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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