Blog @ Work

St. Patrick Day's and Shelley

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  [13+]
Fun Fact Friday, St. Patrick's Day edition! On this day in the year 461, St. Patrick died in Saul. Ireland celebrates this day in his honor. Share with us a story of St. Patrick's Day shenanigans you've gotten into in the past...or, if you prefer, share with us some of the traditions you take part in on March 17th.

We don’t celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day and in fact I hardly heard of it before WdC. My shame! . I was very surprised to find that so many countries celebrated this day. But recalling from faint memory I remember associating this Irish holiday with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, back in the 60s till the 90s of the last century.

“During the conflict public St Patrick's Day celebrations were rare and tended to be associated with the Catholic community. In 1976, loyalists detonated a car bomb outside a pub crowded with Catholics celebrating St Patrick's Day in Dungannon; four civilians were killed and many injured.”

Although The Netherlands and Ireland are part of the same European community we are distant neighbors, although I love Ireland. I have been twice to the country and enjoyed its beautiful nature and it’s footpaths for walking holidays. I even saw the statue of James Joyce in Dublin.

Happy St. Patrick's Day When we look at the bigger picture and all the things we wanted to accomplish and then just never found time it can be disheartening. Pick one thing that did happen and imagine how your life would be if you had found time for another one of your dreams instead. Would it be the same or totally different? Do things happen for a reason?(BC)

I stopped being psychologist years ago. I was not in a good place when I did. If I had found the energy then to take up my writing endeavors right then and there and was involved those fifteen years ago with Writing.com I probably would have published my first English novel by now.

Fortunately, I found WdC in 2016. You cannot turn the clock. Better late than never. I think things happen for a reason, I am not sure yet what the reason is in this particular case.

Happy St. Patrick's Day We've had five days straight of howling wind. I never thought about all the sounds the wind makes until this week. How many ways can you describe the sound of wind? Can you give it emotions? (BCoFs)

Ode To The West Wind - Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 - July 8, 1822)

I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

This poem on wind says it all. With different emotions!