interesting connection

[amadareneko.livejournal.com]

I've loved this poem since I was in middle school, and it reminds me so much of Timeheart (especially the last two lines) that I figured someone else here might appreciate it.

from Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light:

The earth will never be the same again.
Rock, water, tree, iron share this grief
As distant stars participate in pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried,
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies then would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
That every life is noted and cherished,
And nothing loved is ever lost or perished.

Comments

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes.

I first read A Ring of Endless Light much later than I did YW, so the idea of Timeheart -- "What's loved, lives" -- and "All is done for each" were part of the experience I read it with.

I especially like the way "The earth will never be the same again," the idea that this one harm affects us all forever, is brought together with "Nothing loved is ever lost or perished." And not as a contradiction. The best kind of paradox, maybe.

[tortoises.livejournal.com]

I love MLE. Points to you :)

[doranwen.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, I do love Madeleine L'Engle. :) Though I think the awesomest poetry I found in that book was the 15th/16th-century poems by Henry Vaughan. "There is in God, some say / a deep but dazzling darkness, as men here / say it is late and dusky / because they see not all clear. / O for that night! where I in Him / might live invisible and dim."

[majaji.livejournal.com]

<3 !!

That is beautiful...

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

I can't believe that I haven't read any of her work. I am a voracious reader... have been since I was a child.

*puts Madeleine L'Engle on my wishlist*

[adiva_calandia]

The connections between L'Engle's work and YW -- DD has said that L'Engle was one of the reasons she wrote Deep Wizardry -- never cease to delight me.