A moment in my life that returns to me as a kind of blessing is connected in an odd but wonderful way to a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In “The Day is Done” he speaks of simple, heartfelt poems – he calls them “songs” – that
. . . have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer . . .
and gush from the heart “as showers from the clouds of summer, or tears from the eyelids start.”
It’s a poem that more than once has moved me close to tears. I think that is because in its lyrical way it moves the soul to its depths, where one can feel the beautiful, the true, and the good come together.
In its unique way the poem evokes an incident that “made my day” during Army Basic Training when a war raged in Korea, in the early 1950s. The connection stems from the poem’s use of the word “songs.” Of the many that return to this old musician’s head, the title of one, “Honeysuckle Rose (1929),” always comes back to me changed to “Honeysuckle Road.”
In that guise I am taken back to a moment of deep serenity in the hectic days of Army Basic Training.
American Thinker
Jesus Christ is King
