By Stuart McFarlane
ETERNAL SPIRIT OF THE LAKES
O, Wordsworth, Eternal Spirit of the lakes,
a mysterious feeling in me awakes.
I wonder what it truly means just to be;
your presence insinuates itself in me.
In the motion of water, trees and flowers
I can, somehow, sense your elusive powers.
They swoop and swirl; they engulf my troubled mind;
like a racing rivulet, it seems, they wind
down into my body, course all through my blood;
ultimately there surges a rising flood,
flowing ever faster; faster still, until
I feel I am subsumed by your constant will.
A lone star glows in a sky as black as coal;
deep night cannot contain your immortal soul;
nor the light of a thousand suns ever dim
the fire of your spirit that burns from within.
Your aura consigns paler thought into shade;
still shining bright; shall your glory ever fade?
THE MARMALADE ( With apologies to W W)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er hill and glade
when, all at once, I saw a crowd
eating toast and golden marmalade.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
conjoined in convivial ease.
Earth has not anything to show more fair.
(it seems I've heard that line before somewhere!).
O, to witness such a glorious feast!
I can savour the memory, at least.
Yet must I suppress my fabled ability
to recollect emotions in tranquility.
For oft, when, on my couch, I lie
in a restless or in peckish mood,
when my stomach growls I must try
not to think of all that lovely food.
From one small thought another's made,
and spreads; just like the marmalade.
Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.
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