take my hand
liner notes
1. Daydream
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon
the idle seashore of the mind.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2. Healing in His Wings
Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in His wings;
When comforts are declining
He grants the soul again,
A season of clear shining
To cheer it after rain…
—William Cowper
3. Matunuck Muse
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul… I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
— from Moby Dick,
by Herman Melville.
When anxious, uneasy, and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
4. Be Still
Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!
— Isaiah 46:10
Be still my soul,
The Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently
The cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God
To order and provide,
In every change
He faithful will remain.
Be still my soul!
Thy best, thy heav'nly Friend,
Through thorny ways
Leads to a joyful end.
— Katharina von Shlegel
5. Take My Hand
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it
from themselves.
— James M. Barrie
7. Life Together
6. Gentle Gem
Nothing is so strong as gentleness,
nothing so gentle as
real strength.
—St. Francis de Sales
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife,
then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women,
if you can.
I prize thy love more than
whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches
that the East doth hold.
My love is such
that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee
give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold,
I pray.
Then while we live,
in love let’s so persevere
That when we live no more,
we may live ever.
—We May Live Together,
by Anne Bradstreet
8. Happy Cat
I put down my book,
The Meaning of Zen,
and see the cat smiling
into her fur
as she delicately combs it
with her rough pink tongue.
“Cat, I would lend you this
book to study
but it appears that you have
already read it.”
She looks up and gives me
her full gaze.
"Don't be ridiculous," she purrs...
"I wrote it."
—Miao, by Dilys Laing
9. Shrouded
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
10. My Prayer for You
Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of Omnipotence.
— Charles Spurgeon
11. I Remember
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
—Percy Shelley
12. Come, Soft Rains
There will come soft rains
And the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling
With their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools
Singing at night,
And wild plum trees
In tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims
On a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war,
Not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind,
Neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself,
When she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know
That we were gone.
— There Will Come Soft Rains,
by Sara Teasdale
13. Full of Joys
O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout,
Skip, leap, roll on, float on,
To be a sailor of the world,
Bound for all ports,
A ship itself
(See indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air),
A swift and swelling ship,
Full of rich words — full of joys.
— from A Poem of Joys,
by Walt Whitman