Ivan Aivasovsky, Aaron Copland - Themes from Our Town and The Red Pony, Carl Sandburg - Sketch

Another lovely painting of ships and the sea by Ivan Aivasovsky. 
Next week is our last week with this artist, composer and poet.  I'm looking forward to moving on, though I have especially enjoyed the paintings of Ivan Aivasovsky and could happily spend another season with his work. 

 Themes from Our Town and The Red Pony by Aaron Copland. 

Our Carl Sandburg poem today is

         Sketch

THE shadows of the ships
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.

A long brown bar at the dip of the sky
Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.

The lucid and endless wrinkles
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach.

Rocking on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Are the shadows of the ships. 

Ivan Aivasovsky, Aaron Copland - The Promise of Living, Carl Sandburg - Languages

I'm not sure why, but I like boats and water, I like the reflections in the water.  Ivan Aivasovsky painted lots of boats and water scenes.  Here is another lovely painting by this great artist.





Another version of Aaron Copland's The Promise of Living today, done by the Baylor University Choir.  The words to this hymn are at the bottom of today's post.

Interesting thoughts in this poem by Carl Sandburg...
               Languages 

THERE are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving to valleys
And from nation to nation
Crossing borders and mixing.
Languages die like rivers.
Words wrapped round your tongue today
And broken to shape of thought
Between your teeth and lips speaking
Now and today
Shall be faded hieroglyphics
Ten thousand years from now.
Sing--and singing--remember
Your song dies and changes
And is not here to-morrow
Any more than the wind
Blowing ten thousand years ago. 


  The Promise of Living 
The promise of living
with hope and thanksgiving
Is born of our loving our friends and our labor.


The promise of growing
With faith and with knowing
Is born of our sharing our love with our neighbor.


The promise of living
The promise of growing
Is born of our singing in joy and thanksgiving.


For many a year we've known these fields
And know all the work that makes them yield.
Are you ready to lend a hand? Ready to lend a hand?
By working together we'll bring in the harvest--
The blessings of harvest.


We plant each row with seeds of grain
And Providence sends us the sun and the rain.
By lending a hand, by lending an arm
Bring out from the farm,
Bring out the blessings of harvest.


Give thanks there was sunshine,
Give thanks there was rain,
Give thanks we have hands to deliver the grain!
Oh let us be joyful
Oh let us be grateful!
To the Lord for His blessing!


The promise of ending
In right understanding
is peace in our own hearts
and peace with our neighbor!


The promise of living
The promise of growing
The promise of ending
is labor and sharing
and loving!

Ivan Aivasovsky, Aaron Copland - The Promise of Living, Carl Sandburg - Our Prayer of Thanks

I usually imagine Jesus in his human body in this story rather than with Jesus in His eternal glory like Ivan Aivasovsky has imagined him, but I find this an interesting painting anyway.... How do you think he looked?



Today's piece by Aaron Copland, The Promise of Living is a lovely hymn for Thanksgiving.  The composer started with an existing hymn tune and embellished it. 

This poem by Carl Sandburg expresses some thoughts to ponder....

             Our Prayer of Thanks 

For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and
bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white
arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles
on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war
days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are
forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and 
the system; and so for the break of the game and
the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.