Tales in the sand

By Neil Gaiman

"I love you more then a mortal man has ever loved a woman"...

...All that night they stayed togethet, and every living thing that could dream dreamed of love...

Love is so powerful that it can join, separate, create, destroy...love is everything but can be nothing when dealing with the laws of nature. A mortal woman, and endless man, attraction, kisses, tears, destruction, death, eternal suffering, inmortal souls, love forever.

Tribulaciones de un mago

Conclusion

Do I want to go on being what I am? what if I take the risk? what if I change my routine? is it possible?

These questions are the ones the magician asks himself each time he is about to start his performance. Poor magician, he is tired of doing the same thing and he wonders if people is tired too. The fact is that society expects us to fit a role, no matter how hard you try to make a change, no matter if you succeed or not, no matter your effort when struggling with the routine, we always end up in the same position.

Enchantment

On warm summer nights

the porch becomes our living room

where Mama takes her reading

and Dad and I play games

in the patch of brightness

the lamp scatters on the floor.

From the darkness, others come

small round bodies

clinging to the screens

which separate us

from the yard beyond.

Drawn to our light,

the June bugs watch our games

and listen to our talk till bedtime

when Mama darkens the porch

and breaks the spell

that holds them close to us.

By Joanne Ryder

Conclusion about the poem

Why isn't the poem called "June Bugs"? Well, I think the poem carries that title because the June Bugs are just a part of the scene but what really matters here is what the whole situation provokes in the child. Through the description of the sorrounding I came up with the idea of a happy child who is "enchanted" by the pleasant atmosphere created in the house.

Another idea could be that the beauty of the secene fills the reader with "enchantment"

The loom of time

Man's life is laid in the loom of time

to a pattern he does not see,

while the weavers work and the shuttles fly

till the dawn of eternity.

Some shuttles are filled with silver threads

And some with threads of gold,

While often but the darker hues

Are all that they may hold.

But the weaver watches with skillful eye

Each shuttle fly to and fro,

And sees the pattern so deftly wrought

As the loom moves sure and slow.

God surely planned the pattern:

Each thread, the dark and fair,

Is chosen by His master skill

And placed in the web with care.

He only knows its beauty,

And guides the shuttles which hold

The threads so unattractive,

As well as the threads of gold.

Not till each loom is silent,

And the shuttles cease to fly,

Shall God reveal the pattern

And explain the reason why.

The dark threads were as needful

In the weaver's skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver

For the pattern which He planned.

Author Unknown –

Time does not bring relief

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

who told me time would ease me of my pain!

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

the old snows melt from every mountainside,

and last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

but last year's bitter loving must remain

heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear

to go-so with his memory they brim

and entering with relief some quiet place

where never fell his foot or shone his face

I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'

and so, stand stricken, so remembering him.

Edna St Vincent Millay

Conclusion: I must say that although this poem is quite sad and sorrowful I enjoyed reading it since it reflects clearly the feelings the author wants to convey. It has to do with loneliness, memory, unhappiness. As I read it, I could perceive the writer's attitude towards the person he loved and still loves. The writer seems to be someone who has been betrayed or someone who has lost the love of his life.

Cradle song

SLEEP, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night;
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart doth rest.

O the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth weak,
Then the dreadful night shall break.

William Blake. 1757–1827


Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900

The little black boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
and gives his light, and gives his heat away;
and flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
comfort in morning, joy in the noonday".

"And we are put on earth a little space,
that we may learn to bear the beams of love;
and these black bodies and this sunburnt face
is but a cloud, and like a shady grove".

For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
the cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice
saying:´ Come out from the grove, my love & care,
and round my golden tent like lambs rejoice`".

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
and thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
and round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear
to lean in joy upon our father's knee;
and then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
and be like him, and he will then love me.

William Blake.

After analysing both of the poems I came to the following conclusion:

Both reflect the concepts of kindness, innocence, childhood, love, maternity and sweetness. Besides, two kinds of relationships appear to be important: one between the mother and the child, and the other between God and the children. In the former some values, such as love are present while in the latter the concept of faith is the one that joins God with every child in the world.