Mutual Appreciations

I recently received a lovely belated birthday package from an old and dear friend, who would be a founding member of my society for those of mutual appreciations - not that such a thing exists, I just made it up then. But God is kind to us when he puts us in the vicinity, for a time, of such like-minded people. This friend and I have an unspoken pact that everything comes with a poem. The poems she included in my lovely card seem rather apt to my recent blog musings, and I just like them, so here they are, both from Emily Bronte:

It is hope’s spell that glorifies

Like youth, to my maturer eyes

All Nature’s million mysteries,

The fearful and the fair –

Hope soothes me in the griefs I know;

She lulls my pain for other’s woe,

And makes me strong to undergo

What I am born to bear.

from 'Anticipation'

Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear

Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;

A messenger of Hope, comes every night to me,

And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,

With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,

And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

from 'The Prisoner'