Green Isles
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
Especially in memory, life seems to have
green isles,
Leonard Cohen's take on the light that manages to get into our lives.
times that we savour; times when anxieties lift and we can feel a little of what is
present,
The problem of the way our thoughts take us anywhere but here.
here, now. Disconcertingly, at any given moment, if we can see it, life is usually perfectly acceptable. What is bad is our apprehension, our hopelessness, the reverberations of the
loss
Often the main element in our distress is one of loss.
of what is no longer here. Often our memories and fantasies quite obliterate what is right
in front
The central place attention has in allowing us to reflect peacefully.
of us: a breeze, a voice, the play of light; such delights are frequently available if we can set aside what is
not here.
Daishin Morgan on the way we may be already in the right place.
Shelley composed these ‘Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills’ when he was 26, two years before his death.
The picture of the Islands of Fleet was taken from the Barholm Road west of Gatehouse of Fleet, Galloway, Scotland.
Above hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 15th December 2018
...guide to this site