My Art Creations News and Views

The Secret Iron

Let me not falter in defeat,

Nor alter in the fevered heat of circumstance,

But undismayed seizing the will to know,

With one clean blow,

Sever the rock of chance;

Break the dark shroud apart

And free the metal of the heart –

Molding the living, molten ore

To a sharp, bright blade of thought.

Quiet and unafraid,

As iron in the flame is wrought

To cool at length with keener strength,

So mould me, mighty master,

In the white heat of disaster.

In fires of undoing and denial,

Forge with living art the secret iron of my heart.

In burning trial temper the bright metal of my will.

With faultless skill hammer the gleaming contours

Of clear thought –

Delicate, exact –

upon the anvil of unalterable fact.

Ariva Mackaye Ege

The Fly

Little fly,

Thy summer’s play

My thoughtless hands

Has brushed away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not then

A man like me?

For I dance,

And drink and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life

And strength and breath,

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live

Or if I die?

William Blake

Lone Dog

I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog and lone,

I’m a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own!

I’m a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing sheep;

I love to sit and bay the moon and keep souls from sleep.

I’ll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet,

A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat.

Not for me the fireside, the well filled plate,

But shut door and sharp stone and cuff and kick and take.

Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,

Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.

O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,

Wild wind and wild star and the hunger of the quest.

Captain of My Soul

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am master of my fate:

I am captain of my soul.

The Gentle Water Bird

In the far days, when every day was long,

Fear was upon me and the fear was strong,

Ere I had learned the recompense of song.

In the dim days I trembled, for I knew

God was above me, always frowning through,

And God was terrible and thunder-blue.

Greeds the discoloured awed my opening mind,

Perils, perplexities – what could I find?-

All the old terror waiting on mankind.

Even the gentle flowers of white and cream,

The rainbow, with its treasury of dream,

Trembled because of God’s ungracious scheme.

And in the night the many stars would say

Dark things unaltered in the light of day:

Fear was upon me even in play.

There was a lake I loved in gentle rain:

One day there fell a bird, a courtly crane:

Wisely he walked as one who knows of pain.

Gracious he was and lofty as a king:

Silent he was, and yet he seemed to sing

Always of little children and the spring.

God? Did he know him: It was far he flew. . .

God was not terrible and thunder-blue:

-It was a gentle water bird I knew.

Pity was in him for the weak and strong,

All who have suffered when the days were long,

And he was deep and gentle as a song.

As a calm soldier in a cloak of grey

He did commune with me for many a day

Till the dark fear was lifted far away.

Sober-apparelled, yet he caught the glow:

Always of Heaven would he speak, and low,

And he did tell me where the wishes go.

Kinsfolk of his it was who long before

Came from the mist (and no one knows the shore)

Came with the little children to the door.

Was he less wise than those birds long ago

Who flew from God (He surely willed it so)

Bearing great happiness to all below?

Long have I learned that all his speech was true;

I cannot reason it – how far he flew –

God is not terrible or thunder-blue.

Sometimes, when watching the white sunshine,

Someone approaches –I can half define

All the calm beauty of the friend of mine.

Nothing of hatred will about him cling:

Silent – how silent – but his heart will sing

Always of little children and the spring.

Shaw Neilson

In The Street

The night, the rain, who could forget?-

The grey streets glimmering in the wet:

Wreckers and ruined wreckage met:

There was no dearth

Of all the unlovely thing that yet

Must plague the earth.

Gloom, and the street’s unhallowed joys:

The sly-eyed girls, the jeering boys:

Faint-caroling amid the noise

A woman worn-

A broken life: a heart, a voice,

Trembling and torn.

She did not sing of hillside steep,

Of reapers stooping low to reap;

No love-lorn shepherd with his sheep

Made moan or call:

A mother kissed her child asleep

And that was all.

Slowly into our hearts there crept

I know not what: it flamed! It leapt!

Was it God’s love that in us slept? . .  .

I saw the mark

Of tears upon her, as she stept

Into the dark.

To Fortune

Tumble me down, and I will sit,

Upon my ruins, smiling yet;

Tear me to tatters, yet I’ll be

Patient in my necessity.

Laugh at my scraps of clothes, and shun

Me, as a feared infection;

Yet scarecrow-like I’ll walk, as one

Neglecting thy derision.

Robert Herrick

The Past

The debt is paid,

The verdict said,

The furies laid,

The plague is stayed,

All fortunes made;

Turn the key and bolt the door,

Sweet is death forevermore.

Nor haughty hope, nor swart chargin,

Nor murdering hate, can enter in.

All is now secure and fast;

Not the gods can shake the Past;

Flies-to the adamantine door

Bolted down forevermore.

None can re-enter there,-

No thief so politic,

No Satan with a royal trick

Steal in by window, chink, or hole,

To bind or unbind, add what lacked,

Insert a leaf, or forge a name,

New-face or finish what is packed,

Alter or mend eternal Fact.

R. W. Emerson