Featured Poem: Seeking Beauty by William Henry Davies

Another month is nearly coming to a close, and with the approach of March around the corner we can look forward to lighter nights, bursts of Spring sunshine (we hope) and flowers and a renewed vibrancy all around. In these final days of Winter, it's worth remembering that beauty can be found everywhere we look - perhaps sometimes it takes a little more than a passing glance to seek it out and it may even change from one day to the next, but it's there to help keep us buoyed through the last icy blasts.

If you're having trouble finding something beautiful to muse on this Monday, then it's well worth reading this poem from William Henry Davies - and as St David's Day is coming up at the weekend, it's all the more appropriate (lots of beautiful things to be seen in Wales, where we're sure W.H. Davies got some of his inspiration for this verse from).

Seeking Beauty

Cold winds can never freeze, nor thunder sour
The cup of cheer that Beauty draws for me
Out of those Azure heavens and this green earth --
I drink and drink, and thirst the more I see.

To see the dewdrops thrill the blades of grass,
Makes my whole body shake; for here's my choice
Of either sun or shade, and both are green --
A Chaffinch laughs in his melodious voice.

The banks are stormed by Speedwell, that blue flower
So like a little heaven with one star out;
I see an amber lake of buttercups,
And Hawthorn foams the hedges round about.

The old Oak tree looks now so green and young,
That even swallows perch awhile and sing:
This is that time of year, so sweet and warm,
When bats wait not for stars ere they take wing.

As long as I love Beauty I am young,
Am young or old as I love more or less;
When Beauty is not heeded or seems stale,
My life's a cheat, let Death end my distress.

William Henry Davies