REFLECTIONS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, AND PRESENT.

Like snowflakes,

My Christmas memories

Gather and dance—

Each beautiful, unique,

And gone too soon.

Deborah Whipp

With time we grow , and look with different eyes what most people see as Sacred.

But a little of more time, we turn mellow, and tolerant, give a few more years, and we turn even softer, sentimental will be the proper word, we may even cry a tear, or two, when remembering things now afar on time, like our childhood, our parents, and older relatives, now gone for quite some years, you better have created a family of your own, otherwise you will be alone, and with nothing but your memories as a better time, of a paradise lost…

Such it’s the effect  of holidays, it’s hard to be merry, if you have no one to share with.

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stol’n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!

My hasting days fly on with full career,

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th …

Milton.

Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!

Taylor Coleridge

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’

Wadsworth Longfellow

‘Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There’s nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?

Matthew Arnold

I would go back, but the ways are winding,
If ways there are to that land, in sooth;
For what man succeeds in ever finding
A path to the garden of his lost youth?

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Delight it is in youth and May
To see the morn arise,
And more delight to look all day
A lover in the eyes.
Oh maiden, let your distaff be,
And pace the flowery meads with me,
And I will tell you lies …

A. E. Housman

Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn?
Why does every beautiful face grow in old age?
Wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard?
Why does a full head of hair get bald?
Why is the tall, straight figure
That divided the ranks like a spear
Now bent almost double?
Why is it that the
Lion strength weakens to nothing?
The wrestler who could hold anyone down
Is led out with two people supporting him,
Their shoulders under his arms?
God answers,
“They put on borrowed robes
and pretended they were theirs.
I take the beautiful clothes back,
so that you will learn the robe
of appearance is only a loan.”
Your lamp was lit from another lamp.
All God wants is your gratitude for that.

Rumi.

Oh! Fading light of sunset, here comes another Holiday!