I found this today in the front of a yellowed volume at Langsam Library, called Blue Ridge Country by Jean Thomas (Duell, Sloan, and Pearce: New York, 1942)
Appalachian Ritual
Emerald nobility
Reaching to the sky,
Makes the eye a ruler
Fit to measure by.
In the Spring an ecstasy
Lies upon the hills-
Purpling with new red-buds,
Ruffled colored frills.
Make an early ritual
For the mountain side;
Pine and beech are spectators,
White a dogwood bride.
Give a pair of ivory birch
For a wedding gift,
All the mountainside a church
Where wild flowers sift.
Velvet carpet-petals down
To the edge of hill and town,
Showing wild-grape fringes through
Opal cloud-thrones dropped from the blue.
Now the summer like a queen
Does her mountian home in green;
With a season for a bier
Some old majesty lies here.
Autumn gold is swift and fleet
With a wing upon the feet,
Rushing toward a winter breath
Pausing for immaculate death.
In such economic bliss
And a swift parenthesis-
In immortal mountain trails
There are resurrection tales.
All the while the mountains know
Sudden death is never so.
- Rachel Mack Wilson
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Langsom Library is one of the greatest places in the world. You never know what you might find there. Its always accessible, always inviting. I must admit, I've been very disappointed by the libraries at American University of Cairo. They are never open, never user friendly. I find this school to be quite terrible really, as the Art Academy was better managed than this place.
I hope you continue to update you blog man... it really does a lot for my head.
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