Revelation
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
Robert Frost
Here’s my fav.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
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.
by Robert Frost
I thought I’d read all his stuff, that’s a new one to me. And I like it.
I’m a bit of a lowbrow at poetry. I had a friend do this one in calligraphy, and I have it on the bathroom wall: (Tolkien, naturally)
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is a noble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain,
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
Love 'em all 
I love the idea of hanging the poem in the bathroom, Dave! There aren’t too many good poems about a bathroom, but Tolkien definitely managed to defy the odds.
Here’s a old recording of Tolkien reciting his “Bath Song”:
youtube.com/watch?v=Ah61c45Qi2A
Oh, and here is my favorite rendition of a Tolkien song – fanmade, I think. I have not idea what she’s saying (because although I have pointy ears, I do not know Elvish 
), but it is very beautiful. It is Galadriel’s Lament, or “Namarie.”
youtube.com/watch?v=WTgwvadr3J0
And I like Robert Frost, too – I remember having a children’s book of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I wonder if it’s still tucked away somewhere.
Great links, Kate. I love them both – wonderful!
Stopping by woods on a snowy evening is such a great poem, though it was much later I discovered what it was about. Seems every child has had a copy, gorgeously illustrated. I have one tucked away somewhere from my own children’s “little time,” and it wasn’t until I read it to them I discovered it was about death. Strange choice for a children’s picture book, but it has such great visuals, just begging for illustration.
Funny how so many children’s stories have death as an underlying theme. Growing up, one of my favorite Disney movies was The Hunchback of Notre Dame. As I look back on it, I realize that it was surprisingly deep. I mean, Follo teaching Quasi his religious ABC’s serves as an obvious commentary on religious hypocrisy, thrown in for adults, I assume. Kids see a lot worse these days, but it’s strange how even old Disney movies can have heavy religious overtones.
youtube.com/watch?v=7bmny8ksN0o
And, of course, there’s Hellfire, a Disney song about eternal roasting. Curious. 
Dave, I don’t remember ever reading that one, though me not remembering doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. It is a strange thing, isn’t it, that we want people to discover us without our openly disclosing ourselves. Some people are better at this guessing game than others. My husband, for example, needs to be explicitly told every . single . time. He doesn’t remember how to handle these things, which I find very frustrating. So I have to, in the extremis of my emotionalism, come back to earth to explain to him, “Now would be a good time for you to put your arms around me and tell me everything is going to be okay. When you see me like this, this is your cue. Try to remember!” I must be such a confusing person to him.
Does God do this too, when He tells us to seek Him? He gives us all sorts of clues, but we don’t notice most of the time. Paul said at the Areopagus that God has put us here so that we might search for Him, and perchance, by groping about, stumble over and find Him. Is that part of what he meant? We all want to be searched out and found, really. We don’t want to provide a guided tour.
Why is it, I wonder, that we’re like that? We don’t want to have to tell one another – we want one another to instinctively KNOW. Is this part of the longing for community, to be known intimately, that sense of community that we perhaps lost in Eden? Is that part of what Jesus meant when He prayed, “Father make them one that the world may know that you’ve sent Me”? Wow! What an impression that WOULD make on the world, to see a community like that. And no wonder He prayed, because there’s no way we could accomplish that on our own!
Cole, I always liked that one. Kind of melancholy but so beautiful. No, in this world the gold can’t stay, but later, later the streets will be gold (symbolic of God’s glory) and we will stay. In fact thinking of it, wasn’t it we who went away and not the gold? Now because of Jesus, the gold can live within us until the day it is easy to see all around us and on every face.
Love, love the bath song, Dave! So happy, so drippy. 
When our power was out I melted snow on the stove 'til it was boiling and then poured it into a bucket that already had lukewarm water in and poured it over myself in the shower. I thought I was in heaven! It’s amazing how wonderful a simple thing can be when once you’ve been doing without it for a week or so!
The Hunchback of Notre Dame always bothered me, Kate, but I think that was because I first saw it as an adult. Disney is not generally friendly to the church. I don’t know whether the church in those days was that bad, or whether history and entertainment has exaggerated it. Surely there were at least some who kept the flame of love burning – as opposed to the hellfire of lust for power. Dick probably knows better than I would. I know there’s been a LOT of abuse, and we probably have, at least historically, earned this kind of commentary, alas. 
I guess all we can do is to make sure that we don’t live up to the stereotype.
I mean, it’s a beautifully made film, with beautiful music and animation. I think that’s why it so fascinated me as a child, especially because I’ve always loved France.
However, for a child growing up in a religious household, *Hunchback *and similar children’s films risk the creeping of reality into fantasy. Yes, *Hunchback * was just a story. But for a young child who attends Sunday school each week, songs like “Hellfire” could cause some real confusion. Now, I was only around three-years-old when I first saw Hunchback, so I doubt I understood much, if any, of the imagery. However, when I did get older, reaching age five or six, I remember learning about and fearing hell and Satan as very real entities. I wonder if my mind latched back onto the frightening imagery it had first seen years before.
Ack, but I’m being Debbie Downer today! I like Robert Frost, I love the Bath Song, and I even like Disney.
Kate, I’ve replied via PM so as not to derail the thread.
Thanks for the PM, Cinders. I must be heading off soon, but I’ll be thinking of Disney while I develop some prints in the photo lab today, so I’ll have plenty of thoughts to give a proper reply soon.
Who is this Robert Frost?
What’s funny for me is that it could be a German, French (Alsace-Lorraine) and English name.
Okay it’s very off-topic but I cannot repress my passion and obession with linguistics
Well, he is American, and our names tend to be a hodgepodge of everything, which makes sense, because we’re a country of immigrants.
Avez-vous un poète français préféré, lotharson?
(Sorry if I completely botched that sentence – T’is been a while.)
I really like Victor Hugo’s poem, On vit, on parle. I remember listening to a reading of it on YouTube once, and I thought the words just flowed together so nicely. (Since French is a foreign language to me, I find that I appreciate its phonetic qualities of its sounds often more than the meaning of the words themselves.) Nonetheless, I really like the meaning behind Hugo’s poem, too – It makes me think of the simplicity of our everyday comings and goings but also the deeper search for meaning behind it all. But then, since we die, were our efforts worth much to begin with? Is life simple or complex?
On vit, on parle, on a le ciel et les nuages
Sur la tête ; on se plaît aux livres des vieux sages ;
On lit Virgile et Dante ; on va joyeusement
En voiture publique à quelque endroit charmant,
En riant aux éclats de l’auberge et du gîte ;
Le regard d’une femme en passant vous agite ;
On aime, on est aimé, bonheur qui manque aux rois !
On écoute le chant des oiseaux dans les bois
Le matin, on s’éveille, et toute une famille
Vous embrasse, une mère, une soeur, une fille !
On déjeune en lisant son journal. Tout le jour
On mêle à sa pensée espoir, travail, amour ;
La vie arrive avec ses passions troublées ;
On jette sa parole aux sombres assemblées ;
Devant le but qu’on veut et le sort qui vous prend,
On se sent faible et fort, on est petit et grand ;
On est flot dans la foule, âme dans la tempête ;
Tout vient et passe ; on est en deuil, on est en fête ;
On arrive, on recule, on lutte avec effort… –
Puis, le vaste et profond silence de la mort !
And the English translation reminds me a bit of something written by Robert Frost:
We live, we talk, we have the sky and the clouds
On the head; we enjoy the books of the old wise men
We read Virgil and Dante; we go joyfully
By public car to some charming place
Laughing out loud in the hostel and the shelter;
The look of a woman passing by shakes you up
We love, we are loved, happiness that Kings lack!
We listen to the birds chirping in the woods
In the morning, we wake up, and a whole family
Kisses you, a mother, a sister, a daughter!
We have breakfast while reading the newspaper. The whole day
We mix out thoughts with hope, work, love;
Life arrives with its toubled passions
We throw our word to the dark assemblies
In front of the goal that we want, and the destiny that takes you,
We feel weak and strong, we are small and big
We’re a flood in the crowd, soul in the tempest;
Everything comes and goes by; we are on mourning, we’re celebrating;
We arrive, we move back, we struggle with efforts
Then, the vast and deep silence of death!
À bientôt!
Kate
Those words woke me and rang me like a bell.
(The first thing I read this morning)
Thanks
A very simple poem/reflection which I found in one of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s books:
“I am God’s creature; my neighbour is also His creature.
My work is in the city; his is in the field.
I rise early to do my work; he rises early to do his.
As he cannot excel in my work, so I cannot excel in his work.
Perhaps you say: I do great things, and he does small things?
It matters not that a man does much or little,
if only he directs his heart to Heaven”
Hello Kate,
Charles Baudelaire est vraiment grandiose!
He wrote “If God exists, He is the devil.” “Si Dieu existe, c’est le diable” but I think he was a struggling Christian.
Wasn’t Charles Baudelaire also the art critic, known for his extreme taste for the finer things in life and his extreme distaste for photography?
As a photography major, I’d have a few choice words for him!
Glad you liked the poem, Dave. And the one you posted from Hershel was lovely, too. Growing up, my mom would always tell me, “The smallest good deed is better than the grandest intention.” Your poem reminds me of that.
Blessings from Ohio,
Kate