water lily, said Princess Haiku

Sometimes I wish to become a water lily, said Princess Haiku but I can't decide which I love more, the water or the lily?

a dream, said Princess Haiku

"Who know not love from amity,
Nor my reported self from me;
A fair fit gift is this, meseems,
You give--this withering flower of dreams.

"O frankly fickle, and fickly true,
Do you know what the days will do to you?
To your Love and you what the days will do,
O frankly fickle, and fickly true?

"You have loved me, Fair, three lives--or days:
'Twill pass with the passing of my face.
But where I go, your face goes too,
To watch lest I play false to you.

"I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover,
Knowing well when certain years are over
You vanish from me to another;
Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.

"So, frankly fickle, and fickly true!
For my brief life--while I take from you
This token, fair and fit, meseems,
For me--this withering flower of dreams."

* * *

The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,
Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:
The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.

I hang 'mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper!

by Francis Thompson


With appreciation for all of the flowers in my garden:

Japonisme
East Coast Dweller
Get Zapped
Absolute Vanilla
she Who Flies
Jac
Antonia
Marion
dream catcher
kat

who was Princess Haiku in her last life?

The winner of this contest will be awarded a link of the day.

a Gift for Princess Haiku from Julian Pegler

Thank you, Jules, said Princess Haiku, they are exquisite.

For more wonderful sights visit the Creativist.

purple retreat

When the world is too much to bear I turn to purple, said Princess Haiku, on a rainy day.

mermaids

It is often presumed that mermaids are singing to humans, but I doubt this. I think their most special songs are for each other. What do you think?

Musing on Baudelaire's Esthetic

Beauty

I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone,
And my bosom, where each one gets bruised in turn,
To inspire the love of a poet is prone,
Like matter eternally silent and stern.

As an unfathomed sphinx, enthroned by the Nile,
My heart a swan's whiteness with granite combines,
And I hate every movement, displacing the lines,
And never I weep and never I smile.

The poets in front of mine attitudes fine
(Which the proudest of monuments seem to implant),
To studies profound all their moments asign,

For I have all these docile swains to enchant-
Two mirrors, which Beauty in all things ignite:
Mine eyes, my large eyes, of eternal Light!

Princess Haiku listened to rain strike like little cat paws on her window. November twilight was covering the world outside with an opal mist of rain. Such a perfect night to remember the far past and muse on the poetry of Baudelaire, she thought. Why is it that in the midst of busy lives we can still be all alone?

Awash in a Sea of Magenta

It was a "meditation on a theme of magenta moment" and I realized how inevitable the cycles of life are; how we all belong to unending struggle. For just a second I found peace when my mind was awash in a sea of Magenta.

Today.. a continuum.