Under the Harvest Moon

 

Under the harvest moon, 
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker, 
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses 
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories, 
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Carl Sandburg 

 Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own
presence.
- John O’Donohue

 God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than
the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called.
- St. François de Sales

                                                                    I breathe slowly in,

I breathe slowly out. My breath

is a pathway of peace

moving softly through me.

Each day I can breathe and be.

 

This is My Wish for You

That the spirit of beauty
may continually hover about you
and fold you close within
the tenderness of her wings.

That each beautiful
and gracious thing in life
May be unto you as a symbol
of good for your soul’s delight.

That sun-glories
and star-glories,
Leaf-glories and bark-glories,
Flower-glories
and glories that lurk
in the grasses of the field . . . .
Glories of mountains and oceans,
of little streams of running waters
Glories of song
of poesy,
of all the arts. . .

May be to you as sweet
abiding influences
That will illumine your life
and make you glad.

That your soul may be
as an alabaster cup
Filled to overflowing
With the mystical wine
of beauty and love.

That happiness may
put her arms around you,
And wisdom make
your soul serene.

This is my wish for you.

By Charles Livingston Snell (1914)