Seasonal Poetry & Prose | The heART of Ritual 2/3

The heART of Ritual

musings

Welcome to the MUSINGS room in our digital nest! Here you will find an extensive selection of articles, poetry, prose, videos, recipes, and tutorials that journey the natural cycles, seasons, elements, and archetypes in the Celtic Wheel of the Year, as well as our Irish indigenous festivals, folklore, and customs.

This is lovingly provided as a free community resource, however it is copyrighted content. As such, we respectfully ask that if you share this content outside of this dedicated space, either in whole, in part, or paraphrased, that you credit the author and source. Thank you.

The Light at the edge of the Woods

I chose the lamp post from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as today’s source of light primarily because it’s tied into many...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: The Legend of the Christmas Robin

"Legend tells how a Robin, On the night of the first noel, Braved the frosty winter night, So the baby might sleep well. Throughout the...

The Magic of the Earth Element

The forest breathes, it lives, as one. Primordial, intricate, wild. Wild in it's impossible terrain, teeming with life; buzzing, dancing,...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Holly', by Andrew Blakemore

At the edge of the field in a hedgerow so tangled, So thick and so dense where the holly does grow, Berries of scarlet are caught in the...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'The Warm Glow of Home', by Michael Traveler

I see it in the distance the warm glow of home As the dampness in the air sinks down beneath my clothes As the coldness tries to reach my...

The Long Night

The ‘Long Night’ feels true of our wider collective experience. Layers of underworlds. Journeys through grief, fear, loss and sickness...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Mistletoe', by John Bannister Tabb

'To the cradle-bough of a naked tree, Benumbed with ice and snow, A Christmas dream brought suddenly A birth of mistletoe. The shepherd...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Everyday sort of Magic', by Charles de Lint

"I do believe in an everyday sort of magic, the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Snow Song', by Frank Dempster Sherman

Over valley, over hill, Hark, the shepherd piping shrill! Driving all the white flocks forth From the far folds of the North. Blow, Wind,...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'A Winter Scene' by Henry David Thoreau

The rabbit leaps, The mouse out-creeps, The flag out-peeps ⁠Beside the brook; The ferret weeps, The marmot sleeps, The owlet keeps ⁠In...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Fairy and Child' by Eugene Field

Oh, listen, little Dear-My-Soul, ⁠To the Fairy voices calling, For the moon is high in the misty sky ⁠And the honey dew is falling; To...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: Exerpt from 'The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems' by Robert Bly

'The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.' ~ Robert Bly, The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Winter Cloak' by Joyce Rupp

This year I do not want the dark to leave me. I need its wrap of silent stillness, its cloak of long lasting embrace. Too much light has...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'If She Had Been The Mistletoe', by Emily Dickinson

If she had been the Mistletoe And I had been the Rose— How gay upon your table My velvet life to close— Since I am of the Druid, And she...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'December' by Christopher Pearse Cranch

No more the scarlet maples flash and burn Their beacon-fires from hilltop and from plain; The meadow-grasses and the woodland fern In the...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'The Cold Earth Slept Below' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The cold earth slept below; Above the cold sky shone; And all around, With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow The...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'And death shall have no dominion', by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are...

In Loving Memory of Robert Bly

"He was a King, a seer and a poet. He was a lord with a manifold and great train. He was our magician, our knowledgeable one, our...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Melancholic Perception', by Theodore Roethke

It was beginning winter, An in-between time, The landscape still partly brown: The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind, Above the...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'The Frost', by Hannah Flagg Gould

The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, And he said, 'Now I shall be out of sight; So through the valley and over the height In...