Weekly Photo Challenge (Fleeting)

 

Mrs Carmichael has chosen to reveal a serious side in this photo challenge. For one reason or another I found the need to chose a poem before I decided on a photograph this week. I like to think that Longfellow’s young man would give heartfelt approval to John Scott’s  astonishing Twentieth Century space.

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real !   Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Modernist altar, Fortuna Chapel, Karori (mrscarmichael)

Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o’erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Mrs C particularly likes these:

• http://brokenlightcollective.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/sun-rising-2/
• http://tostir.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/fleeting/  another poem to compliment the theme.
• http://marichulambino.com/2013/06/08/weekly-photo-challenge-fleeting/ loving the sense-surround feel of this one.
• http://wp.me/p20Ylc-wV now, as you know, I do not get along with birds so this pic must have something about it to make me repost.