My new girls...

Errata...
My girls have developed testicles. They are now officially Ladyboys!

To His Mistress in Absence
Torquato Tasso (1544-95)

Far from thy dearest self, the scope
Of all my aims,
I waste in secret flames;
And only live because I hope.

O when will Fate restore
The joys, in whose bright fire
My expectation shall expire,
That I may live because I hope no more.

I was there.

Dawn
Ivor Gurney - WW1 poet

Dawn came not surprising, but later widened
To great space and a sea of many colours
With slate and pink and blue above the frightened
Mud fields soiled and heavy with War's colours-
And the guns thumped and threatened,
While the bacon frizzled, and the warm incense heightened,
Drifting in bays and dugouts slowly lightened.
First light bringing the thought what familiar star
There was, of town, farm, cottage, over there, over yonder,
And by day before duty settled awhile to
A companionship of good talk, forgetting night's woe.

Is This the Price of Love?
Joseph Seamon Cotter

Never again the sight of her?
Never her winsome smile
Shall light the path of my journeying
O'er many a weary mile?
Never again shall her soft voice come
To cheer me all the while?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Tell me, is this the price of love?

Never again the touch of her lips?
Never her dark, brown eyes
Shall shine on me with the dancing joy
Of stars in the summer skies?
Never again shall my song be aught
Save minor chords of sighs?
O Thou, who hearest from above,
Tell me, is this the price of love?

If It Be Destined
Francesco Petraca (1304-74)

If it be destined that my Life, from thine
Divided, yet with thine shall linger on
Till, in the later twilight of Decline,
I may behold those Eyes, their lustre gone;
When the gold tresses that enrich thy brow
Shall all be faded into silver-grey,
From which the wreaths that well bedeck them now
For many a Summer shall have fall'n away;
Then should I dare to whisper in your ears
The pent-up Passion of so long ago,
That Love which hath survived the wreck of years
Hath little else to pray for, or bestow,
Thou wilt not to the broken heart deny
The boon of one too-late relenting Sigh.

Jeffery Day (1896-1918) was one of the very few flyer-poets of World War 1.
He was killed in an air battle towards the end of World War I over the sea.

On the Wings of the Morning
Jeffery Day

A sudden roar, a mighty rushing sound,
A jolt or two, a smoothly sliding rise,
A tumbled blur of disappearing ground,
And then all sense of motion slowly dies,
Quiet and calm, the earth slips past below,
As underneath a bridge still waters flow.

My turning wing inclines toward the ground;
The ground itself glides up with graceful swing
And at lane’s far tip twirls slowly round,
Then drops from sight again beneath the wing
To slip away serenely as before,
A cubist-patterned carpet on the floor.

Hills gently sink and valleys gently fill.
The flattened fields grow ludicrously small;
Slowly they pass beneath and slower still
Until they hardly seem to move at all.
Then suddenly they disappear from sight
Hidden by fleeting wisps of faded white.

The wing-tips, faint and dripping, dimly show
Blurred by the wreaths of mist that intervene.
Weird, half-seen shadows flicker to and fro
Across the pallid fog-bank’s blinding screen.
At last the choking mists release their hold,
And all the world is silver, blue and gold.

The air is clear, more clear than sparkling wine;
Compared with this wine is a turgid brew.
The far horizon makes a clean-cut line
Between the silver and depthless blue.
Out of the snow-white level reared on high
Glittering hills surge up to meet the sky.


Outside the wind screen’s shelter gales may race;
But in the seat a cool and gentle breeze
Blows steadily upon my grateful face.
As I sit motionless and at my ease,
Contented just to loiter in the sun
And gaze around me till the day is done.

And so I sit half sleeping, half awake,
Dreaming a happy dream of golden days
Until at last, with a reluctant shake
I rouse myself and with lingering gaze
At all the splendour of the shining plain
Make ready to come down to earth again.


The engine stops; a pleasant silence reigns-
Silence, not broken, but intensified
By the soft, sleepy wire’ insistent strains,
That rise and fall as with a sweeping glide
I slither down the well-oiled sides of space,
Towards a lower, less enchanted place.

The clouds draw nearer, changing as they come.
Now, like a flash, fog grips me by the throat.
Down goes the nose: at once the wire’s low hum
Begins to rise in volume and in note,
Till, as I hurtle from the choking cloud
It swells into a scream, high pitched, and loud.

The scattered hues and shades of green and brown
Fashion themselves into the land I know,
Turning and twisting, as I spiral down
Towards the landing-ground; till, skimming low
I glide with slackening speed across the ground,
And come to rest with lightly grating sound.

Sonnet
Edward Davison

Now that the moonlight withers from the sky
Like hope within my heart, What's left to do
But dream alone until the day I die
On some imagined memory of you?
Believe there was a day when for a space
I looked into your unaverted eyes
To feel my spirit awake at their embrace
Articulate and beautiful and wise;
Or dream I hear your voice in the dim pause
Of dawn, ere birds awake, and feel your hand
Seek mine, when some night-fancy overawes
Your drowsy thoughts, knowing I understand:
Better to falsify you thus and rest
Than know myself forever dispossessed.

Night Flying
Frederick Victor Branford

Aloft on footless levels of the night
A pilot thunders through the desolate stars,
Sees in the misty deep a fainting light
Of far-off cities cast in coal-dark bars
Of shore and soundless sea; and he is lone,
Snatched from the universe like one forbid,
Or like a ghost caught from the slay and thrown
Out on the void, nor God cared what he did.

Till from these unlinked whisperers that pain
The buried earth he swings his boat away,
Even as a lonely thinker who hath run
The gamut of greatlore, and found the Inane,
Then stumbles at midnight upon a sun
And all the honour of a mighty day.

One of my leaving cards.

and a Tshirt present

Serenity
John Middleton Murry

I ask no more for wonders: let me be
At peace within my heart, my fever stilled
By the calm circuit of the year fulfilled,
Autumn to follow summer in the tree
Of my new-ordered being. Silently
My leaves shall on the unfretting earth be spilled,
The pride be slowly scattered that shall gild
A windless triumph of serenity.

Vex me no more with dreams; the tortured mind
Hath turned and rent the dreamer. Foreordain
My motions, and my seasons solemn lead
Each to his own perfection whence declined
Their measured sequence promise shall contain,
And my late-opened husk let fall a seed.

Possession
John Freeman

I saw you,
I held you,
And surely I heard you:
But you were as far as any man living could be.

Though sometimes
I have seen you,
And touched you and heard you,
As together we walked and your sleeve now and then brushed mine;

Yet were you then
Farther, farther
Than with body's absence-
But who walks with you now while your thoughts are here and brush mine?

The slow waters
Of three oceans,
And the change of seasons,
Between us are but as a new-leafy hawthorn hedge,

And I see you
And hold you:-
But are you yet living,
Or come you now nearer than any man living may be?

Tomorrow is my last official
day of work in education.
My emotions are very mixed.

To Lucasta, going beyond the Seas
Richard Lovelace. 1618–1658

If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind or swallowing wave.

Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown; and greet as Angels greet.

So then we do anticipate
Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind.

Posers today!

and in the garden...

Sonnet 148
William Shakespeare

O me! what eyes hath love put in my head
Which have no correspondence with true sight:
Or if they have, where is my judgement fled
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's: No,
How can it? O how can love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
No marvel then though I mistake my view:
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find!

Mesnevi
Sa'di (- 1291)

If liveihood by knowledge were endowed,
None would be poorer than the brainless crowd;
Yet fortune on the fool bestows the prize,
And leaves but themes for wonder to the wise.

The luck of wealth dependeth not on skill,
But only on the aid of Heaven's will:
So it has happened since the world began-
The witless ape outstrips the learned man;
A poet dies of hunger, grief, and cold;
A fool among the ruins findeth gold.

He Is out of Heart with His Time
Guerzo di Montecanti (13th century)

If any man would know the very cause
Which makes me to forget my speech in rhyme,
All the sweet songs I sang in other time,--
I'll tell it in a sonnet's simple clause.
I hourly have beheld how good withdraws
To nothing, and how evil mounts the while:
Until my heart is gnawed as with a file,
Nor aught of this world's worth is what it was.
At last there is no other remedy
But to behold the universal end;
And so upon this hope my thoughts are urged:
To whom, since truth is sunk and dead at sea,
There has no other part or prayer remain'd
Except of seeing the world's self submerged.

James May's Things You Need To Know Ep 2 by MyJMPage

http://www.heraldica.org/topics/orders/garterlist.htm

Redressing the balance; here's one for the fellas.
(Robert Dudley strutting his stuff on the catwalk? ;) )

A Farewell to Arms (To Queen Elizabeth)
By George Peele
1558?-1597

HIS golden locks Time hath to silver turn'd;
O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurn'd,
But spurn'd in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,--
'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.'
Goddess, allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.

For all us ladies who are getting on a bit!

THE AUTUMNAL.(incomplete)
John Donne

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face ;
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape ;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame ;
Affections here take reverence's name.
Were her first years the Golden Age ? that's true,
But now they're gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time ;
This is her tolerable tropic clime.
Fair eyes ; who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves ; if graves they were,
They were Love's graves, for else he is nowhere.
Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit,
Vow'd to this trench, like an anachorite,
And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
Here dwells he ; though he sojourn everywhere,
In progress, yet his standing house is here ;
Here, where still evening is, not noon, nor night ;
Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight.
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at council, sit.
This is love's timber ; youth his underwood ;
There he, as wine in June, enrages blood ;
Which then comes seasonabliest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.

Beauty XXV
Khalil Gibran

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?

And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.

Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."

And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.

Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."

The tired and the weary say, "beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.

Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."

But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,

And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."

At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."

And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."

In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."

All these things have you said of beauty.

Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,

And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,

But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,

But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,

But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.

But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

James May's Things You Need to Know Ep 1 by MyJMPage

The Summer Solstice is here!

I have very fond memories of being at Stonehenge to witness the Solstice dawn. It was 2003, fine and cloudless. The lasting impression, apart from the obvious moment of sunrise, was the pastel coloured sky, being criss-crossed by light aircraft.

Elegy 10 - The Dream
by John Donne

IMAGE of her whom I love, more than she,
Whose fair impression in my faithful heart
Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart
The value ; go, and take my heart from hence,
Which now is grown too great and good for me.
Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense
Strong objects dull ; the more, the less we see.
When you are gone, and reason gone with you,
Then fantasy is queen and soul, and all ;
She can present joys meaner than you do,
Convenient, and more proportional.
So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For all our joys are but fantastical ;
And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true ;
And sleep, which locks up sense, doth lock out all.
After a such fruition I shall wake,
And, but the waking, nothing shall repent ;
And shall to love more thankful sonnets make,
Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
But, dearest heart and dearer image, stay ;
Alas ! true joys at best are dream enough ;
Though you stay here, you pass too fast away,
For even at first life's taper is a snuff.
Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.

Sanctuary

How hard can it be?
Well, I've lost my sanctuary.

Did it belong to you?
No, I was just passing through.

Was it yours alone?
No, it became quite well known.

Where will you go from here?
I don't know, I think I'm lost, I fear.

I think I'll just stay here.

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,
Friendship without envy, Or beauty without vanity?
Here, where grace is served with muscle And strength by gentleness confined He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity.
There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.
There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.
England's past has been borne on his back.
All our history is in his industry.
We are his heirs, he our inheritance.

One ring to show our love.
One ring to bind us.
One ring to seal our love
And forever to entwine us.

Elaine
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Oh, come again to Astolat!
I will not ask you to be kind.
And you may go when you will go,
And I will stay behind.

I will not say how dear you are,
Or ask you if you hold me dear,
Or trouble you with things for you
The way I did last year.

So still the orchard, Lancelot,
So very still the lake shall be,
You could not guess—though you should guess—
What is become of me.

So wide shall be the garden-walk,
The garden-seat so very wide,
You needs must think—if you should think—
The lily maid had died.

Save that, a little way away,
I’d watch you for a little while,
To see you speak, the way you speak,
And smile,—if you should smile.

from Cælica
by Fulke Greville (1554-1628)

WHEN all this All doth pass from age to age,
And revolution in a circle turn,
Then heavenly justice doth appear like rage,
The caves do roar, the very seas do burn,
Glory grows dark, the sun becomes a night,
And makes this great world feel a greater might.

When love doth change his seat from heart to heart,
And worth about the wheel of Fortune goes,
Grace is diseased, desert seems overthwart,
Vows are forlorn, and truth doth credit lose,
Chance then gives law, desire must be wise,
And look more ways than one, or lose her eyes.

My age of joy is past, of woe begun,
Absence my presence is, strangeness my grace,
With them that walk against me is my sun:
The wheel is turned, I hold the lowest place,
What can be good to me since my love is
To do me harm, content to do amiss?

A picnic by the river at Chatsworth, last week.

In The Fields
Charlotte Mew

Lord when I look at lovely things which pass,
Under old trees the shadow of young leaves
Dancing to please the wind along the grass,
Or the gold stillness of the August sun on the August sheaves;
Can I believe there is a heavenlier world than this?
And if there is
Will the heart of any everlasting thing
Bring me these dreams that take my breath away?
They come at evening with the home-flying rooks and the scent
of hay,
Over the fields. They come in spring.

Ad Lectorem de Subiecto Operis Fui
Thomas Bastard (1566 - 1618)

The little world the subject of my muse,
Is an huge task and labour infinite;
Like to a wilderness or mass confuse,
Or to an endless gulf, or to the night:
How many strange meanders do I find?
How many paths do turn my straying pen?
How many doubtful twilights make me blind,
Which seek to limn out this strange All of men?
Easy it were the earth to portray out,
Or to draw forth the heavens' purest frame,
Whose restless course by order whirls about
Of change and place, and still remains the same.
But how shall men's or manners' form appear,
Which while I write, do change from what they were?

Limn -
Depict or describe in painting or words.
or suffuse or highlight (something) with a bright color or light.

Farewell!
William Shakespeare

Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

I'm back

When I Have Fears
John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Going for another few days by the sea. I may even write some poetry. Come on Mr May, you are my muse, I need inspiring. x

Clenched Soul (incomplete)
Pablo Neruda

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

Gazing at the Sacred Peak
Du Fu (Tu Fu)

For all this, what is the mountain god like?
An unending green of lands north and south:
From ethereal beauty Creation distills
There, yin and yang split dusk and dawn.

Swelling clouds sweep by. Returning birds
Ruin my eyes vanishing. One day soon,
At the summit, the other mountains will be
Small enough to hold, all in a single glance.

A Sonnet
Francis Beaumont

Flattering Hope, away and leave me,
She'll not come, thou dost deceive me;
Hark the cock crows, th' envious light
Chides away the silent night;
Yet she comes not, oh ! how I tire
Betwixt cold fear and hot desire.

Here alone enforced to tarry
While the tedious minutes marry,
And get hours, those days and years,
Which I count with sighs and fears
Yet she comes not, oh! how I tire
Betwixt cold fear and hot desire.

Restless thoughts a while remove
Unto the bosom of my love,
Let her languish in my pain,
Fear and hope, and fear again;
Then let her tell me, in love's fire,
What torment's like unto desire?

Endless wishing, tedious longing,
Hopes and fears together thronging;
Rich in dreams, yet poor in waking,
Let her be in such a taking:
Then let her tell me in love's fire,
What torment's like unto desire?

Come then, Love, prevent day's eyeing,
My desire would fain be dying:
Smother me with breathless kisses,
Let me dream no more of blisses;
But tell me, which is in Love's fire
Best, to enjoy, or to desire?

So true, so true...

We never really grow up,
we only learn how to act in public.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit;
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

To be sure of hitting the target,
shoot first and call whatever
you hit the target.

Have received the package today,
many thanks.
You are a true star x

A Sleepless Night
Alfred Austin

Within the hollow silence of the night
I lay awake and listened. I could hear
Planet with punctual planet chiming clear,
And unto star star cadencing aright.
Nor these alone: cloistered from deafening sight,
All things that are, made music to my ear:
Hushed woods, dumb caves, and many a soundless mere,
With Arctic mains in rigid sleep locked tight.
But ever with this chant from shore and sea,
From singing constellation, humming thought,
And life through time's stops blowing variously,
A melancholy undertone was wrought;
And from its boundless prison-house I caught
The awful wail of lone Eternity.