Winter, by François Boucher

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The Months of the Year, by Sara Coleridge

January brings the snow;
Makes the toes and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen ponds again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daises at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses;
Fills the children’s hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Strawberries and gilly-flowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the Harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are falling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
blazing fire and Christmas treat.

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Somehow, not only for Christmas,
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.

And the more you spend in blessing
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart's possessing
Returns to you glad. (John Greenleaf Whittier)

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The New Year is a good time for new ideas, new plans and new beginnings. I’ve been re-thinking my blogs and making some changes.

With the exception of Christmas and New Year week-ends, Quiet Corner will continue on Mondays, A Touch of Culture on Fridays, and Wise Men Say daily.
80 plus will become an occasional blog appearing every so often on Thursdays.
The Pre-Raphaelite site will come to an end this week, when 80 paintings will have been collected.
And a new weekly blog The Poetry Path will start on Wednesday 5th January. You can have a look at that website now at -
http://thepoetrypath.blogspot.com

BEST WISHES TO EVERYONE FOR CHRISTMAS AND THE NEW YEAR

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change (Buddha)

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When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not. (Georgia O’Keefe)

And ‘tis my faith that every flower enjoys the air it breathes. (William Wordsworth)

Lilacs in a Window, by Mary Cassatt

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Observe this dew-drenched rose of Tyrian gardens a rose today. But you will ask in vain tomorrow what it is; and yesterday it was the dust,
the sunshine, and the rains. (Christina Rossetti)

Where flowers bloom so does hope (Lady Bird Johnson)

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Finally, this is a colourful slide show of photographs taken at Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island.



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A MOON REVERIE

[Image by FreeFoto.com]

The moon pulled off her veil of light,
That hides her face by day from sight,
(Mysterious veil of brightness made,
That’s both her lustre and her shade)
And in the lantern of the night
With shining horns hung out her light. (Samuel Butler)

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The moon is a white, strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the moon that pulls the tide, and the moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomer. When we describe the moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness. (D.H. Lawrence)

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Untitled (Archip Iwanowitsch Kuindshi)

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. (Joseph Conrad)

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And I raise my eyes to the moon, with tears blurring my vision.
I ask Her why, what’s the reason, what’s my mission?
My toes going numb with the frost on the ground,
My arms spread out wide as I circle around.
When I fall to the earth, my energy spent at last,
I ask Her again with one final gasp,
Where did I come from and where shall I be,
What will be left when there’s nothing of me? (Anon)

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Moon Nymph (Luis Ricardo Falero)

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I see the moon, the moon sees me
Under the shade of the old oak tree;
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one I love. (Popular Song)



Moon on the Delaware River (Thomas B. Griffin)

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Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly tree,
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.
(Emily Bronte)

[Thanks to FreeFoto.com for the images]

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This great video was compiled by “hilberts.” The pictures are by the Dutch artist Rien Poortvliet (1932-1995) and the music is Toselli’s Serenata.



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Berthe Morisot and her daughter Julie, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919

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Reverie by Sophia Scott

The Campsie Fells lay dreaming in the soft sweet summer light,
Little breezes played and whispered round her knees,
She dreamed of days we knew not when the waters lapped her feet
And the glaciers slithered steeply from her sides -
Days when mammoths roamed the valley through the sand dunes weird and high,
And our coal was mosses, ferns and tropic trees.

The long low line of hills was swept by western winds,
And the bracken’s green was long since turned to brown,
Her dreams were sore and troubled, for she heard the tramp of feet
As the Romans marched to Cadder o’er the down;
Till they pitched their tents and sheltered from the winter’s wildest wrath,
And beneath her flanks they built for them a town.

All these days are long since over, long ago and far away,
Changeless still the Campsies lie in summer sheen;
We discover Roman forts and we dig up mammoth bones
In our age of petrol, aeroplanes and steam;
And we build our little houses and we live our little lives,
But the great hills hug their secrets still - and dream.

[The Campsie Fells lie to the north of Kirkintilloch where the late Mrs Scott lived for many years.]

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“Floating Heads” by Sophy Cave has been a great attraction at Kelvin grove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

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SOME BLOG NEWS

Because of increased interest being shown in my Pre-Raphaelite site -
http://myownselection.blogspot.com - I’m planning a second series. Beginning on Tuesday 23rd November, I’ll be adding a painting to the collection every day.

My other blogs will continue - Eighty Plus on Thursdays, A Touch of Culture on Fridays, John’s Quiet Corner on Mondays, and Wise Men Say daily.

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MONDAY 15TH NOVEMBER

An old Cherokee was telling his grandson of the battle that goes on inside everyone - a battle between two wolves.

“One of them is Evil,” he said, “full of anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride and superiority.”

“And the other?” asked the boy.

“He is Good,” the old man replied, “full of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth and compassion.”

The boy thought for a moment and then spoke. “Who will win?”

“The one you feed,” was the answer.

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Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.

Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o'erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.

Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.

All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.

The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
(Thomas Campion 1567-1620)

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This painting “The New Bonnet” is the work of the American artist Francis William Edmonds 1806-1863. The girl is obviously proud of her purchase, but her little sister looks worried. Is that the bill for the bonnet the father is frowning over?

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This sound-only YouTube is the Romance from The Gadfly by Dmitri Shostakovitch, played by the violinist Tasmin Little accompanied by Piers Lane.



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Now on A TOUCH OF CULTURE - A Visit to Kyoto
http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

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Monday 8th November

Every winter
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
The leaps in spring to his returning kisses. (Charles Kingsley)

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire; it is the time for home. (Edith Sitwell)

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There is a spot ‘mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.

The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome;
But what on earth is half so dear -
So longed for - as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them - how I love them all!

A little and a lone green lane
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain
Of mountains, circling every side.

A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And, deepening still the dream-like charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. (Emily Bronte)

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This video has been made available on YouTube by Masami Takeuchi who is featured playing the Londonderry Air. The theremin, an electronic instrument, was invented by Leon Theremin who patented it in 1928. The sound it produces is heard regularly on television, for it’s a theremin which plays the theme tune of “Midsomer Murders.”

                                                                                         taking a short cut
                                                                                   the squirrel hurries home
                                                                                      on the telephone wire

                                                                                        cold November day
                                                                                  little bushytail still appears
                                                                                         at the bird-feeder

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No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day -
No sky - no earthly view -
No distance looking blue -
No road - no street - no “t’other side the way” -
No end to any Row -
No indications where the Crescents go -
No top to any steeple -
No recognitions of familiar people -
No courtesies for showing ‘em -
No knowing ‘em! -
No travelling at all - no locomotion,
No inkling of the way - no notion -
No go; - by land or ocean -
No mail - no post -
No news from any foreign coast -
No Park - no Ring - no afternoon gentility -
No company - no nobility -
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -
November!

(Thomas Hood 1799-1845)

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If that poem has made you a bit depressed, this will cheer you up.
A mail order company called Solutions from Renwoods is offering a Christmas wall-clock that plays a festive tune every hour! Favourites include Silent Night and Santa Claus is coming to Town!! And all for £12.95 plus postage and packing!!! Wow!!!!
 
 

                      A Poem from the 19th century. The Victorians were very keen on this kind of thing.

                                                                      If you are tempted to reveal
                                                                     A tale to you someone has told
                                                                     About another, make it pass
                                                                     Before you speak, three gates of gold.
                                                                     These narrow gates: First, “Is it true?”
                                                                     Then, “Is it needful?” in your mind
                                                                     Give truthful answer. And the next
                                                                     Is last and narrowest, “Is it kind?”
                                                                     And if to reach your lips at last
                                                                     It passes through these gateways three,
                                                                     Then you may tell the tale, nor fear
                                                                     What the result of speech may be.

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                                   A Girl Reading (The Reader) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard 1732-1806.

Fragonard was the complete opposite of an impoverished artist. He became rich by painting the kind of pictures that wealthy people liked. However, when the French Revolution began, he had to escape from Paris and, by the time it was all over and he was able to return, his name had been forgotten. He spent the rest of his life in poverty.

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This video devised by Phlip Scott Johnson is an astonishing example of "morphing." More then 70 actresses are featured in "Women in Film."  The music is the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No1 in G, played by Yo-Yo- Ma.



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Now on A Touch of Culture - Looking at Some Paintings by Scottish Artists
http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

***A Touch of Culture***A Touch of Culture***A Touchof Culture***A Touch of Culture***

A Day in Autumn, Sokolniki painted by the Russian artist Isaac Levitan 1860-1900

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One day Ryokan a Zen master was walking on the beach. There had been a severe storm and thousands of little starfish had been washed up on to the sand. Realising that they would soon die, he started to pick them up and throw them back into the sea.

A fisherman who was going for his boat saw what Ryokan was doing and told him he was wasting his time. There were thousands of starfish lying on the shore and, since there was no possibility of rescuing them all, his efforts would make no difference.

Indicating the starfish in his hand, Ryokan replied, “It will to this one.”

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O Autumn, laden with fruit and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may’st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

“The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

“The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

(William Blake 1757-1827)

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The music on this video is the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni 1863-1945, with views of the Terrazo Mascagni in Livorno, the town where Mascagni was born. 



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On A Touch of Culture this week - four poems by Thomas Hardy
http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

***A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture***

                                                          Remembering last spring and looking forward . . . .

                                             Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

                                                            I dreamed that as I wandered by the way
                                                            Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
                                                            And gentle odours led my steps astray,
                                                            Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
                                                            Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
                                                            Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
                                                            Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
                                                            But kissed it, and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream.

                                                        (Percy Bysshe Shelley, from "A Dream of the Unknown")

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The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home, first with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms.

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said “Bother!” and “Oh blow!” and also “Hang spring-cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, “Up we go! Up we go!” till at last, pop! His snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

“This is fine!” he said to himself. “This is better than whitewashing!” The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout.

Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side. 

[from “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame 1859-1932]

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"It was a Lover and his Lass" - Thomas Morley's setting of Shakespeare's words, sung and played here by Flauto Dolce.




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This week the subject of A TOUCH OF CULTURE is the ballet and includes short extracts from four popular ballets.http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

***A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture***
 

No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face. (John Donne 1572-1631)

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Within the orchard’s many shadows,
Flitting softly round our feet,
While burning hot, the sunlight shot
Between them in the summer heat;
We went, at times, by dock-leaves, falling
Limp, beside the mossy walling.

The way from garden into orchard
Through an arched gateway led,
Where rose a dovecote up above
The grey old arch, above the head,
By flower-beds of the oldest fashion,
Sweet with rose and red carnation.

There spreading trees of mossy oldness,
This and that way leaning lay;
And others, young and upright, sprung
For year-stunned old ones cast away;
Within a thorny hedge that girded
Ground, and tree bough, many birded.

There shone the boughs, in May’s gay sunshine,
Out in blooth as white’s a sheet;
Or else their flowers fell in showers
Softly down about their feet;
Or else they nodded, many-appled,
Green, or lastly ruddy-dappled.

And then the time of apple-taking
Came, and apples pattered down
Below the trees, in twos and threes,
Full thick; and yellow, red and brown,
To folks that filled, from baskets by them,
Bags as full as they could tie them.
(William Barnes 1801-1886)

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Thanks to Elsa Laura of Mexico for this video. The music is from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi 1678-1741

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My new blog A TOUCH OF CULTURE is now online and this week is showing five great paintings by the American artist William Merritt Chase 1849-1916.

http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

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                                             12th century silk painting “Bird on a Branch” by Li Anzhong

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have won. (Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862)

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A linnet in a gilded cage -
A linnet on a bough -
In frosty winter one might doubt
Which bird is luckier now.
But let the trees burst out in leaf,
And nests be on the bough,
Which linnet is the luckier bird,
Oh, who could doubt it now? (Christina Georgina Rossetti 1830-1894)

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Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,
I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save
Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye,
And once it tried to sing;
Of him or her who placed it there, and why,
No one knew anything. (Thomas Hardy 1849-1928)

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Thanks to “puntocaramelo” for this video. The music -  “Gabriel’s Oboe” by Ennio Morricone comes from the film The Mission



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my new blog . . . . . . A TOUCH OF CULTURE . . . . . . my new blog

                             Starting Friday 1st October

Every Friday     http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com   Every Friday
                   

My other blogs Eighty Plus, Quiet Corner and Wise Men Say are continuing as usual

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Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night. (Hal Borland)

“Full Moon” attribution -  Arun.blue at en.wikipedia

How like a queen comes forth the lonely moon
From the slow opening curtains of the clouds
Walking in beauty to her midnight throne. (George Croly)

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Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon:
This way, and that, she peers and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam
By silver reeds in a silver stream. (Anon)

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“Moonlight and Roses” is the title of this popular song published in 1921. The tune was taken without permission from an organ piece “Andantino in D flat” by Edwin Lemare 1866-1934. After legal action in 1925, the composer was granted share of the royalties.



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Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower (Albert Camus)

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A piece of prose, a poem and two haiku - I’ve chosen them because they show the kind of attitude poets have for what we consider to be households pests.

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House or Window Flies

These little indoor dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all summer long.

They look like things of mind or fairies, and seem pleased or dull as the weather permits. In many clean cottages and genteel houses, they are allowed every liberty to creep, fly, or do as they like; and seldom or ever do wrong.

In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves. 
(John Clare 1793-1864)

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An August Midnight

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor;
On this scene enter - winged, horned and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;*
While ’mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly that rubs its hands.

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space,
My guests besmear my new-penned line,
Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.
“God’s humblest, they!” I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I. 
(Thomas Hardy 1849-1928))

* dumbledore = bumblebee (old modern English)
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Two haiku by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

don’t worry
little spider
I won’t touch your web

I’m going out
you flies can relax
make love

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When we were on holiday in Arran a few years ago, I took this photograph of the Holy Isle in the Firth of Clyde.

The old Gaelic name for the island was Eilean Molaise, named after a 6th century monk Saint Molaise who lived in a cave there.

The island has always had religious connections. There was a monastery in the 13th century and there’s a spring which is said to have healing properties.

The Holy Isle is now the perfect setting for the Samyé Ling Buddhist Community who have frequent residential courses and retreats.

Part of the island is a nature reserve with ponies, sheep and goats. I found this photo of one the ponies on Wikipedia.

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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.
(From “To Autumn” by John Keats 1795-1821)

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This is a portrait of Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824)  an Austrian composer and musician. She lost her sight when a very young child. It’s believed that Mozart wrote his Piano Concerto No.18 in B flat especially for her.   

Sicilienne, one of her compositions, has always been a great favourite of mine. It’s played here by the cellist Jacqueline Du Pré (1945-1987) accompanied by Gerald Moore.



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Thomas Gray the poet was born in London in 1716 and died in 1771. He was one of 12 children, and incredibly he was the only one who survived infancy. He was educated at Eton and then at Cambridge where he later became a Professor.

Quite a number of common English phrases have their origin in Gray’s poetry:-
“Ignorance is bliss” comes from his “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” and “kindred spirit,” “celestial fire,” “paths of glory” and “far from the madding crowd” can be found in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

Here are the first three verses of the Elegy -

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

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A few years ago, when visiting Painswick in Gloucestershire, I took this photograph of part of the churchyard.

St. Mary’s church was built during the 15th and 16th centuries, with the spire being added in 1632.

The 99 yew trees in the churchyard are the great attraction for visitors. They were planted in 1792 and it’s said that there can be no more than 99, for if a hundredth tree were to grow the devil would pull it up.

However, I understand that some time ago a count was made and the total came to 103.

If that‘s the case, then that’s not good news for the young men of the district, for an old rhyme says -

“Painswick maidens shall be true
Till there grows the hundredth yew.”

Yew trees were sacred in pre-Christian times. They were associated with the three stages of a woman's life - maiden, mother and crone, and also with death and rebirth. The wood of the yew was used for making all sorts of tools and utensils, and the magical properties of the tree was important in the making of lutes.

So to finish, I’ve found some magical lute music from Venice -



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“At the Seaside” by William Merritt Chase 1849-1916

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It is nine o’clock.

There is still light on the sky.

Father and mother, basking in one another’s love, are sitting in chairs on the steps of the boarding-house; behind the front door peeps the inevitable castor oil plant in its china pot. Beside them sit the younger children, unnaturally good and quiet for fear they shall be sent up to bed while it is still light and while the moon rises huge and yellow above the purple bay.

The elder children, grown up now, are off to the dance halls. Only a few rejected young men sit sadly on the steps among the ancients and the infants.

The girls wear white dancing shoes and that is how you know whither they are bound. Two shillings or four-and-six, somewhere round that, is the cost of a ticket to dance.

I like the Palace dance hall best. It has a parquet floor of sixteen thousand square feet and room for five thousand people. It is in a gay baroque style, cream and pink inside, and from the graceful roof hang Japanese lanterns out of a dangling forest of flags.

A small and perfect dance band strikes up - ah, the dance bands of the Isle of Man! Soon a thousand couples are moving beautifully, the cotton dresses of the girls like vivid tulips in all this pale cream and pink, the sports coats and dark suits of the men a background to so much airy colour. The rhythmic dance is almost tribal, so that even a middle-aged spectator like me is caught up in mass excitement, pure and thrilling and profound.
[Extract from “The Isle of Man” by John Betjeman 1906-1984, published by Penguin Modern Classics in “The Best of Betjeman.”]

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Continuing the nostalgic theme, some seaside images from the past -

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And finally, this is probably the kind of music they would be dancing to at John Betjeman’s Palace in the Isle of Man.





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THE NEXT POST HERE will be on TUESDAY 24th AUGUST

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Thanks to FreeFoto.com for this view of Crummock Water, Cumbria

Thinking about silence . . .

I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent. (Cato the Elder)

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music and silence. (Edith Sitwell)

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. (Josh Billings)

‘Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. (Abraham Lincoln)

Silence is golden, when you can’t think of a good answer. (Mohamed Ali)

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A rather sad poem by Thomas Hardy -

WHERE THE PICNIC WAS

Where we made the fire
In the summer time
Of branch and briar
On the hill to the sea,
I slowly climb
Through winter mire,
And scan and trace
The forsaken place
Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows,
And the grass is grey,
But the spot still shows
As a burnt circle - aye,
And stick-ends, charred,
Still strew the sward
Whereon I stand,
Last relic of the band
Who came that day!

Yes, I am here
Just as last year,
And the sea breathes brine
From its strange straight line
Up hither, the same
As when we four came,
- But two have wandered far
From this grassy rise
Into urban roar
Where no picnics are,
And one - has shut her eyes
For evermore.

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I like this - The Orchard, by the English painter Thomas Cooper Gotch

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Finally, this is the Waltz from the ballet Coppélia by Léo Delibes, with some marvellous pictures to accompany the music.

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,
Lulled by the moonlight have all passed away!
Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea
Mermaids are chanting the wild lorelie;
Over the streamlet vapours are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.
Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me! (Stephen Foster 1826-1864)

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This painting “Flora” is the work of Titian (1477?-1576)

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The singer here is Chloe Agnew.



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After an interval of four months my EIGHTY PLUS blog begins again this week end at -
http://80plus.blogspot.com

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People say “I want peace.“
If you remove I (ego) and want (desire), you are left with peace. (Sathya Sai Baba, b1926)

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Whence comes solace? Not from seeing,
What is doing, suffering, being;
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Not from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream
And in gazing at the Gleam
Whereby grey things golden seem. (Thomas Hardy 1840-1928)

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The Skylark, by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770-1835)

Bird of the wilderness
Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o’er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling place -
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud,
Far in the downy cloud;
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth,
Where on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O’er fell and fountain sheen,
O’er moor and mountain green,
O’er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,
Over the rainbow’s rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing away.

Then when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms
Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling place -
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

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In this video the music is “On Wings of Song” by Felix Mendelssohn, not Franz Liszt. The name of the pianist is not given.



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Thanks to http://www.photoeverywhere.co.uk for the use of the above photograph

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The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze. (Julian Grenfell 1888-1915)

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Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A bee-hive’s hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.

The swallow oft beneath my thatch
Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
And share my meal, a welcome guest.

Around my ivied porch shall spring
Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
And Lucy at her wheel shall sing
In russet gown and apron blue.

The village church among the trees,
Where first our marriage vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze
And point with taper spire to Heaven. (Samuel Rogers 1763-1855)

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 The painting is the work of John McWhirter 1839-1911

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I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever. (Alfred Lord Tennyson  1809-1892)

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Traumerei (Dreaming) by Robert Schumann. The pianist is Yundi Li.



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Two views from a carriage window -

Just a peep from a carriage window,
As we stood for a moment still,
Just one look - and no more - till the engine
Gave a whistle sharp and shrill.

But I saw in that moment the heather,
That lay like a purple sheet
On the hills that watch o’er the hamlet
That sleeps like a child at their feet.

O, sweet are those hills when the winter
Flings round them his mantle of snow,
And sweet when the sunshine of summer
Sets their fair green bosoms aglow.

But sweeter and grander in autumn,
When the winds are soft with desire,
When the buds of the heather take blossom,
And run to their summits like fire.

I saw each and all through the heather
That purple lay spread like a sheet
On the hills that watch over the hamlet,
That sleeps like a child at their feet. (Alexander Anderson 1845-1909)

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Yes. I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Then the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and around him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. (Edward Thomas 1878-1917)

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