Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Like the Wild Roses


"The long empty roads
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal unresponsive sky.

Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;

Youth, with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk."
-- Excerpted from "Prairie Spring," epigraph to O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

I read this today and wanted to share it with someone. I like the juxtaposition of the tired unrelenting world against the bright energetic flash that is youth.

4 comments:

steviewren said...

It's true that youth is wasted on the young. It would be interesting to know what choices we would make if we got the chance to have a do over...I wonder if we would just make new mistakes with our new choices.

Would you like me to email you the instructions for the crocheted hairband for Anora?

Indie said...

I am reading O Pioneers right now, and there was another quote about Alexandra's dying father.

"He felt her youth and strength, how easily she moved and stooped a lifted. But he would not have had it again if he could, not he! He knew the end too well to wish to begin again. He knew where it all went to, what it all became."

Keep in mind that he was trying to farm in the midwestern prairie and worked himself to death by 46.

Yes, please, about the instructions! Thank you!

Anonymous said...

I think one of the most therapeutic actions any of us adults can take is to fill a nice clean bathtub with hot water and bubbles and bring a playful spirit into the tub along with us when we enter therein. Just the way we used to do when we were little and the tub was a great big adventure. It still can be!

A vacation, a journey to a far country, an exercise of the imagination, a soothing sensuous and yea, verily, a slippery situation!

Remember to add hot as the tubwater cools!

Indie said...

O excellent, excellent plan!! :) :)