 Yellow iris (Photo: Amiel Osmaston) 'One by One' by Adelaide Anne Proctor One by one the sands are flowing, One by one the moments fall: Some are coming, some are going; Do not strive to grasp them all. One by one thy duties wait thee; Let thy whole strength go to each; Let no future dreams elate thee; Learn thou first what these can teach. One by one,—bright gifts of heaven,-- Joys are sent thee here below; Take them readily when given; Ready be to let them go. One by one thy griefs shall meet thee; Do not fear an armed band; One will fade as others greet thee,-- Shadows passing through the land. Every hour that fleets so slowly Has its task to do our bear: Luminous the crown and holy, When each gem is set with care. Hours are golden links, God's token Reaching heaven; but one by one Take them, lest the chain be broken Ere the pilgrimage be done. Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) was an English poet and philanthropist.
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 Photo: Amiel Osmaston 'I See His Blood upon the Rose' by Joseph Plunkett I see his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies. I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice—and carven by his power Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree. Joseph Plunkett (1887–1916) was an Irish writer.
 Incoming tide at Morecambe Bay, Grange-over-Sands, UK (Photo: Amiel Osmaston) 'The Tide River' by Charles Kingsley Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear, By shining shingle and foaming weir; Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. Dank and foul, dank and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child. Strong and free, strong and free, The flood-gates are open, away to the sea. Free and strong, free and strong, Cleansing my streams as I hurry along, To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, And the taintless tide that awaits me afar. As I lose myself in the infinite main, Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) was a poet and an Anglican priest.
 Creosote bush blooming. Photo: Momiji Seligman 'Music and Memory' by Alfred Noyes Music, that is God's memory, never forgets you. Music, in atom, and star, and the falling leaf, Binding all worlds in one, remembers for ever The least light whisper and cry of our joy and grief; Chord calling to chord, through swift resurrectional changes, From key to key, in the long unbreakable chain . . . All, all that we ever loved, though it sleep in the silence, At a touch of the Master shall wake and be music again. Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) was an English poet.
 Photo by Jon Seligman: 'The final part of my commute to work every day has this upward climb surrounded by trees—a bastion of nature surrounded by urbanity. The fog often rolls in the morning, preparing the mind for the mystery that is to unfold later in the day.' 'Distant Voices' by Alfred Noyes Remember the house of thy father, When the palaces open before thee, And the music would make thee forget. When the cities are glittering around thee, Remember the lamp in the evening, The loneliness and the peace. When the deep things that cannot be spoken Are drowned in a riot of laughter, And the proud wine foams in thy cup; In the day when thy wealth is upon thee, Remember the path through the pine-wood, Remember the days of thy peace. Remember--remember--remember-- When the cares of this world and its treasure Have dulled the swift eyes of thy youth; When beauty and longing forsake thee, And there is no hope in the darkness, And the soul is drowned in the flesh; Turn, then, to the house of thy boyhood, To the sea and the hills that would heal thee, To the voices of those thou hast lost, To the still small voices that loved thee, Whispering, out of the silence, Remember--remember--remember-- Remember the house of thy father, Remember the paths of thy peace. Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) was an English poet.
 Photo: Carina Postolache 'Now the Green Blade Riseth' by John Macleod Campbell Crum Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain, Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. In the grave they laid Him, Love who had been slain, Thinking that He never would awake again, Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. Forth He came at Easter, like the risen grain, Jesus who for three days in the grave had lain; Quick from the dead the risen One is seen: Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain, Jesus' touch can call us back to life again, Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. John Macleod Campbell Crum (1872–1958) was an Anglican priest and poet.
 Photo: Jon Seligman 'The Flower' by George Herbert How Fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing. Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone Quite under ground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown; Where they together All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown. These are thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell And up to heaven in an houre; Making a chiming of a passing-bell, We say amisse, This or that is: Thy word is all, if we could spell. O that I once past changing were; Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair, Offring at heav’n, growing and groning thither: Nor doth my flower Want a spring-showre, My sinnes and I joining together; But while I grow to a straight line; Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline: What frost to that? what pole is not the zone, Where all things burn, When thou dost turn, And the least frown of thine is shown? And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing: O my onely light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night. These are thy wonders, Lord of love, To make us see we are but flowers that glide: Which when we once can finde and prove, Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide. Who would be more, Swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. George Herbert (1593–1633) was a Welsh poet and an Anglican priest.
 Photo: Esther Dobson 'Pied Beauty' by Gerard Manley Hopkins Glory be to God for dappled things-- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was an English poet and a Jesuit priest.
 A nunnery grave, Isle of Iona, Scotland (Photo: Carina Postolache) 'The Strange Guest' by Alfred Noyes You cannot leave a new house With any open door, But a strange guest will enter it And never leave it more. Build it on a waste land, Dreary as a sin. Leave her but a broken gate And Beauty will come in. Build it all of scarlet brick, Work your wicked will. Dump it on an ash-heap, Then--O then, be still. Sit and watch your new house Leave an open door. A strange guest will enter it And never leave it more. She will make your raw wood Mellower than gold. She will take your new lamps And sell them for old. She will crumble all your pride, Break your folly down. Much that you rejected She will bless and crown. She will rust your naked roof, Split your pavement through, Dip her brush in sun and moon And colour it anew. Leave her but a window Wide to wind and rain, You shall find her footstep When you come again. Though she keep you waiting Many months or years, She shall stain and make it Beautiful with tears. She shall hurt and heal it, Soften it and save, Blessing it, until it stand Stronger than the grave. You cannot leave a new house With any open door, But a strange guest will enter it And never leave it more. Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) was an English poet.
 Photo: Justin Thompson 'God's Grandeur' by Gerard Manley Hopkins The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was an English poet and a Jesuit priest.
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