Wassail, traveler, and welcome to The Gable Grey -- a place of retreat, of renewal, and of resistance: a tree-shaded refuge in Dark Times. Now pass the threshold, and rest from journeys! For a cold wind is blowing; and here, if you wish, you may hear tidings of the world without...

Friday, June 18, 2010

Roll Call

Red Wolf came, and Passenger Pigeon,
The Dodo Bird, all the gone or endangered
Came and crowded around in a circle,
The Bison, the Irish Elk, waited
Silent, the Great White Bear, fluid and strong
Sliding from the sea, streaming and creeping
In the gathering darkness, nose down,
Bowing to earth its tapered head,
Where the Black-footed Ferret, paws folded,
Stood in the center surveying the multitude
And spoke for us all:  "Dearly beloved," it said.
 
                                                  -- William Stafford

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Whiles carried o'er the iron road,
We hurry by some fair abode;
The garden bright amidst the hay,
The yellow wain upon the way,
The dining men, the wind that sweeps
Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps --
The gable grey, the hoary roof,
Here now -- and now so far aloof.
How sorely then we long to stay
And midst its sweetness wear the day,
And 'neath its changing shadows sit,
And feel ourselves a part of it.
Such rest, such stay, I strove to win
With these same leaves that lie herein.

-- William Morris, from
"The Roots of the Mountains"