Tag: Love
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2022
THIS would be a good “fingerprint” for all of us to ‘make our mark’ with on the year ahead – whether religious or non-religious …..
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The Nativity Stories (v) Unconditional Love
I’ve been suggesting that the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke are two different stories that invite us, while enjoying what’s on the surface, to think a little more deeply. Some people might imagine that because I don’t regard these stories as historical, their meaningfulness for me must be sadly impoverished, but not so ! […]
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Elegy (Dylan Thomas)
Love rather than friendship … This, though not finished, is the last of Dylan Thomas’s poems. Completed in a notebook were the 17 lines quoted above, along with 2 following lines which he crossed out. In the notebook there were other lines not made use of, though some might have been if he’d lived to […]
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A Unique Love Story (Brahms and Clara Schumann)
This tender and beautiful poem, about the deep though troubled relationship between Brahms and Clara Schumann, was written by Lisel Mueller (a German-born American poet). On October 1st, 1853, 20 year old Johannes Brahms knocked on the door of Robert and Clara Schumann’s home in Düsseldorf. Schumann was one of the first composers of the […]
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A Transcendental Teashop Moment !
Even if the teashop is in the renowned city of Bath, the title of this delightfully whimsical little poem isn’t instantly and ear-catchingly promising. Whiling away the time with idle chitchat and the latest gossip is what we’d most likely expect. The first two lines, however, are decidedly not what we’d most expect. The curtain […]
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Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?
The question, in this post’s heading, is the title of a book by John Powell S.J. who, in the 1960/70s, wrote a series of movingly insightful and constructively practical studies in interpersonal relationships. What does this have to do with Yeats’s poem? Read on ….. When W.B. Yeats writes about “the heavens’ embroidered cloths“, he […]
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Love – with no ifs or buts !
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote two poems that we all know – “Love came down at Christmas” and “In the bleak midwinter”. This poem is, perhaps, the finest and most moving of all. For the record, it’s a sonnet, consisting of a 1st part with 8 lines, followed by a 2nd part with 6. The poet […]
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Elgar and Friendship and Love
Everyone (even if at first they don’t know they know it), knows the ninth variation in Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, “Enigma”. It’s played every November, on Remembrance Sunday, at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London. It has therefore become associated ‘in the public mind’, (assuming there is such a thing), with remembrance of […]
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