Opened
it lay before me on the path:
earth’s lightest book —
it has but two pages.
Filled with wonder I read its magic signs.
Then it ascended into the air.
No apocalypse.
Only a couple of words from summer’s
secret revelation:
Aglais io, peacock butterfly.
Christine Busta (1915–1987)
Photograph: Didier Descouens – Own work; copied from wikipedia.
Thank you to Bishop Erik Varden for sharing this poem on his Coram Fratribus blog.
By Radcliffe Hall:
A Memory
You lay so still in the sunshine,
So still in that hot sweet hour—
That the timid things of the forest land
Came close; a butterfly lit on your hand,
Mistaking it for a flower.
You scarcely breathed in your slumber,
So dreamless it was, so deep—
While the warm air stirred in my veins like wine,
The air that had blown through a jasmine vine,
But you slept—and I let you sleep.
It quite possibly was a gate-keeper butterfly that landed on the hand of the poet’s companion, a creature of the forest edge, as the name suggests. A sung version of this played on the radio this morning: ‘You lay so still in the sunshine’ by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Willow wands growing through the snow. Calm after the storm.
Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me, When winds rave thro' the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, Dark'ning the day! O Nature! a' thy shews an' forms To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms! Whether the summer kindly warms, Wi' life an' light; Or winter howls, in gusty storms, The lang, dark night! The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel he learn'd to wander, Adown some trottin burn's meander, An' no think lang: O, sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder A heart-felt sang. Three wintry verses from Burns to mark his day. The Sots dialect is not too difficult here, but just a couple of translations from our third verse. Fand: found. Burn: brook; it crops up in English place-names, Saltburn, Blackburn, etc..
These lines are part of a song in the Compleat Angler of Izaac Walton, written by John Chalkhill, his relative by marriage. Chalkhill was a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser.
Snow on the ground in the photograph, but one day in Spring I chose this piece for a Summer’s day, trusting that there might be ‘excessive heat’ coming the reader’s way. I was editing it soon after cutting down osiers; the previous year’s growth of coppiced willow, as seen above. Often they are grown within a slow-moving river. Then again, I find myself walking under willows almost every day beside the River Stour. I often had occasion to shelter under willows during my time as a very incompleat angler in Ireland. I did catch a very respectable pike once and good eating it was too!
If the sun's excessive heat Make our bodies swelter, To an osier hedge we get For a friendly shelter! Where in a dike, Perch or pike, Roach or dace, We do chase, Bleak or gudgeon, Without grudging, We are still contented. Or we sometimes pass an hour Under a green willow, That defends us from a shower, Making earth our pillow Where we may Think and pray, Before death Stops our breath: Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented.
Waters above! eternal springs!
The dew that silvers the Dove's wings!
O welcome, welcome to the sad!
Give dry dust drink; drink that makes glad!
Many fair ev'nings, many flow'rs
Sweeten'd with rich and gentle showers,
Have I enjoy'd, and down have run
Many a fine and shining sun;
But never, till this happy hour,
Was blest with such an evening-shower!
From "Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II.
This was not an April shower, but a March one; a morning but not an evening shower yet I'm sure Henry Vaughan would have appreciated it, as I did, seeing the raindrops on the willows shining on the osiers. Laudato Si'!
… The sheepfold here
Pours out its fleecy tenants o’er the glebe.
At first, progressive as a stream they seek
The middle field: but, scatter’d by degrees,
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.
(from William Cowper’s The Task
When Cowper wrote this in the 18th Century he was living in Bedfordshire, almost as flat as the Sussex salt marshes, where the picture was taken. And he would have seen the occasional stage coach pass by, not hourly trains, as seen in the background here.
A delightful word picture, an illumination like those little sketches in mediaeval manuscripts.
There's nothing like the sun as the year dies, Kind as it can be, this world being made so, To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies, To all things that it touches except snow, Whether on mountain side or street of town. The south wall warms me: November has begun, Yet never shone the sun as fair as now While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough With spangles of the morning's storm drop down Because the starling shakes it, whistling what Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot That there is nothing, too, like March's sun, Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's, Or January's, or February's, great days: And August, September, October, and December Have equal days, all different from November. No day of any month but I have said — Or, if I could live long enough, should say — "There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day." There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.
Edward Thomas.
Edward Thomas challenged his melancholy by getting out of doors, with friends such as Robert Frost but often enough alone. November sun in England, especially against a south wall, or south cliff, is noticeably warming.
Mid-November last year we went walking and foraged damsons, sweeter than they would have been a month earlier, but recorded that in prose, not poetry.
‘There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead’, and then? Why then we shall learn who the sun is like.
And there shall be no night there;
and they need no candle, neither light of the sun;
for the Lord God giveth them light:
and they shall reign for ever and ever.
Revelation 22:5.
Summer is gone with all its roses, Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers, Its warm air and refreshing showers: And even Autumn closes. Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going, And winter comes which is yet colder; Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder, And the last buds cease blowing.
From Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti.
There were more frosts and more intense cold in Christina Rossetti’s time. Nevertheless, we have had the first hoar frost of this winter, those last dahlia buds look unlikely to flower; the tents along Canterbury High Street we hope are keeping people safe, and warmer than otherwise they would be, until the shelter opens next month.
Sunflowers
To sing break-heartedly of light Like dying sunflowers Gathering to themselves their life, Defying that which is their source. Small suns, we grasp your wantonness And would reverse your death. Our poorness seize your gold. But go you must, Dear small reflections Of so great a God, We would you stay.
Sheila Billingsley.
The sunflowers are indeed ‘gathering to themselves their life’ as Summer strolls into Autumn. The seed heads will turn to black, attracting the birds when they are hung up in the garden in weeks to come; we cannot seize their gold, but we can remember them, and save a few seeds to reflect God next year.
Let’s have a little poem to celebrate the great outdoors. Sadly, the number of thrushes seem to be declining fast in Kent, though I came across a thrush’s anvil yesterday; there was one in our garden, many years ago. If you never saw it, you won’t know you’ve lost it. A thrush’s anvil is the stone s/he uses to bash snails against until the flesh can be extracted. This one was on gravel, so the shells hardly showed against the pebbles, of a similar shape, size and colour to the shells, so I brought two smashed shells home. I hope the thrushes’ chicks prosper and restore their fortunes in Kent.
The poem was probably written in Florence, where Walter Savage Landor had gone after quarrelling with most of his friends and enemies in England. Robert Browning took him under his wing.
Damon was sitting in the grove
With Phyllis, and protesting love;
And she was listening; but no word
Of all he loudly swore she heard.
How! was she deaf then? no, not she,
Phyllis was quite the contrary.
Tapping his elbow, she said, ‘Hush!
O what a darling of a thrush!
I think he never sang so well
As now, below us, in the dell.’
Imaginary Conversations and Poems, A Selection, by Walter Savage Landor via Kindle
I’m reminded of George’s primary school teacher, who complained that at the end of a difficult lesson when she had been introducing a new maths topic, she saw him looking out of the window. ‘There’s a female blackbird on the grass, Miss.’
When he got home, he said that he had stopped paying attention once he understood the maths, and got on with birdwatching.
Will Turnstone 