" Oh that these pages might amuse the reader half as much as they have done the writer." ~Mary Louisa Boyle
That is the earnest desire of every writer of words, or if it isn’t, it should be. To amuse [meaning to hold the attention of in an agreeable fashion] the reader even half as much as the writer was amused in the writing. To sink the reader into a reverie of abandon, a bliss of respite, a calmness of spirit.
When it all becomes too much to bear, those who love words can always find retreat. Those who are skilled at composing words can create worlds that offer a soft landing to those who love reading, offering a liminal space for drifting on billowy breezes of wonder.
It has been a rough few months for so many. The shiny new year has crashed into rocky dirt, picking up hair, muck, and tarnish as it lumps along toward summer. A night of suicide watch for a loved one, a needed surgery denied, a broken marriage and nowhere to go, a child placed in psychiatric facility without knowledge or consent of a parent, a cancer death, an infant with a malignant tumor, an overdose death, the loss of the only working family car, a break-in and theft, a deadly accident, a job loss, an assault. People I know have been touched by all of these so far this year. People I don’t know are experiencing the same, and worse.
When your outer bark is scarred, burnt, ripped loose - and you have a gaping vacuum abyss sucking out your emotions until you are a withered, shriveled husk, where can you turn? Words can fill you up. Words can help repair the rips. Words can weave a fabric of strength in your soul.
Poetry is your paddle in the kayak of grief. Through poetry, you can howl, wail, and cry a torrential river of tears. You can connect your suffering thread to the weeping tapestry of humanity. You can find companions in healing. You can find the uplifting song of triumph.
In Her Book written by Mary Louisa Boyle, she writes of the death of one of her little sisters at the age of six. Her uncle wrote the following epitaph:
“Scarce yet had smiled thy early dawn of day, Youth's roseate buds just opening into bloom, When wintry winds, that chilled thy lovely May, Shed all thy with'ring blossoms on the tomb.
" But blest, fair child, blest far above thy years. With filial piety and duteous love. Thy sure reward restrains our selfish tears And lifts our hearts to Charlotte's bliss above."
Where would we be without writers sharing their words throughout history? When you are feeling lost, sad, downtrodden, try reading. Seek the words of writers who will fill up that empty space within you. Write a journal. Write letters.
The first two stanzas of Percy Blysshe Shelley’s To a Skylark1 bring light and lift for any reader:
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of.
. unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar,
. and soaring ever singest.
“Shelley completed this, one of his most famous poems, in June 1820. The inspiration for the poem was an evening walk Shelley took with his wife, Mary, in Livorno, in north-west Italy. Mary later described the circumstances that gave rise to the poem: ‘It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark.”2
When you have been carved empty or need a friend or need to wail, allow the gossamer web of poetry to catch you in its hammock and gently lift you to the sundrenched rafters of peace.
#poetry #toaskylark #percyshelley #marylouisaboyle #healingwords #poetrywail #writeforreaders #findingsolace
Drakechild, H. et al. (2024) The best nineteenth-century poems everyone should read, Interesting Literature. Available at: https://interestingliterature.com/2019/11/best-nineteenth-century-poems/#