Welcome to InnerVisions by Jay

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.
Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

~ Katherine Mansfield

This is not easy to understand
For you that come from a distant land
Where all thecolours are low in pitch -
Deep purples, emeralds deep and rich,
Where autumn's flaming and summer's green -
Here is a beauty you have not seen.

~ Dorothea Mackellar

In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres.

~ Edgar Allen Poe

It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.

~ Robert Frost

But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men

~ Walter De La Mare

Riverwalk

A lilac scent arcs over staircases to La Villita;
A tiny village whispering of forgotten histories.
Shops of handmade goods attract the hotel dwellers,
Who inhale graceful river breeze.

~ Baby Boomerang

Resolv'd to cherish in his bleeding breast
The secret of his birth, Ah! birth too high
For his now humbled state, from infancy
He taught him, labour's task: He bade him chear
The dreary day of cold adversity
By patience and by toil.

~ Mary Darby Robinson

The world has room to make a bear feel free;
The universe seems cramped to you and me.
Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage
That all day fights a nervous inward rage~
His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.
He paces back and forth and never rests

~ Robert Frost

I come to you without me, come to me without you.
Self is the thorn in the sole of the soul.
Merge with others,
If you stay in self, you are a grain, you are a drop,
If you merge with others, you are an ocean, you are a mine.

~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi

How would ya like to be a big wheel?
Dinning out for every meal
I'm the plant that can make it real
You're gonna get it

~ Howard Ashman

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

~ William Butler Yeats

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

~ Lin Yutang

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

~ Theodore Roethke

FASTER than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The dull, faint patter in the drooping hours
Drifts in upon my sleep and fills my hair
With damp; the burden of the heavy air
Is strewn upon me where my tired soul cowers,
Shrinking like some lone queen in empty towers
Dying. Blind with unrest I grow aware:
The pounding of broad wings drifts down the stair
And sates me like the heavy scent of flowers.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light.

~ John Milton

Colours fade into nameless shades of grey
and where the tonsure of bas-relief crudely
stands effete, semantic symbolism degrades
into meaninglessness. The artefacts of an old
existence deny you humanity but you don't
recognise them anyway, they are not bound
to objects of power that belay access to reason.

~ Ivan Donn Carswell

As during summer midges swarm
To beat their wings against a flame
Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed
To beat against the window pane
The blizzard sculptured on the glass
Designs of arrows and of whorls.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

~ Boris Pasternak

It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.

~ Robert Frost

Sleep, sleep cat of the night with
Episcopal ceremony and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams
Control the obscurity
Of our slumbering prowess
With your relentless HEART
And the great ruff of your tail.

~ Pablo Neruda

I bought a new broom today
and swept the corners of my brain.

~ Witt Wittman

By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

~ William Shakespeare

Animal crackers and cocoa to drink,
That is the finest of suppers I think;
When I'm grown up and can have what I please
I think I shall always insist upon these.

~ Christopher Morley

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen

~ William Shakespeare

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

~ Edgar Allen Poe

Weep you no more, sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
Heaven's sun doth gently waste.
But my sun's heavenly eyes
View not your weeping,
That now lies sleeping
Softly, now softly lies
Sleeping.

~ John Dowland

Rainbow shaker
On a stallion twister
Bareback rider
On the eye of the sky
Stormbringer coming down
Meaning to stay
Thunder and lightning
Heading your way

~ Ritchie Blackmore and David Coverdale

Then in a silken scarf,--sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,--
She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.

~ John Keats

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.

~ John Greenleaf Whittier

EST. 1846

The day puts on playclothes,
takes up its jumprope.
We want to tell the children
about centuries, and our favorite pets.
But they know so little.
We cannot tell them
what they face.
Though we are face to face
each morning, we cannot tell them.

~ Jennifer Horne

He goes--the tempests round Him break,
As Judge and Hero cometh He;
He goes--the constellations quake,
The sun, the world quake fearfully.
I see Him in His victor-car,
On fiery axles borne afar,

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We entered this narrow place, and we heard the sound
Above us--the train couldn't move fast enough.
It isn't clear what happened next. Are you and I
Still sitting there in the train, waiting for the lights
To go on?

~ Robert Bly

I find
nothing toxic
in the thorn
except the
occasional prickle
of the rose.

~ Bhuwan Thapaliya

And yonder where the battle's waves
Broke yesterday o'erhead,
Where now the swift and shallow graves
Cover our English dead,
Think how your sisters play their part,
Who serve as in a holy shrine,
Tender of hand and brave of heart,
Under the Red Cross Sign.

~ Owen Seaman

"A holy father, from over the sea
has brought me this cutting of Rosemary.
Plant it carefully by the wall.
If it grows a tree, both healthy and tall,
You shall be lord in your husbands hall."

~ Reginald Arkell

The Dandelion's pallid tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas --
The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower, --
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o'er.

~ Emily Dickinson

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me

~ Thomas Gray

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

~ T.S. Eliot

"When you hear me speak of emptiness, don't become attached to it, especially don't become attached to any idea of it. Merely 'sitting' still with your mind vacant, you fall into notional emptiness

~ Hui Neng

i don't need
a companion who is
nasty sad and sour
the one who is
like a grave
dark depressing and bitter
a sweetheart is a mirror
a friend a delicious cake
it isn't worth spending
an hour with anyone else

~ Rumi

It's too bad this thing doesn't have the gumption to get up to the starting line this morning. I should have enjoyed beating it.

~ The Love Bug

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

~ John Keats

A hippo sandwich is easy to make.
All you do is simply take
One slice of bread,
One slice of cake,
Some mayonnaise
One onion ring,
One hippopotamus
One piece of string,
A dash of pepper -
That ought to do it.

~ Shel Silverstein

And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,
each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!
So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,
tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,
and prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen!

~ John Godfrey Saxe

Take up the White Man's burden --
The savage wars of peace --
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

~ Rudyard Kipling

Is it because of an adobe's trace that your eyes shed tears,
A place whose people came in the morning and left
in the evening,
Whose lambs are urged by pug-nosed gazelles,
Whose calves are the very reddest rose in al-Jaww?
Is it from Bint 'Ajilan that this far-flung phantom
Came when my saddle had falled and been set aside?

~ Muraqqish the Younger

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,

~ Robert Frost

"His body black as Erebus
Accorded with the hue of night;
His central eye self-luminous
Threw out a cone of noon-day light,
Which split the gloom and then flashed back
The diamond levels of the track.

~ E. J. Pratt

She was born at sunrise; a house in which she dwelt blazed into a flame which reached to heaven; a pillar of fire rose from her head when she took the veil; and her breath gave new life to the dead.

~ Lebor na hUidre

I WOULD I could weave in
The colour, the wonder,
The song I conceive in
My heart while I ponder,
And show how it came like
The magi of old
Whose chant was a flame like
The dawn’s voice of gold;

~ George William Russell

Motionless thus they sit and dream
Until that melancholy hour
When, with the sun's last fading gleam,
The nightly shades assume their power.

~ Charles Baudelaire

It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

~ Robert Frost

We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,
And we bade it stoop and stay.
And what with the dawn of night began
With the dusk of day was done;
For that is the way of woman and man,
When a hazard has made them one.

~ William Ernest Henley

be a blade of grass at the foot of the mountain; and jasmine flower at home
Be like a rock when fate pours rains of difficulties on you
Be sweet like sugar and jaggery to the poor and weak
Be one with all.

~ Mankuthimmana Kagga

These circus creatures of a poet’s dreaming
Whose destiny on silent strings is spun,
Are patterned in design of nature’s scheming
To move unseen through dappled woods and dun.
Strange genesis in which the substance seeming
The shadow, is the secret of the sun!

~ Phoebe Hesketh

They are my servants, and I am their slave,
And all my soul obeys the living flame.
Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light
As candles lighted at full noon; the sun
Dims not your flame phantastical and bright.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Joanna looked after her, and into the cart of another woman going slowly past her. My God, she thought, they even fill their carts neatly! She looked into her own: a jumble of boxes and cans and jars. A guilty impulse to put it in order prodded her; but I'm damned if I will! she thought, and grabbed a box from the shelf- Ivory Snow -and tossed it in.

~ Ira Levin

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

~ William Blake

With prey and preying both so endless,
It tends to end up rather friendless
And seldom is commended much
Except by gardeners and such.

~ Mary Ann Hoberman

When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes-and
with joy you realize for the first time
"thinking's just like not thinking-
So I don't have to think
any more"

~ Jack Kerouac

O Neptune! Neptune! must I still Be here detain'd against my will? Is this your justice, when I'm come Above two hundred miles from home; O'er mountains steep, o'er dusty plains, Half choked with dust, half drown'd with rains, Only your godship to implore, To let me kiss your other shore

~ Jonathan Swift

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

~ Langston Hughes

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men

~ T.S. Eliot

You can decide only when to start,
and usually when to stop.
The rest is left entirely to nature.

~ William Pene du Bois

Yet side by side we lie in the little room,
Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain
Keenly, yet dream-bewildered, through tense gloom,
Listening in helpless stupor of insane
Drugged nightmare panic fantastically wild,
To the quiet breathing of our sleeping child.

~ Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

dvance our standards, set upon our foes Our ancient world of courage fair
St. George Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons.

~ William Shakespeare

Each dawn, kneeling before my hearth,
Placing stick, crossing stick
On dry eucalyptus bark
Now the larger boughs, the log
(With thanks to the tree for its life)
Touching the match, waiting for creeping flame.
I know myself linked by chains of fire
To every woman who has kept a hearth

~ Elsa Gidlow

Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.
His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from his mouth.
In his neck abides strength, and terror dances before him.

~ Book of Job

All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of "Currer Bell"
In quiet "Haworth" laid.

~ Emily Dickinson

O BOWL that held the hot imprisoned fire,
Cup where the sacred essence used to burn—
That fluent essence that shall ne’er return—
Old home of Aspiration and Desire:
What art thou now to honour and admire?
A thing inconsequential one might spurn,
Thou art not e’en the scattered ashes’ urn;—
Husk of the spirit that shall not expire.

~ Mary E Fullerton

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~ Robert Frost

Thus we never see the true State of our Condition, till it is illustrated to us by its Contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.

~ Daniel Defoe

Her promise lay all in her past
Broken down but not finished.
There was still power in her - a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting.

~ Stephen King

Set the gearshift for the high gear of your soul, you've got to run like an antelope out of control!

~ Trey Anastasio

If I were a rose and you were a bee,
You should never go when you came to me,
I should hold my love on my heart at last,
I should close my leaves and keep you fast,
If you were a bee

~ Sara Teasdale

I can recall those happy days forgot,
And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past.
Your languid beauties now would move me not
Did not your gentle heart and body cast
The old spell of those happy days forgot.

~ Charles Baudelaire

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

~ Robert Frost

It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.

~ Federico Garcia Lorca

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

~ Albert Camus

The bull-necked man knows you--this first time
His itching flesh sees from divine and vibrant health.
And thinks not of his avocation.
I came incuriously--
Set on no diversion save that my mind
Might safely nurse its brood of misdeeds
In the presence of a blind crowd.

~ Anne Spencer

And as he looked down upon my face
His eyes were wide two pools in space,
As they engulfed, the countryside,
The sky above, held me inside -
Their special height and slant of things
Their special view of every thing,
And I could see by looking up
The wealth within his loving cup

~ Linda A. Copp

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.
And multimarbled Genova the Proud,
Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed,
I first beheld thee clad--not as the Beauty but the Dowd.

~ Thomas Hardy

How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently?

~ Lewis Carroll

What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

~ William Blake

And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses.

~ Sylvia Plath

I am the man who fills the till,
Who pays the tax, who foots the bill
That guarantees the Bomb he makes
For him to load for him to drop
If orders come from one who gets
The word passed on to him by one
Who waits to hear it from the man
Who gives the word to use the Bomb.
I am the man behind it all;
I am the one responsible.

~ Peter Appleton

Weather Vane

Against the sky where four winds blow
I watched a whirling weather vane
Turn lightly with each gentle breeze,
Then turn the same in storm and rain.

Rebel or yield, the winds of fate
Blow soft or strong, bring loss or gain-
Henceforth, around I turn, meet life,
As yielding as a weather vane.

~ D.J. Harkness

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

~ John McCrae