Beltane 1997 Newsletter Sacred Spirituality |
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"All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals"
Well, I didn't receive any submissions for the topic of this months newsletter, so the offer still stands. If you are experiencing difficulty in obtaining a deck of tarot cards (due to price or circumstance), please write a small piece for the newsletter and I will send you a deck. See the end of the newsletter for next months topic.
I thought that the following poem might be appropriate for the time of year that is coming soon. Few people will not have heard this poem, but it is interesting to note her connection with the moon and the earth paying us back threefold!
My Country
The love of field and coppice
I love a sunburnt country,
The stark white ring-barked forests,
Core of my heart, my country!
Core of my heart, my country!
Over the thirsty paddocks,
An opal-hearted country,
by Dorothea Mackeller
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
