Light in the Darkness
"Daybreak in the Pines" (22" x 14") Here's the latest oil painting to roll off the line -- and you'll notice it's NOT a winter scene. I'm dreaming of summer landscapes already. This does not bode well for my sanity over the next couple months but dreaming of and painting scenes reminiscent of places here in North Carolina I hike with my wife Joy over the summer months -- that helps take the edge of 8 degree lows. :p
"Daybreak in the Pines" (22" x 14")
The West Wind
by William Cullen Bryant
Beneath the forest's skirts I rest,
Whose branching pines rise dark and high,
And hear the breezes of the West
Among the threaded foliage sigh.
Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of wo?
Is not thy home among the flowers?
Do not the bright June roses blow,
To meet thy kiss at morning hours?
And lo! thy glorious realm outspread--
Yon stretching valleys, green and gay,
And yon free hilltops, o'er whose head
The loose white clouds are borne away.
And there the full broad river runs,
And many a fount wells fresh and sweet,
To cool thee when the mid-day suns
Have made thee faint beneath their heat.
Thou wind of joy, and youth, and love;
Spirit of the new wakened year!
The sun in his blue realm above
Smooths a bright path when thou art here.
In lawns the murmuring bee is heard,
The wooing ring-dove in the shade;
On thy soft breath, the new-fledged bird
Takes wing, half happy, half afraid.
Ah! thou art like our wayward race;--
When not a shade of pain or ill
Dims the bright smile of Nature's face,
Thou lov'st to sigh and murmur still.
