Wednesday, July 4, 2007

To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas by Richard Lovelace

If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind or swallowing wave.
 
But I'll not sigh one blast or gale
To swell my sail,
Or pay a tear to 'suage
The foaming blue god's rage;
For whether he will let me pass
Or no, I'm still as happy as I was.
 
Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown; and greet as Angels greet.
 
So then we do anticipate
Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In Heaven, their earthly bodies left behind.


Wheatfield by Claude Monet

Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

The Fall of Icarus by Breugel

Still Life with Coffee Pot by Pissarro

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

St. Paul's Basilica by Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Cypress Trees with Moon by Vincent Van Gogh

The Empire of Light by Rene Magritte

The Reader by Gerard

Jack-in-Pulpit Abstraction by Georgia O'Keeffe