Poetry Please #2: Streams full of stars
Finding beauty in the everyday.
I've recently become a little obsessed with libraries. As a child, I was often taken to the magnificent Canterbury library where I grew up... But since my picture book days, I remained a stranger to community libraries. Until our little boy Joubert came into the world.
We already have too many books for small space living, and so introducing an extensive mini library for Joubert to flick through wasn’t really an option. As I walked through the doors of Oxford’s city centre library to check out the kids book selection, I pretty instantly fell at home. I now have two kids books at a time on loan, and although I admittedly have one too many paperbacks lying around, my most recent trip saw two more making it home. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald (I’ve been eyeing this one up for a while!) and Poetry Please - a collection of BBC Radio 4 listeners’ favourites.
This week’s poem is, as you’d expect coming from such a book, relatively well-known. But, its message is simple.
Enjoy!
Gabby x
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.- Leisure by William Henry Davies
Oh, if you missed last week’s Poetry Please (our first edition), do take a look:
Poetry Please #1: Fall, Leaves, Fall
This, really, is a footnote to our Sunday post, which if you didn’t see was a little list of reasons to embrace the darker evenings and shorter days.
Love the Poetry Please #2. As soon as I started reading it I was propelled backwards to school days where we had to learn and recite this poem. It always appealed to me, the classic daydreamer, as it seemed to affirm my staring off into the distance through the classroom window instead of doing my sums.