Yeh! The old Celica sailed through her
MOT this morning. I love her!

High Waving Heather
Emily Brontë

High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

My ladyboys are almost fully grown.

The last pit ponies, Wheldale colliery, 1972.

The Ponies
Wilfred Gibson

During the strike, the ponies were brought up
From their snug stables, some three hundred feet
Below the surface - up the pit's main shaft
Shot one by one into the light of day;
And as each stepped, bewildered, from the cage,
He stood among his fellows, shivering,
In the unaccustomed freshness of free air,
His dim eyes dazzled by the April light
And then one suddenly left the huddled group,
Lifted his muzzle, sniffed the freshness in.
Pawed the soft turf and, whinneying started trotting
Across the field; and one by one his fellows
With pricking ears each slowly followed him,
Timidly trotting: when the leader's trot
Broke into a canter, then into a gallop;
And now the whole herd galloped at his heels
Around the dewy meadow, hard hooves, used
To stumbling over treacherous stony tramways
And plunging hock-deep through black steamy puddles
Of the dusty narrow galleries, delighting,
In the soft spring of the resilient turf.
With a soft thunder of hooves,the sunshine flashing,
On their sleek coats, through the bright April weather.
They raced all day; and even when the night
Kindled clear stars above them in the sky
Strangely unsullied by the stack which now
No longer belched out blackness, still they raced,
Unwearied, as through their short sturdy limbs
The rebel blood like wildfire ran, their lungs
Filled with the breath of freedom. On they sped
Through the sweet dewy darkness; and all night
The watchman at the pithead heard the thudding
Of those careering and exultant hooves
Still circling in a crazy chase; and dawn
Found them still streaming raggedly around,
Tailing into a lagging cantering,
And so to a stumbling trot; when gradually,
Dropping out one by one, they started cropping
The dew-dank tender grass, which no foul reek
From the long idle pit now smirched, and drinking
With quivering nostrils the rich living breath
Of sappy growing things, the cool rank green
Greatful to eyes familiar from their colthood
Only with darkness and the dusty glimmer
Of lamplit galleries......

Out of the Morning
Clive Sansom

Out of the morning, grey as smoke,
Grey fields, grey sky,
The sudden stroke of heavy wings,
The sudden shock of white on grey,
A wild swan flying.

It came so sheerly from the mist,
Annunciation-Angel-like,
It shook the centre of my world,
It broke the greyness of my mind
Like great winds crying:

It woke all colours in the grey,
It spoke of speed and strength and power,
It told the beauty of the seed-
The core within the core of life-
In dead weeds lying;

My thoughts were shattered into light,
My heart was lifted into song;
I was that sudden stroke of wings,
I was the shock of white, the bird,
The wild swan flying!

Epitaph For an Airman
George Nichols

The shouting wind shall be his requiem,
The falling star his lofty monument;
No earthbound pangs can honour add to them
Who seek their honours in the firmament.

The light of dawn shall be his votive flame,
The purple cloud of dusk his canopy;
Who lived and died with dusk and dawn may claim
No lower tribute than this panoply.

His guiding stars shall now his bearers be
In mute procession through the mourning skies-
Partaker now of that high mystery
He could not share till death had made him wise.

Tonight's Sunset

Love Not Me for Comely Grace
John Wilbye

Love not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face;
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for my constant heart:
For those may fail or turn to ill,
So thou and I shall sever.
Keep therefore a true woman's eye,
And love me still, but know not why;
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever.

Happy Birthday James!
Hope that you have a brilliant day,
with love from Elaine x

If ever you are feeling unhappy, try watching this.

Works for me!

After
Richard Elwes

And after-
the laughing done, there follows in its place,
gentle and soft and warm,
a rippling, sunlit calm;
the smiling peace, the dear tranquility
dawns in your face
and hovers over me so tenderly.
O stay! O will you never stay?
Dissolving wraith by day,
by night retreating dream,
never remaining,
fading, waning,
becoming dimmer,
soon but a glimmer
the darkening gleam,
that was, a moment since, your eyes,
the gleam that dies
and vanishes and will not shine,
for all the gathering mists in mine.

Sometimes With One I Love
Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage,
for fear I effuse unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love,
the pay is certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

One Hour To Madness And Joy
Walt Whitman

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings!
(I bequeath them to you, my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you, whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me,
in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a
determin'd man!

O the puzzle--the thrice-tied knot--the deep and dark pool! O all
untied and illumin'd!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
O to be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine, and
you from yours!
O to find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of nature!
O to have the gag remov'd from one's mouth!
O to have the feeling, to-day or any day, I am sufficient as I am!

O something unprov'd! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!
O to escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts--with invitations!
To ascend--to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.