My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:
My desire and thy desire
Twining to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher:
Thro’ the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.
Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.
Love can tell, and love alone,
Whence the million stars were strewn,
Why each atom knows its own,
How, in spite of woe and death,
Gay is life, and sweet is breath:
This he taught us, this we knew,
Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood
‘Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.
— Robert Bridges, My Delight and Thy Delight (1899)
I have things to attend to this morning, so I am sharing a simple trio that deals with something other than the state of the world or even the creative process. The trio today has more to do with love. I guess you could argue that love– or the lack of it– plays a vital part in both the state of the world and the creative process. So, maybe it is pertinent?
I don’t know. I just like this group and felt they all interwove well with each other, all dealing in a way with the theme of two angels. The poem above is from Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930) who was a British poet and the Poet Laureate of Britain from 1913 -1930. I was going to include just the first verse but the poem is not that long.
The song, Two Angels, is a longtime favorite from Peter Case. The painting at the top, All of Time, is at the West End Gallery. It’s one of those pieces that stick in my mind, maybe because its creation didn’t come easily. I began it then set it aside for a long time, often looking at what was there and wondering what the next step would be. It was a bit of an enigma. I was finally able to complete it so that it both pleased me deeply and found its own voice. That’s always satisfying.
The hard-fought ones often leave the deepest impressions—in painting as well in love and in life.
Redtree Times 