My streams of thought meet here
Image by nile — Pixabay
We’ve been enjoying a very mild spell here on the prairies for the last couple of weeks, but the forecast is for a “polar vortex” to move into our area today, plunging temps to -30 C for the next two weeks. so walkers will need to bundle up warm. 🙂
The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is MAGNIFY. And here’s an old-fashioned poem as my response:
The Magnifying Sprite There’s an evil little spirit and his chiefest job, it seems is to magnify the faults of friends, the folly of their dreams. He likes to sow suspicion and amplify each doubt. If ever some good deed is done he points each fault line out It thrills him to sow discord and woe among mankind, to tinge all praise with shadow, each nasty nuance find. To shun this spiteful spirit, let his allusions slide, and focus on the good in folks, the magnifier’s other side.
New Year’s Eve seems to be a time for paying tribute to our dear old friends, maybe because of Bobby Burns’ poem that’s come to be a standard New Year’s Eve song:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days of auld lang syne?
... We'll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne.
I came across an enjoyable poem by Edgar Guest where he pays tribute to a dear friend. Here’s part of it:
To An Old Friend When we have lived our little lives and wandered all their byways through, when we’ve seen all that we shall see and finished all that we must do, when we shall take one backward look off yonder where our journey ends, I pray that you shall be as glad as I shall be that we were friends. When we have met all we shall meet and know what destiny has planned, I shall rejoice in that last hour that I have known your friendly hand; I shall go singing down the way off yonder as my sun descends as one who’s had a happy life, made glorious by the best of friends. From his book, Collected Verse of Edgar A Guest © 1934 by The Reilly & Lee Company
Recently I started reading a book titled EMBRACING OBSCURITY. The author, Anonymous, writes about how, in today's society, we're apt to feel we must be a SOMEBODY if we want to count at all. I haven't read far, but I gather he's saying we need to abandon dreams of being Big Names and settle for being ordinary people. As Edgar Guest aspires to in this verse...
The Neighborly Man Some are eager to be famous, some are striving to be great, some are toiling to be leaders of their nation or their state, and in every man’s ambition, if we only understood, there is much that’s fine and splendid; every hope is mostly good. So I cling unto the notion that contented I will be if the men upon life’s pathway find a needed friend in me. I rather like to putter ‘round the walks and yards of life, to spray at night the roses that are burned and browned with strife; to eat a frugal dinner, but always to have a chair for the unexpected stranger that my simple meal would share. I don’t care to be a traveler, I would rather be the one sitting calmly by the roadside helping weary travelers on. I’d like to be a neighbor in the good old-fashioned way, finding much to do for others, but not over much to say. I like to read the papers, but I do not years to see what the journal of the morning has been moved to say of me; in the silences and shadows I would live my life and die and depend for fond remembrance on some grateful passers-by. I guess I wasn’t fashioned for the brilliant things of earth, wasn’t gifted much with talent or designed for special worth, but was just sent here to putter with life’s little odds and ends and keep a simple corner where the stirring highway bends, and if folks should chance to linger, warn and weary through the day, to do some needed service and to cheer them on their way. From his book, Collected Verse of Edgar A Guest © 1934 by The Reilly & Lee Company
There are some game plans that sound totally illogical and backwards, but actually work. 🙂
by Edgar Guest
How to be cheerful, do you say,
when the wind is cold and the skies are gray?
How to be cheerful? Just one way:
forget yourself for awhile today.
Never mind self and your irksome cares.
Somebody else greater burden bears.
Stretch out a helping hand and play
the friend to all who may chance your way.
You’ll never be cheerful sitting there
sorrowing over the hurts you bear,
for never a joyous hour is known
by the man who thinks of himself alone.
How to be cheerful? Scatter cheer;
share your life with your neighbors here;
encourage the weary and comfort the sad*
and you’ll find more joy than you’ve ever had.
From his book, The Collected Works of Edgar A Guest
© 1934 by the Reilly & Lee company
*You may have to do this by phone until Covid-19 has been banished. 🙂
An Old-Fashioned Caution
A naughty termite eyed a house
and said, “I’ll make you fall
with a little chomping here and there.”
So it chose a sturdy wall.
The house was made of robust beams
“I’ve stood a century!
Could stand a hundred more,” it bragged,
“Built from the strongest tree.”
Yet the old house shuddered softly;
what a sprightly mite might do!
And wished someone would squash the thing
as it commenced to chew.
The insect chewed both day and night;
the onslaught seemed quite small
yet the termite had colossal dreams
of seeing this house fall.
He chomped with such a fervent haste,
carved tunnels all around,
’til weakened finally, the wall
cracked and came crashing down.
The house, deprived of its support,
groaned sadly, then it buckled
and as the roof on the garden fell
that wicked termite chuckled.
So might some petty jealousy
though minuscule to start,
bring down a home, split dearest friends,
or break a tender heart.
Ragtag Daily Prompt: ROBUST
Word of the Day Challenge: SPRIGHTLY
My response is this adaptation of “The Ant and the Rubber Tree Plant.” 🙂
Christine's Collection 