Happy Solstice!
Today is the Winter Solstice, the longest night, the shortest day. Marking it with verse is one of my rituals. (With best wishes to friends in the Southern hemisphere for your midsummer celebrations.) At 6:03pm (EST), the moment of the solstice, I will be opening a bottle of bubbly to continue and honor a ritual my father and I had for many years.
I have news for you; the stag bell, winter snows, summer
Has gone.
Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course, the sea
Runs high.
Deep red the bracken, its shape is lost; the wild goose has
Raised its accustomed cry.
Cold has seized the birds' wings; season of ice.
This is my news.
9th century Irish/Celtic poem
author unknown
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
"The Shortest Day"
by Susan Cooper
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
~excerpt from "Burnt Norton" in Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot
Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.
~The Creation of Éa
from A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. LeGuin
I have news for you; the stag bell, winter snows, summer
Has gone.
Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course, the sea
Runs high.
Deep red the bracken, its shape is lost; the wild goose has
Raised its accustomed cry.
Cold has seized the birds' wings; season of ice.
This is my news.
9th century Irish/Celtic poem
author unknown
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
"The Shortest Day"
by Susan Cooper
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
~excerpt from "Burnt Norton" in Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot
Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.
~The Creation of Éa
from A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. LeGuin