What is this life if full of care

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep, or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this, if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

© William Henry Davies 1871 - 1940

~ Contra Omnia Discrimina

The waters of the seas,
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees,
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause,
'Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips,
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it,
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it,
Through the broad bright land.

© Charles Hamilton Sorley

contra omnia discrimina, amor vincit omnia

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.
Maya Angelou

Life is not about getting through the storms, but about dancing in the rain.
Bunny Armstrong

There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary wings.
Barbara Lazear Ascher

Dancing is the body made poetic.
Ernst Bacon

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
Dave Barry

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
Chas Baudelaire

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
Vicki Baum

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
Ecclesiastes 3:1,2,4

Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.
Amy Bloom

My kids refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on TV.
Erma Bombeck

The earth sets some music going in us and dance we must.
Ludwig Boone

While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. That is why I dance.
Hans Bos

In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.
Julia Cameron

Dance on the edge of mystery.
Alan Cohen

Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on the shifting carpet.
Thomas Crum

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music.
Agnes de Mile

The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.
Barbara DeAngelis

Don’t say, Yes! Just take my hand and dance with me.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.
Wayne Dyer

I said to my soul, be still, and wait...So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
T.S. Eliot

The stillness shall be the dancing and the darkness the light.
T.S. Eliot

Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Get up and dance, get up and smile, get up and drink to the days that are gone in the shortest while.
Simon Fowler

You can't be afraid of stepping on toes if you want to go dancing.
Lewis Freedman

We dance around in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Robert Frost

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Kahlil Gibran

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
Martha Graham

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
Martha Graham

The body says what words cannot.
Martha Graham

Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain!
Vivian Greene

Work like you don't need the money, love like your heart has never broken, and dance like no one is watching.
Aurora Greenway

Everything is affected by and is part of everything else, changing constantly from one state to another. The rain becomes the river; the river surrenders to the sea and the cycle begins over again. Nothing is ever lost. The melody changes – the dance goes on.
Connie Harrison

Play with life, laugh with life, dance lightly with life, and smile at the riddles of life, knowing that life's only true lessons are writ small in the margin.
Jonathan Lochwood Huie

Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join the dance.
Søren Kierkegaard

You can’t lie when you dance. It’s so direct. You do what is in you. It is impossible to dance out of the side of your mouth.
Shirley MacLaine

When it rains it pours. Maybe the art of life is to convert tough times to great experiences; we can choose to hate the rain or dance in it.
Joan Marques

Dance has always been a way of accessing the other worlds, especially whirling or spinning.
Caitlin Matthews

Joy is peace dancing and peace is joy at rest.
F. B. Meyer

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
Angela Monet

Put a little fun into your life. Try dancing.
Kathryn Murray

Dance is life. Stillness is love. Together, they are everything.
Debbie Nargi-Brown

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
Friedrich Nietzsche

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his ‘divine service’.
Friedrich Nietzsche

One must still have chaos in him to dance with a shooting star.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The soul never ages. My soul dances without my feet. I am the music.
Alev Oguz

Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one is watching.
Satchel Paige

He who cannot dance claims the floor is uneven.
Hindu saying

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.
Hopi saying

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
Japanese proverb

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.
Zimbabwe Proverb

See stars in the changing season and dance among them, shining.
Mary Anne Radmacher

Part of the joy of dancing is conversation. Trouble is, some men can’t talk and dance at the same time.
Ginger Rogers

Love is the passionate dance between two hearts. It is to believe in the dream, and together make it real.
Sylvana Rossetti

Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It’s the language of the soul.
Gabrielle Roth

Dance where you can break yourself up to pieces and totally abandon your worldly passions.
Rumi

To dance is to live!
Charles M. Schulz

When I feel the joy of receiving a gift my heart nudges me to join creation's ballet, the airy dance of giving and receiving, and getting and giving again.
Lewis Smedes

Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you've never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.
John Philip Souza

Next time you’re mad, try dancing out your anger.
Sweetpea Tyler

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain.
Author Unknown

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
Voltaire

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
Kurt Vonnegut

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
Alan Watts

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states.
Carol Welch

Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.
Oprah Winfrey

With a heart so purely fine,
And so sweet a love - divine,
I dared to dream - you’ll be mine,
Only - forever - valentine.

So, I offer you the sweetest wine,
Nothing but the finest fruit of the vine,
Keenly rejecting all others as brine,
For you - forever- valentine.

Scared, I dreamed of life sublime,
And now at last - the dream is mine,
Catch my heart each moment in time,
In love - forever - my valentine.

Cling to me my love - and entwine,
Feast with me, my sweet - and dine,
Always together - the grand design,
Our love - forever - eternal valentine.

Copyright © Ryan Price, 2011
All rights reserved.

You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her and only that she’s gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back,
or you can do what she’d want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

David Harkins, © 1981
Silloth, Cumbria, UK

•••

Included by the Queen on the order of service for the Queen Mother's funeral on Tuesday 9th April 2002, the poem 'She Is Gone' was credited to 'Anon'. Her Majesty was said to have encountered the work at the funeral of the late" Dowager Viscountess De L'Isle, whose family had found the poem in a small anthology published in 1999.

After the Queen Mother's funeral much effort went into attempts to identify the author, with attributions going to, among others Immanuel Kant and Joyce Grenfell, before the author was discovered to be former baker David Harkins from Cumbria. David Harkins had written the piece in the early eighties, though not as a funeral oration, but in homage to an unrequited love.

David Harkins wrote to The Daily Mail on Tuesday January 14th 2003 as follows:- 'I was 23 when I first met Anne LLoyd, my inspiration for the poem I called Remember Me.
She was 16 and didn't know me, but had seen her about and knocked on her door one evening in November 1981. Anne answered, and I introduced myself as a painter (painting was a hobby of mine back then) and asked her to pose.
She agreed, and I returned on the Thursday evening, when I made feeble attempts to sketch Anne. This proved difficult as her mother was present throughout.
Anne posed for me about eight times, and we met regularly for a couple of years and talked a great deal, though we never even kissed, which is probably why I poured all my feelings about her into my poetry.
I completed Remember Me in about March 1982, but until last year none of my poems received any recognition. Pam, a one act play from 1987, was my last piece of work inspired by Anne.
Shortly afterwards I met Jayne, my wife, and I have not seen Anne since. My writing has dried up and I'm now a painter selling my works on the internet.'
David Harkins, Silloth, Cumbria.

Further Foot Note:

News & Star 12/09/2002 I wrote the Queen Mum's funeral poem By Chris Musson THE mystery author of a poem which was read out at the Queen Mother's funeral can now be revealed as a Cumbrian man who wrote it more than 20 years earlier when he was a young bakery worker. The poem was recited at the royal funeral earlier this year and sparked a glut of media interest because of its simple, upbeat nature - and mystery author. The Queen had found the poem while leafing through old memorial service books and she chose it to be read at her mother's funeral at Westminster Abbey in April, where it struck a chord with millions of mourners. Today the News & Star can reveal that Silloth man David Harkins wrote the poem in 1981 while working at Robertson's bakery in Durranhill, Carlisle. Mr Harkins, 43, has since received a letter of thanks from the Prince of Wales. The discovery finally ends a nationwide media hunt for the poem's author. Mr Harkins, who now works as an artist selling paintings over the Internet, said he "couldn't believe his eyes" when he saw his poetry published in newspapers after the funeral. Shocked He had sent the original manuscript of the poem to Prince Charles, and St James's Palace replied thanking Mr Harkins for explaining its origin. He said: "I wrote it in 1981. It was about a girl and I called it Remember Me. Since then, it's been changed to suit different people and also altered slightly for funerals. "I was shocked. I only found out about it at the time of the Queen Mother's funeral and I couldn't believe it. My wife Jayne and I were reading the newspapers and there it was. "She said to me something like 'that's your poem!'. There were changes but they were just words - a word here and a word there. "So I sent the original copy to Prince Charles in May and got a lovely letter of reply." The reply from Prince Charles' then private secretary, Stephen Lamport, thanks Mr Harkins for providing the history of the "passage which captured the hearts of so many people when it was published as part of Queen Elizabeth's funeral service". At the time the poem was written, he was working at Robertson's bakery, while living in Scalegate Road, Upperby. Mr Harkins said: "I laugh about it because death is not what it's about. It wasn't written for a funeral. I wrote it about a girl I lusted after but she couldn't stand the sight of me. "It was nothing to do with anyone dying but at the same time, I am humbled by the fact that anyone should use it at a funeral, especially for the Queen Mother. "It was straight from the heart and when I think about it, I'm both proud and not proud. I have sent it to people and they always try to put it into poetry but it isn't. It was just poetic prose." It is thought Remember Me - one of many pieces Mr Harkins has sent to publishers and newspapers over the years - found its way onto the Internet and into memorial booklets like the one spotted by the Queen. After the funeral, the poem was subjected to the scrutiny of the national media, with some critics ridiculing its apparent lack of literary merit. The reply from the Prince of Wales's office continued: "I have no doubt that it will be reproduced on many occasions over the years to come. The Prince of Wales has asked me to send you his very best wishes." Chris Musson Reporter, The Cumberland News / News & Star

An interesting link if you need more information on 'She is Gone' and the author http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A2174735

If I could
Carry your heavy load,
Ease the sorrow you have,
I would.

If I could
Give you a reason for this,
Tell you why this is happening,
I would.

I would do anything to remove your hurt,
But sometimes the rocky road of life,
Twists and turns, goes uphill and down,
And the whole world seems cold and heartless.

If I could
Shelter you from all of this,
Wrap you up and comfort you,
I would.

If nothing else,
Remember this;
I’m here,
If you want to talk,
If you need to cry,
If you can find comfort from sharing silence with me,
I’m here,
I care.

© 1998 - 2010 Ryan Price

Twice twenty thousand swordfish, and now that mouse is dead.

The mercury in swordfish is an enemy to dread.

He ate twice twenty thousand, and that mouse is dead.

His sister gnawed through pizzas (I’m told one million four).

There’s talk of botulism, and that sister is no more.

Their brother downed ten thousand turkeys lined with pesticide.

It took a week to kill him, but that poor mouse died.

So stay away from hormones, and from salmonella too,

Be impolite to cyclamates, and DDT eschew,

For additives and chemicals can kill you just like that,

Though (confidentially) those mice were done in by the cat.

Courtesy of:
http://weirdsid.tumblr.com/post/2758745039/a-poem-about-mice-by-w-r-espy

contra omnia discrimina