**** in the time of Covid ***

I don’t know why, but I feel like the Armada has been sighted, perhaps this is a metaphor describing our notion of old England……(without Johnson)

I miss a few lines at the start……

The Armada

(Lord Macaulay 1800-1859 was Rector of Glasgow University; Alma mater)

TRISTESSE at the time of Covid

My first real girlfriend {of the late fifties} has died 2020- (cancer) this news affected me profoundly; she died alone, without any family near, (like many these days) : but not unmourned. RIP JP

Here’s Lord Byron:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

Lord Byron 1788 – 1824 (36)

***********************************************

In the time of Covid:

The current plight of humanity now is echoed in the wartime poem “There will come soft rains” . {Also a short story by Ray Bradbury (Martian Chronicles)}

*************************************

THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

******************************************************************

We talked of the Precession of the Equinoxes: Chaucer‘s words in the 14th Century are an important marker in Astro-archaeology. Here below “the yonge sonne” spring equinox is in ARIES – the Ram, in April (Aprille).

Now (in the 21st Century) the spring equinox has moved back to March. These are the opening stanzas of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-

Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, (1340 – 1400)

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16th November 2019  thoughts on reaching  84   (Polonium atomic No 84)

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear ‘t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Shakespeare  –  Polonius’ advice (Hamlet)

October 2019

July 2019

   Robert Frost   1874-1963

June 2019       I used to know this poem by heart…..

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

                                                          Lewis Carroll

September 2018    …and will this summer ever end…..

 TO AUTUMN

  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-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d 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-brimm’d their clammy cells.

  Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

June 2018

ADLESTROP

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. Some one 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
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

                    Edward Thomas

May 2018   a favourite Sonnet:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

    W Shakespeare         

March 2018

Wordsworth.     March

            THE Cock is crowing,
            The stream is flowing,
            The small birds twitter,
            The lake doth glitter,
          The green field sleeps in the sun;
            The oldest and youngest
            Are at work with the strongest;
            The cattle are grazing,
            Their heads never raising;
          There are forty feeding like one!                           

                       
                                                              1801.

February 2018

                     A shropshire Lad (John Betjeman) recite with Midland accent

                    Captain Matthew Webb (19 January 1848 – 24 July 1883) was the first                                                            recorded person to swim the English Channel

The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley.
Swimming along-
Swimming along-
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to Heaven.

The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks,
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses’ backs,
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping along in a bathing dress
To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along-
Dripping along-
To the Congregational Hall;
Dripping and still he rose over the sill and faded away in a wall.

There wasn’t a man in Oakengate
That hadn’t got hold of the tale,
And over the valley in Ironbridge,
And round by Coalbrookdale,
How Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Rose rigid and dead from the old canal
That carries the bricks to Lawley
Rigid and dead-
Rigid and dead-
To the Saturday Congregation,
Paying a call at Dawley Bank on his way to his destination.

John Betjeman   (1906 – 1984) 

January 2018

                              To mark January 25th ( “Burns Night”)    

                                    Rabby Burns  (b Jan 25 1759  d 1796)

a very much shortened version of:

           Tam O’Shanter

When Chapman Billies leave the street,
And drouthy Neebors, neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
An’ folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
And getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and styles,
That lie between us and our hame
Whare sits our sulky sullen dame.
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter,
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses
For honest men and bonnie lasses.)
……………………..
But to our tale: Ae market night,
Tam had got planted unco right;
Fast buy an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely
And at his elbow, souter Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;
Tam lo’ed him like avery brither-
They had been fou for weeks thegither!
………………………
Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg-
A better never lifted leg-
Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet;
Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet;
Whiles glowing round wi’ prudent ares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares:
Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.
Tam spies Kirk Alloway:   “When glimmering thro’ the groaning trees’
Kirk Alloway seemed in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.
…………………………
Tam approached the Kirk:  “And wow! Tam saw an unco sight
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion brent-new frae France,
But hornpipes,jigs,strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
……………………………
this is the bit where:  Tam roars out “Weel done Cutty Sark!
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion rallied.
………………………………
Ah! Tam! ah Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin’!
In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin’
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin’!
Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman!
Now do thy speedy utmost Meg,
And win the key-stane o’the brig;
There at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross,
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had got shake!
For Nannie, fast before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And few at Tam wi’ furious ettle;
But left ahint her ain grey tail:
The carlin caught her by the rump’
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o’truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother’s son take heed:
Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think! ye may buy the joys o’er dear –
Remember Tam o’Shanter’s mare.

Robert Burns

December 2017

 Shakespeare’s  “When icicles hang” is appropriate

Last month

 John McCrae : “in Flander’s fields”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead.   Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

– W.B. Yeats

Last month

One of Carole’s favourites: 

Welsh Incident          Robert Graves

to be read with Welsh accent

October’s  choice

Roundabouts and Swings    (to be  read in Norfolk accent)

“ twas early last September, nigh to Framlin’ham on sea,
and ’twas Fairday come tomorrow and the time was after tea,
when I met a painted caravan, a’down a dusty lane;
a pharoe and his wagons comin’ jolt and creak and strain,
a cheery cove and sunburnt, bold o eye and wrinkled up,
and beside him on the splashboard, sat a brindled tarrier pup,
an’ a lurcher, wise as Solomon and lean as fiddle strings
was joggin’ in the dust along ‘is roundabouts and swings.

“ Good een” says he, “Good een” says I, “and how d’you find things go,
And what’s the chance of millions when you runs a travellin’ show ?”
“I find”, says he, “things much the same as how they always were,
for it’s bread and bacon mostly, when the dog don’t catch a hare,
But lookin’ at it broad and while we ain’t no merchant kings,
What’s lost upon the roundabouts, we pulls back on the swings.”

Good luck, said he, “Good luck” says I “you’ve put it past a doubt,
And keep that lurcher on the road – the gamekeepers is out.”
He stomped upon the splashboard and he lumbered on again,
To meet a gold-dust sunset, in the owl light down the lane,
And the moon, she climbed the ‘azels, and a night-jar seemed to sing,
That pharoe’s wisdom o’er again, his soothe of loose and win,
For up and down and round, quoth he, go all appointed things,
And losses on the roundabouts mean profits on the swings.

anon