the music from this river
Will sing for them and me;
Will sing for us, for us forever
In our eternity.
—JESSE STUART
(“Kentucky is My Land”)
The PILOT
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Southern Pines, North Carolina
1941—JAMES BOYD—1944
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