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    Robert Antoine Pinchon, c.1906, Le jardin aux pavots, detail

    Three Poems for Spring

    By Jane Tyson Clement

    May 5, 2017
    2 Comments
    2 Comments
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    • metin erdem

      We need to be thankful to God for all creation at universe. God 's creation is so perfect that all technology we have today follows the universe. It is wonderful to live the spring season in peace and love of God. May God help all of us to live not only spring but all the seasons in peace. May the smell of the spring flowers overcome the smell of the gunpowder.

    • Wilf Copping

      Everything that can be said on the broadest theme of spring has been said, sometimes well often badly but then.....something new and very good and not good because it is just new but because it carries newness and goodness. Praise God.

    Prayer

    Oh, break the chrysalis of doubt,
    plow up the clods of thick despair,
    and split the buds of ignorance,
    and cleanse the winter-heavy air!
    Create a tumult in our hearts,
    drive us to seek what we have lost,
    until the flame of faith again
    has seared us with thy Pentecost!

    For R.A.C.

    I do not swear I will remember you;
    I have sworn that before – and have forgot,
    and vowed eternities too many times
    to tarnish this with phrases I hold cheap.
    I will not even say you are my love;
    the word is trite, beribboned, tired with use,
    and has grown sickly with the world’s abuse.

    I say that you are young, when all around
    the years are weary, hearts destroy themselves,
    and the bright morning of an April day
    scarcely moves the dark; and you are clean
    when dust of ages blows about the fields
    and the new corn is stifled at its birth.
    I say that I would choose, if choice were mine,
    with all the honesty my heart can give,
    to be your fellow out across the hills.

    I do not swear I will remember you.
    The lines we follow may diverge today
    to meet each separate end. But I can say
    when I am old, that once the world was true
    and I was fearless and was not alone,
    and broke the barriers of blood and bone
    into the regions of a brighter star;
    and when I smell the fragrant dusk of spring
    I will be still with joy, remembering
    these days no threat, no falsity can mar.

    The Promise

    I who have sinned against God
    stand cold and empty-handed,
    desert under my feet
    with no hope of flowering,
    athirst where there is no spring,
    in a land where no manna falls
    and no voice speaks –

    Ah, but somewhere
    my brother loves me,
    from far, from unknown places
    my brother speaks for me,
    my brother calls me,
    my brother longs with a pure love
    to break the spell of the barren land,
    to rend the dry earth that binds me –

    Then from the vast, brassy, barren sky
    comes the small cloud,
    the gathering sweet rain.
    Then comes the warm wind
    and the sound of bells,
    the sound of running feet
    and glad voices calling;
    the flowers spring up and the birds
    beat with glad wings about my shoulders.

    And a child takes my hand, crying,
    Come – the Kingdom awaits!


    These poems and others by Jane Clement can be found in her anthology, No One Can Stem The Tide.

    Robert Antoine Pinchon, c.1906, Le jardin aux pavots, detail Le jardin aux pavots, detail, by Robert Antoine Pinchon
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