Finding My Rainbow

Strength in What Remains Behind

Abandonment, death, endurance, grief, loss, pain, separation, sickness and suffering all come to pass at one moment of our Life or another. I was first introduced, when I was 17, to a part of William Wordsworh famous poem by the Warren Beatty – Natalie Wood movie 'Splendour in the Grass.' How exciting!

Count Your Sunny Hours…

At that tender age, when my world was small, what can be so painful when I had a home, parents, siblings, love, food and clothings? Whilst Wordsworth might have mourned the fading away or loss of childhood vision with adulthood, and his view that one can protect one's sense of loss by turning to nature or to time – my main lesson in life has been 'grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind.' It was my imagery to look for that rainbow each time rain has fallen on me. So, count your sunny hours this weekend, and enjoy this stanza:

Count Your Blessings…

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;

Smell The Flowers…

I like the next stanza, more philosophical and stoic I guess: 

In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Click here to read the complete poem: Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
By William Wordsworth

 Please let me know via your comments if you've enjoyed reading this favourite poem of mine, so that I may be encouraged to add more posts about poems that have touched me. Thanks.

Enhanced by Zemanta