“The Unnamed Lake” by Frederick George Scott (1861-1944) for II MA English (Ecocriticism)

            “The Unnamed Lake” by Frederick George Scott (1861-1944)

    IT sleeps among the thousand hills
        Where no man ever trod,
    And only nature’s music fills
        The silences of God.

    Great mountains tower above its shore,
        Green rushes fringe its brim,
    And o’er its breast for evermore
        The wanton breezes skim.

    Dark clouds that intercept the sun
        Go there in Spring to weep,
    And there, when Autumn days are done,
        White mists lie down to sleep.

    Sunrise and sunset crown with gold
        The peaks of ageless stone,
    Where winds have thundered from of old
        And storms have set their throne.

    No echoes of the world afar
        Disturb it night or day,
    The sun and shadow, moon and star
        Pass and repass for aye.

    ’Twas in the grey of early dawn,
        When first the lake we spied,
    And fragments of a cloud were drawn
        Half down the mountain side.

    Along the shore a heron flew,
        And from a speck on high,
    That hovered in the deepening blue,
        We heard the fish-hawk’s cry.

    Among the cloud-capt solitudes,
        No sound the silence broke,
    Save when, in whispers down the woods,
        The guardian mountains spoke.

    Through tangled brush and dewy brake,
        Returning whence we came,
    We passed in silence, and the lake
        We left without a name. 

 

Pic thanks vftt.org

"Kinship" by Ella Wheeler WILCOX

"Kinship" by Ella Wheeler WILCOX (1850-1919)

I am the voice of the voiceless;
Through me the dumb shall speak,
Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear
The wrongs of the wordless weak.

From street, from cage and from kennel,
From stable and zoo, the wail
Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin
Of the mighty against the frail.

Oh shame on the mothers of mortals,
Who have not stooped to teach
Of the sorrow that lies in dear, dumb eyes,
The sorrow that has no speech.

The same force framed the sparrow
That fashioned man the king;
The God of the whole gave a spark of soul
To furred and feathered thing.

And I am my brother’s keeper,
And I will fight his fight,
And speak the word for beast and bird,
Till the world shall set things right.

Happy to be on the Advisory Board of AUSTRALASIAN AND CANADIAN STUDIES : a collaborative programme of IASA

AUSTRALASIAN AND CANADIAN STUDIES
 a collaborative programme of IASA

 Editorial Board 
International Contributing Editors
Raclene Frances , Monash University
Paul Sharrad,University of Wollengong
Paul Brown , University of New South Wales 
Gillian Whitlock , University of Queensland 
Bill Ashcroft , University of New  South Wales
Keith Newlin, Formerly President,International Theodore Dreiser Society
Yoshinobu Hakutani, Kent State University
Lawrence E.Hussman, Wright State University
Thomas P.Riggio, University of Connecticut
Kiyohiko Murayama, Tokyo Metropolitan University
Jawaid Danish , Writer and Film Producer,Director, Rangmanch CanadaAdvisory Board
Santosh Sareen, Jawaharlal Nehru University 
Makarand Paranjape, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Pradeep Trikla,M.S.University , Rajasthan
Suresh Frederick ,Bishop Heber College 
Krishna Sen , Calcutta University
Sobha Chattopadhyay, Jadavpur University
Debi Prasad Bhattacharya,Kalyani University
Sonia Singh, Academician and Writer, Gwalior

 http://australasianandcanadianstudies.weebly.com/editorial-board.html

The Silkworms – Douglas Stewart for PG Students (Ecocriticism)

The Silkworms – Douglas Stewart

All their lives in a box! What generations,
What centuries of masters, not meaning to be cruel
But needing their labour, taught these creatures such patience
That now though sunlight strikes on the eye’s dark jewel
Or moonlight breathes on the wing they do not stir
But like the ghosts of moths crouch silent there.

Look it’s a childs’s toy! There is no lid even,
They can climb, they can fly, and the whole world’s their tree;
But hush, they say in themselves, we are in prison.
There is no word to tell them that they are free,
And they are not; ancestral voices bind them
In dream too deep for wind or word to find them.

Even in the young, each like a little dragon
Rambing and green upon his mulberry leaf,
So full of life, it seems, the voice has spoken:
They hide where there is food, where they are safe,
And the voice whispers, “Spin the cocoon,
Sleep, sleep, you shall be wrapped in me soon.”

Now is their hour, when they wake from that long swoon;
Their pale curved wings are marked in a pattern of leaves,
Shadowy for trees, white for the dance of the moon;
And when on summer nights the buddleia gives
Its nectar like lilac wine for insects mating
They drink its fragrance and shiver, impatient with waiting,

They stir, they think they will go. They they remember
It was forbidden, forbidden, to ever go out;
The Hands are on guard outside like claps of thunder,
The ancestral voice says Don’t, and they do not.
Still the night calls them to unimaginable bliss
But there is terror around them, the vast, the abyss,

And here is the tribe that they know, in their known place,
They are gentle and kind together, they are safe for ever,
And all shall be answered at last when they embrace.
White moth moves closer to moth, lover to lover.
There is that pang of joy on the edge of dying–
Their soft wings whirr, they dream that they are flying.

"The Tame Bird was in a Cage" by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

"The Tame Bird was in a Cage"

                                  by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest.

They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.

The free bird cries, “O my love, let us fly to the wood”.

The cage bird whispers, “Come hither, let us both live in the cage”.

Says the free bird, “Among bars, where is there room to spread one's wings?”

“Alas”, cries the caged bird, “I should not know where to sit perched in the sky”.

 

The free bird cries, “My darling, sing the songs of the woodlands”.

The cage bird sings, “Sit by my side, I'll teach you the speech of the learned”.

The forest bird cries, “No, ah no! songs can never be taught”.

The cage bird says, “Alas for me, I know not the songs of the woodlands”.

 

There love is intense with longing, but they never can fly wing to wing.

Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is their wish to know each other.

They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing, “Come closer, my love!”

The free bird cries, “It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage”.

The cage bird whispers, “Alas, my wings are powerless and dead”.