On Wings of Song, Happy Birthday!

Dear Mrs. M_:

On wings of song my affections to you fly! Happy birthday!

The English poetess and writer, Christina Rossetti (1830-1894,) wrote a poem on her birthday. She was thankful for her special day underpinned by Providence’s care, “My heart is like a singing bird…/Because the birthday of my life/Is come, my love is come to me.”

When one was young, he hardly stopped to admire the “primrose by a river’s brim”. After all, it was “a yellow primrose was to him,/And it was nothing more.” So perceived Wordsworth. In the arrow of the time, similarly, Browning’s “Pippa’s Song” has become more endearing to those who are living in the last of the seven stages of man.

Notwithstanding these final August days of sultry noons and hot breaths, they do bring on the glories of soft evening hours and the tinkles of wind chimes. Would you mind then sauntering along with me to the sunset tree—sauntering slowly in the twilight breeze while listening to Handel’s “Where’er You Walk”? Perhaps the tenor voice of Richard Lewis would enthrall on your birthday this halcyon year.

Ever in His grace,

L'