Pippa's Song

Pippa's Song  by Robert Browning

And the day’s at the morn,
Morning‘s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled
The lark‘s on the wing
The snail’s on the thorn;
God is in His heaven
All’s right with the world.

This always brings tears to my eyes.  Pippa passes through the corrupted world, the spoilt paradise, singing, her song reminding us of what we have lost and of the paradise earth to come - because Jehovah IS in his heaven, and He WILL put all right with the world. That is the wonderful reassuring message of the Bible - from Paradise lost, to Paradise regained.

Will the poet, his wife Elizabeth Barrett, and their son Pen wake from the dreamless sleep of death one day to find that truly all is right with the world?  I hope so.

In the meantime, we had a nice day with family on Saturday.  The little one, 3 years old, spent a lot of time on the balcony, drawing - and also had a good time on the beach and in the playground.  She added some treasures to her pebble and shell collection too.  

I have known Linda, Evie's gran, since she was a little girl herself, when Col and I first began a'courting. And now she is a grandma of three lovely girls with another one imminent.

The strangeness of time passing...

The flowers were a pressie from our guests, along with a bottle of wine.

And Pippa's song seems just right for Evie.  A dear little creature, full of the joy of life.  And she said a charming  "Thank you for having me" as she left.  

Apparently she loves being outside.  Which takes me back to my own youth in post WW2 Sheffield, food rationing, bomb sites, and the whole town black with soot from the steel foundries. We played out all the time.  And one of my earliest memories is of being outside in the stone walled back garden of a little friend. It was May and we were playing shop with flowers and petals.  I remember how the white blossom shone against the black paving, and it gave me such a feeling of happiness.

I think of it now as a paradise feeling, just a glimpse of that lovely garden our first parents once lived in so happily.  For sure it was not paradise back then, but there are still glimpses of it everywhere. So can they remind us that it is not gone for good?  If what the Bible promises is true, as I believe, there is more happiness ahead for us, right here on the earth, than we can now imagine.