Life is so poignant for it is so brief
That artists' dedication seems most sad
Even when they convey a joy, not grief.
Think of the richness that they never had.
Their frank obsession is their honest wealth
And all their lives a quest for excellence.
Their manic art controls their mental health
And dominates all their experience.
Oh! That each day should be a high ideal
And something permanent achieved. Forget
The horror and the chaos that is real
And never compromise, never accept
The shabby half-truth or the less than good
Till gold is made out of the raw and crude.
2.BRAHMS
What greater tragedy than inspiration lost?
On artist's aspiration to the highest height
Which leaves behind a small achievement that's so slight?
Of high endeavour's effort who can count the cost?
We have to fight for loneness and distinctiveness,
A life in which each moment is significant,
For moods make memories which lively actions can't
And moods can colour all our existences.
The sudden jolt, disrupting, only reassures
And we create a future digging in the past.
We don't know where we're riding but we're riding fast
For we are ever striving for immortal cures.
So let us always seek the very highest art
That genuinely comes from the feeling heart,
3. IMAGES
Wind-rippled puddles, streams that scintillate
Or foam'mid rocks that firmly interpolate,
Cast sunlight on a floor or wall that fades
Or strengthens, burns or dims among the shades;
Light that reflects thro' raindrops on a pane,
Or windscreens curving rivulets of rain:-
Such are things a poet notices
And form a part of all he writes and says,
A solitary star's a poet's friend,
A shooting star, a gift that God will send.
Each night we look to see the goddess moon
Cloud-haunted and frost-haunted in her swoon.
A poet dares what others will not dare
And what they never notice, he sees there,
4. RONDEL
Transient bloom, I wish that it would last
On Blackford Hill I love the gorse and broom
Under the nimbus clouds that lour and loom
And shake the heavens over which they've passed.
Sad grows the eye when it is overcast,
Glad when a flower-carpet is bestrewn.
Transient bloom, I wish that it would last:
On Blackford Hill I love the gorse and broom.
Hedgerow hacked down can leave me so aghast;
Angry I view the tree-line that is hewn.
Never can springtime come again too soon
And I wish wintertime would hurry fast.
Till beeches carpet forests with their mast
And I wish it would last, transient bloom.
James L.S, Carter is the author of Selected Sonnets (1971-1992) Atholl Press, and of two other collections The Anniversaries and City Reflections which were also published in 2004.
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