the last day of summer holidays

robert gallon sunset

the last day of the summer holidays.

a day when i am torn between the excitement of what the school year will bring

and a deep aching

for the loss of freedoms and pleasures,

not the least of which has been a welcome degree of simplicity

about the way my life has been organized for the last two months.

the ability to respond to needs and wishes

in a manner that somehow

feels like i am more present as a person.

this summer has been

one long magical day for me.

really it has!

so i think i'm feeling sorry for myself

and excited for myself

all at the same time.

so, forgive me this rare maudlin posting.

i'll get over it as soon as i am with my class

and see their eyes and hear their voices.

as soon as a i feel their thinking

and especially watch for the first little threads of

community that builds from tenuous and tentative beginnings

into something so extraordinary,

so dynamic and even at times

breathtaking

that you'd have to be there to know it.

~

here's rupert brooke's tender ode to a day's end.

tenderly, day that i have loved, i close your eyes,

and smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.

the grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies.

i bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,

where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making

mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.

there you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;

and over the unmoving sea, without a sound,

faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight,

us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming

and marble sand. . . .

beyond the shifting cold twilight,

further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming,

there'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! but the drear

waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep.

oh, the last fire -- and you, unkissed, unfriended there!

oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there to weep!

(we found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers,

lovely and secret as a child. you came with us,

came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,

high on the downs at dawn!) void now and tenebrous,

the grey sands curve before me. . . .

from the inland meadows,

fragrant of june and clover, floats the dark, and fills

the hollow sea's dead face with little creeping shadows,

and the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.

close in the nest is folded every weary wing,

hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held you dear,

eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering . . .

day that I loved, day that I loved, the night is here!

rupert brooke

the lady of shalott john atkinson grimshawe