Saturday, September 26, 2009


Then join the general chorus of all worlds,
And let the song of charity begin
In strains seraphic, and melodious pray'r.

-- Christopher Smart
from The Religious Poetry,
edited by Marcus Walsh

Saturday, September 19, 2009


Let a man be stimulated by poetry,
established by the rules of propriety,
and perfected by music.

-- Confucius
(quoted in Notations,
edited by Sallye Leventhal)

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Life's Drum
From the beginning there were drums,
beating out world rhythm --
the booming, never-failing
tide on the beach,
the four seasons,
gliding smoothly, one from the other;
when the birds come,
when they go,
the bear hibernating
for his winter sleep.
Unfathomable the why,
yet all in perfect time
Watch the heartbeat in your wrist
-- a precise pulsing beat
of life's drum.

-- Jimalee Burton (Cherokee)
quoted in In Beauty May I Walk . . . (Exley Pub.)

Saturday, September 5, 2009


"Music is almost like the air of higher regions: we breathe it deeply into the lungs of our spirit, and it infuses a more expansive blood into our hidden circulation."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke
from Letters on Life, translated by Ulrich Baer