Snowfall
Hamish Brown

When the first snows come
It is like quiet benediction,
The service over.
We shuffle out, at peace,
Cleansed from civilisation
And the year done.
We look out on drifting purity
As strangers from another age,
Misunderstood.
For a world impoverished, this we know:
That truth has stood.

Tonight I Can Write (incomplete)
Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Sonnets of War
Richard Elwes

The melting waters move and flow again,
and Life's awakening pulse is everywhere,
responsive, stirring in the souls of men.
And Spring's heroic song is in the air,
sounding her deathless, ancient certainties:
that valiant hearts were never vainly stilled,
that truth must ever triumph over lies,
that martyred blood was never vainly spilled.
As heirs of an immortal chivalry,
advancing bravely down the storied years,
we take our places in their company
and catch her message with their dauntless ears.
For Life itself is with us in the field,
who call on perjured tyranny to yield.

Christmas Eve Sunrise

GIFSoup

The Song of Love
Ludwig Lewisohn

How shall I guard my soul so that it be
Touched not by thine? And how shall it be brought,
Lifted above thee, unto other things?
Ah, gladly would I hide it utterly
Lost in the dark where are no murmurings,
In strange and silent places that do not
Vibrate when thy deep soul quivers and sings.
But all that touches us two makes us twin
Even as the bow crossing the violin
Draws but one voice from the two strings that meet.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what great player has us in his hand?
O song most sweet.

it may not always be so
e e cummings

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be --
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

Oh, look who it is! Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

Fain would I wed
Thomas Campion

Fain would I wed a fair young man that night and day could please me,
When my mind or body grieved, that had the power to ease me.
Maids are full of longing thoughts that breed a bloodless sickness,
And that, oft I hear men say, is only cured by quickness.
Oft I have been wooed and praised, but never could be movèd;
Many for a day or so I have most dearly lovèd,
But this foolish mind of mine straight loathes the thing resolvèd;
If to love be sin in me, that sin is soon absolvèd.
Sure I think I shall at last fly to some holy order;
When I once am settled there, then can I fly no farther.
Yet I would not die a maid, because I had a mother,
As I was by one brought forth, I would bring forth another.

i carry your heart with me
e.e.cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight?
Christopher Marlowe

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should love, the other win;

And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

My Love Was Warm
Robert Louis Stevenson

MY love was warm; for that I crossed
The mountains and the sea,
Nor counted that endeavour lost
That gave my love to me.

If that indeed were love at all,
As still, my love, I trow,
By what dear name am I to call
The bond that holds me now.

As we never forget a loved, lost pet and because James has recently mentioned Fusker again, here's a couple of paragraphs from his Telegraph column...

"My Top Gear colleagues think it terribly funny that I once proclaimed that I loved my cat, Fusker, above all else; more, even, than my old Bentley. But, so help me, I do. Before anyone writes in with some cod psychology and any nonsense about me projecting on to a dumb animal, I am well aware that Fusker does not love me. He loves cat food.

The flow of adoration runs in one direction; I spend hours talking to him, even though the only word he might possibly understand is "Fusker", and in return not one sound of any consequence has ever emanated from his witless furry face. He has never passed me a spanner or written any of this column, except for a bit that went fasdfij ffeug djdvbv9821."

And I will bring back this...

'I took a chair and threw it...'
Felix Dennis

I took a chair and threw it
Across my unmade bed
When I returned one evening,
To find my old cat dead.

Yet when an ailing neighbour
Passed on - no missiles flew.
The ties that bind are stronger
Than what we tie them to.

There is a Gentle Thought
Dante Alighieri

There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to seduce our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?
The heart replies ‘O, meditative mind
this is love’s messenger and newly sent
to bring me all Love’s words and desires.
His life, and all the strength that he can find,
from her sweet eyes are mercifully lent,
who feels compassion for our inner fires.’

Futility
Wilfred Owen

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Time Lapse Return to Earth from the Space Station

http://fragileoasis.org/blog/2011/11/coming-back-down-to-our-fragile-oasis-2/

I was downloading images from my camera today
and was pleasantly reminded of a Derbyshire summer.

If you follow the line of the distant hills from left to right till they peter out, the village just noticeable below them is Peak Dale, where I spent my childhood. A country child.

A quote from the lovely Liz Smith...

"One of the best parts of growing older?
You can flirt all you like since you've become harmless."

The Tryst
Walter de la Mare

"O whither are you faring to, my sweetheart?
How far now are you journeying, my dear?"
"I am climbing to the brink of yonder hill-top,
Naught human far or near."

"And what will you be seeking there, my sweetheart?
What happy scene is thence surveyed. my dear?"
"Twill be night-tide when outwearied I come thither,
And star-shine icy clear."

"But what will you be brooding on, my sweetheart?
What fantasies of darkness will appear?"
"My self will keep a tryst there - bleak and lonely -
My own heart's secrets I shall share."

"But what will be the manner of your greeting?
What word will you then whisper - no one near?"
"Ah, he who loved me once would know the answer,
Were he still true, my dear."

 /\„,„/\

( =';'= )

/*♥♥*\

(.|.|..|.|.)

Friendship
Elizabeth Jennings

Such love I cannot analyse;
It does not rest in lips or eyes,
Neither in kisses nor caress.
Partly, I know, it’s gentleness

And understanding in one word
Or in brief letters. It’s preserved
By trust and by respect and awe.
These are the words I’m feeling for.

Two people, yes, two lasting friends.
The giving comes, the taking ends
There is no measure for such things.
For this all Nature slows and sings.

The Seed-Shop
Muriel Stuart

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That will drink deeply of a century's streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

A lovely 'May Day' yesterday with two booksignings in London, plus Top Gear Live last Sunday.
I'm still in a state of slight euphoria. Thanks James x

I have a large clock on my computer homepage - when I looked up at it this morning, it read Eleven minutes past eleven. I tried to print screen it but it had already moved to 11:12, darn.

Still, at least I saw it when it said 11:11 on the 11/11/11

p.s. got it in the evening...

For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables at home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Sonnet: Beauty Of Her Face
Dante Alighieri

For certain he hath seen all perfectness
Who among other ladies hath seen mine:
They that go with her humbly should combine
To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
So perfect is the beauty of her face
That is begets in no wise any sigh
Of envy, but draws round her a clear line
Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness.
Merely the sight of her makes all things bow:
Not she herself alone is holier
Than all; but hers, through her, are raised above.
From all her acts such lovely graces flow
That truly one may never think of her
Without a passion of exceeding love.

Toy Story
-------------
The Flying Scotsman,
On miles of rail,
A little Lilliputian on the Tarka Trail.

A gulp of sentiment,
A shout of joy,
Pride in the endurance of a childhood toy.

It was coming home,
It had made it through,
For the Toy Story man and the child that knew.

Elaine x

They are selling four foot Concorde replicas, made out of wood, on eBay. That's your first e-present for Christmas!

Feeling emotional having just watched the Edge of Space clip...

In Memoriam
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;

Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.

Dedicated to a former choirboy!

Choirs
George R Hamilton

Does memory make you sad of heart?
No, I'll not trust those ancient tales,
Though you should make my tears to start,
You choirs of soulless nightingales:

For I've heard twenty rogues today,
Your rivals, flouting gods and men,
Come laughing into Church from play,
Rustle their surplices, and then

To heavens higher than all height
From rascal throats unfaltering raise
A Jacob's ladder of pure light,
A single sanctity of praise.

The Way Through the Woods
Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods ...
But there is no road through the woods.

The Rolling English Road
G.K. Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

A Sonnet of the Moon
Charles Best

Look how the pale queen of the silent night
Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
And he, as long as she is in his sight,
With her full tide is ready her to honor.
But when the silver waggon of the moon
Is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
The sea calls home his crystal waves to moan,
And with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.
So you that are the sovereign of my heart
Have all my joys attending on your will;
My joys low-ebbing when you do depart,
When you return their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come and as you do depart,
Joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.

Bach And The Sentry
Ivor Gurney

Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood
On that most dearest Prelude of my delight.
The low-lying mist lifted its hood,
The October stars showed nobly in clear night.

When I return, and to real music-making,
And play that Prelude, how will it happen then?
Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking,
With a dull sense of No Man's Land again?

Visited here yesterday,
Calke Abbey, Derbyshire.
I've been reliably informed that there are
34 Stately Homes in the county.

From China circa 500BC

I climbed the hill just as the new moon showed,
I saw him coming on the southern road.
My heart lays down it's load.

Another translation of...
Full Moon
Du Fu (Tu Fu)

Isolate and full, the moon
Floats over the house by the river.
Into the night the cold water rushes away below the gate.
The bright gold spilled on the river is never still.
The brilliance of my quilt is greater than precious silk.
The circle without blemish.
The empty mountains without sound.
The moon hangs in the vacant, wide constellations.
Pine cones drop in the old garden.
The senna trees bloom.
The same clear glory extends for ten thousand miles.

Tonight's Autumnal Sunset

Song on May Morning
John Milton

Now the bright morning-star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

At the beginning of the month James announced that he is no longer writing for the Telegraph. It didn't come as a surprise as we have had no new columns for months. The comments section became a second home to me for a couple of years. Thankfully, rather than an abrupt finish, it has dwindled slowly to an end.
Thank you James for all that witty, amusing, not to mention informative writing. But thank you most of all for inviting us into your personal life, just a little. It has endeared us and charmed us.

Here's to the future then and to all your other projects. Long may Top Gear reign! Man Lab seems to be taking off now, and I'm looking forward to seeing the new format at Top Gear Live next month. Elaine x

Mild the mist upon the hill
Emily Bronte

Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I'm gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,
And 'neath my father's sheltering roof
And near the old hall door

I watch this cloudy evening fall
After a day of rain;
Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall
The horizon's mountain chain.

The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning's tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years.

Blood Brother
Felix Dennis

Wherever you are, whatever you’ve done,
However the land is lying,
If you but call by night or day,
Though hope is lost and the Devil to pay,
Though hounds of hell should bar the way,
Yet I would come to where you lay —
Or perish in the trying.

Wherever you are, whatever you’ve done,
Whichever the flag you’re flying,
If but you call by day or night,
In men’s contempt, in friend’s despite,
By the sickle moon or broad daylight,
Yet I shall come to set all right —
Or perish in the trying.

To The Moon
Giacomo Leopardi

Now that the year has come full circle,
I remember climbing this hill, heartbroken,
To gaze up at the graceful sight of you,
And how you hung then above those woods
As you do tonight, bathing them in brightness.
But at that time your face seemed nothing
But a cloudy shimmering through my tears,
So wretched was the life I led: and lead still..
Nothing changes, moon of my delight. Yet
I find pleasure in recollection, in calling back
My season of grief: when one is young,
And hope is a long road, memory
A short one, how welcome then
The remembrance of things past - no matter
How sad, and the heart still grieving.

"The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,"

Tennyson

Sonnet: Beauty Of Her Face
Dante Alighieri

For certain he hath seen all perfectness
Who among other ladies hath seen mine:
They that go with her humbly should combine
To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
So perfect is the beauty of her face
That is begets in no wise any sigh
Of envy, but draws round her a clear line
Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness.
Merely the sight of her makes all things bow:
Not she herself alone is holier
Than all; but hers, through her, are raised above.
From all her acts such lovely graces flow
That truly one may never think of her
Without a passion of exceeding love.
-----------------------
I had a horse called Dante many moons ago.