…coming into life again like April – Thomas Wolfe

…from You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe (1934)

“Child, child, have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away . . . And now, because you have known madness and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us-we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass . . .

“Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same.  Lean down your ear upon the earth, and listen.

“The voice of forest water in the night, a woman’s laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children’s voice in bright air-these things will never change.

“The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs . . . the thorn of spring . . . these things will always be the same.

“All things belonging to the earth will never change . . . all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth-these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever . . .

“Pain and death will always be the same.  But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.”

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thank you to my friend, Tad. I so needed this quote today… The world seems crazier and crazier each day with the melting off Greenland, Tea Party people acting nutzo in various corners of the nation and just tough stuff going on in my life. good stuff  and tough stuff… here was a breath of wisdom that popped up into my email in-box and for this I am grateful… thank you to Tad and Thomas Wolfe. And to the Earth and SPRING. phew.