Waking up to the call of Malabar Whistling Thrush

There is a whistle that echoes through the morning mist of Western Ghats. Wafting the ravine forest and churning mountains it resonates in unmistakable gaiety. The resplendent rising sun is hummed to a bright new day. It’s the Malabar Whistling Thrush adding its oral aesthetes to the verdant visual. Whistling schoolboy is an alias that adds to its nonchalant splendor, the boyhood of yore. The lines from James Whitcomb Riley’s poem ‘To a Boy Whistling’ was never so apt    

          

O happy boy with untaught grace!
    What is there in the world to give
    That can buy one hour of the life you live
Or the trivial cause of your smiling face!

Malabar Whistling Thrush aka Myophonus horsfieldii are endemic to Western Ghats. It carries its shiny patches of blue on the forehead and shoulders with aplomb.    

James Whitcomb Riley: We are not always glad when we smile!!

James Whitcomb Riley (October 7, 1849 – July 22, 1916) was an American poet and writer, who after a squalor origin gained immense popularity in US that he elevated to the status of national poet. The book titled the Rhymes of Childhood was his most popular work. I am putting some of his poems here that I found interesting, of course many more can be read in the Net.  

Plain sermons

I saw a man—and envied him beside—
    Because of this world's goods he had great store;
But even as I envied him, he died,
    And left me envious of him no more.

I saw another man—and envied still—
    Because he was content with frugal lot;
But as I envied him, the rich man's will
    Bequeathed him all, and envy I forgot.

Yet still another man I saw, and he
    I envied for a calm and tranquil mind
That nothing fretted in the least degree—
    Until, alas! I found that he was blind.

What vanity is envy! for I find
    I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor
In that I was a fool, and lastly blind
    For never having seen myself before!

If I knew what poets know

If I knew what poets know,
    Would I write a rhyme
Of the buds that never blow
    In the summer-time?
Would I sing of golden seeds
Springing up in ironweeds?
And of rain-drops turned to snow,
If I knew what poets know?

Did I know what poets do,
    Would I sing a song
Sadder than the pigeon's coo
    When the days are long?
Where I found a heart in pain,
I would make it glad again;
And the false should be the true,
Did I know what poets do.

If I knew what poets know,
    I would find a theme
Sweeter than the placid flow
    Of the fairest dream:
I would sing of love that lives
On the errors it forgives;
And the world would better grow
If I knew what poets know.

Song of the New Year

I heard the bells at midnight
    Ring in the dawning year;
And above the clanging chorus
    Of the song, I seemed to hear
A choir of mystic voices
    Flinging echoes, ringing clear,
From a band of angels winging
    Through the haunted atmosphere:
        "Ring out the shame and sorrow,
            And the misery and sin,
        That the dawning of the morrow
            May in peace be ushered in."

And I thought of all the trials
    The departed years had cost,
And the blooming hopes and pleasures
    That are withered now and lost;
And with joy I drank the music
    Stealing o'er the feeling there
As the spirit song came pealing
    On the silence everywhere:
        "Ring out the shame and sorrow,
            And the misery and sin,
        That the dawning of the morrow
            May in peace be ushered in."

And I listened as a lover
    To an utterance that flows
In syllables like dewdrops
    From the red lips of a rose,
Till the anthem, fainter growing,
    Climbing higher, chiming on
Up the rounds of happy rhyming,
    Slowly vanished in the dawn:
        "Ring out the shame and sorrow,
            And the misery and sin,
        That the dawning of the morrow
            May in peace be ushered in."

Then I raised my eyes to Heaven,
    And with trembling lips I pled
For a blessing for the living
    And a pardon for the dead;
And like a ghost of music
    Slowly whispered—lowly sung—
Came the echo pure and holy
    In the happy angel tongue:
        "Ring out the shame and sorrow,
            And the misery and sin,
        And the dawn of every morrow
            Will in peace be ushered in."

To Annie

When the lids of dusk are falling
    O'er the dreamy eyes of day,
And the whippoorwills are calling,
    And the lesson laid away,—
May Mem'ry soft and tender
    As the prelude of the night,
Bend over you and render
    As tranquil a delight.

We are not always glad when we smile

We are not always glad when we smile:
    Though we wear a fair face and are gay,
        And the world we deceive
        May not ever believe
    We could laugh in a happier way.—
Yet, down in the deeps of the soul,
    Oft times, with our faces aglow,
        There's an ache and a moan
        That we know of alone,
    And as only the hopeless may know.

We are not always glad when we smile,—
    For the heart, in a tempest of pain,
        May live in the guise
        Of a smile in the eyes
    As a rainbow may live in the rain;
And the stormiest night of our woe
    May hang out a radiant star
        Whose light in the sky
        Of despair is a lie
    As black as the thunder-clouds are.

We are not always glad when we smile!—
    But the conscience is quick to record,
        All the sorrow and sin
        We are hiding within
    Is plain in the sight of the Lord:
And ever, O ever, till pride
    And evasion shall cease to defile
        The sacred recess
        Of the soul, we confess
    We are not always glad when we smile.

From my scribble pad… 

Sun after the rain

It’s like a faint touch of soul departed

revealed in a prospect.

An apparition hanging within the indolent cloud

the glint on each leaf magnifying the vividness of it.

All my life capsulated in this instance

in this lone moment

when death matters the least