Pete Walsh

Category: Ancestral Dreams

  • Y B Yeats on Nature

    Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
    For there the mystical brotherhood
    Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
    And river and stream work out their will.

  • Plant Trees

    “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”

    – Greek Proverb
  • Dombrovskis on Wildness

    Dombrovskis on Wildness

    It is a wild land and I think that there is a certain wildness, a certain wild element, in mans nature that is essential to the humanness of man. If man becomes contained, too docile, programmed, then he becomes less human. The wildness in the wilderness allows the wildness in man an expression.

    – Peter Dombrovskis, Wildness documentary.

  • The Waste Land

    The Waste Land

    What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
    Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
    You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
    A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
    And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
    And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
    There is shadow under this red rock,
    (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
    And I will show you something different from either
    Your shadow at morning striding behind you
    Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
    I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

    Extract from The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot

  • The last rose…

    The last rose…

    So soon may I follow,
    When friendships decay,
    And from Love’s shining circle
    The gems drop away.

    Thomas Moore, from the last rose of summer.

  • Waldeinsamkeit

    I do not count the hours I spend
    In wandering by the sea;
    The forest is my loyal friend,
    Like God it useth me.

    In plains that room for shadows make
    Of skirting hills to lie,
    Bound in by streams which give and take
    Their colors from the sky;

    Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
    Or down the oaken glade,
    O what have I to do with time?
    For this the day was made.

    Cities of mortals woe-begone
    Fantastic care derides,
    But in the serious landscape lone
    Stern benefit abides.

    Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
    And merry is only a mask of sad,
    But, sober on a fund of joy,
    The woods at heart are glad.

    There the great Planter plants
    Of fruitful worlds the grain,
    And with a million spells enchants
    The souls that walk in pain.

    Still on the seeds of all he made
    The rose of beauty burns;
    Through times that wear and forms that fade,
    Immortal youth returns.

    The black ducks mounting from the lake,
    The pigeon in the pines,
    The bittern’s boom, a desert make
    Which no false art refines.

    Down in yon watery nook,
    Where bearded mists divide,
    The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
    The sires of Nature, hide.

    Aloft, in secret veins of air,
    Blows the sweet breath of song,
    O, few to scale those uplands dare,
    Though they to all belong!

    See thou bring not to field or stone
    The fancies found in books;
    Leave authors’ eyes, and fetch your own,
    To brave the landscape’s looks.

    Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
    Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
    For a proud idleness like this
    Crowns all thy mean affairs.

    – Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Into the Woods…

    “If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise.”

    – Henry Hall (The Teddy Bears Picnic).