Good morning and happy Tuesday!  I hope your week got off to a good start yesterday--here in my state the horrible hot weather packed up its suitcase and went on vacation, and I hope it stays away for quite some time!  It feels wonderful to be able to open the windows and feel fresh air instead of a blast of heat.  I spent most of last night thinking about my post for today--this poem conveys the sense of sadness I feel at the senseless shootings in Aurora and Milwaukee.  I want to take today to honor those victims.

Chorus from a Tragedy

Leonard Bacon

The world is no longer good.

Men's hearts no more are kind.

There is coldness in the mind,

Bitterness in the blood.

And I am not resigned.

When they talk of burning things

That touch me to the heart,

They trammel music and art,

They wither Ariel's wings

Or tear his pinions apart.

We shall not have things as they were,

Not as they were before.

If I had the heart to restore,

Would the chestnut thicken its burr?

Would the olive leaf once more?

May your day be blessed with goodness.



Thames Below Westminster (Westminster Bridge), Claude Monet 1871




Good morning!  After a week of watching the Olympics and thinking about all things English, I thought this beautiful painting by Impressionist painter Claude Monet would be a lovely way to start our week.  I hope you had a restful weekend with time to relax and play, and that your Monday starts off on a pleasant note!  Not only painters loved London's Westminster Bridge--here is how William Wordsworth described it in words instead of paint.

Westminster Bridge

September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock or hill,

Ne'er saw I, never felt,a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Do you have a favorite painter?  I'd love to hear from you!  Until tomorrow, have a day as lovely as the picture above!

Good morning!  Having learned my lesson yesterday about procrastinating on writing my post and feeling vaguely guilty all day about it, I woke up this morning determined to find the perfect poem early in the day!  And with the help of my mother's 1941 Viking Book of Poetry (sorry, Mom, if you have been looking for your book!) I found one that amused me, and I hope you enjoy it as well.  My husband is an avid golfer, and likes to get up EARLY in the morning and start his day on the course while the sun is still coming up.  Most of the time I can manage to sleep through his early morning dressing and leaving the house, but not always.  This poem reminded me of how sometimes couples with sleep cycles that don't quite match have to make compromises.  Have a wonderful Sunday...carpe diem!

"Anna-Marie, Love, Up is the Sun"

from Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

Knight:  Anna-Marie, love, up is the sun,

Anna-Marie, love, morn is begun,

Mists are dispersing, love, birds singing free,

Up in the morning, love, Anna-Marie.

Anna-Marie, love, up in the morn,

The hunter is winding blithe sounds on his horn,

The echo rings merry from rock and from tree.

'Tis time to arouse thee, love, Anna-Marie.

Wamba:  O Tybalt, love, Tybalt, awake me not yet,

Around my soft pillow while softer dreams flit;

For what are the joys that in waking we prove,

Compared with these visions, O Tybalt! my love?

Let the birds to the rise of the mist carol shrill,

Let the hunter blow out his loud horn on the hill,

Softer sounds, softer pleasure, in slumber I prove,

But think not I dream of thee, Tybalt, my love.

I gave myself a little more time to write my blog today, figuring I deserved some recreation time on Saturday after working all week, but I didn't count on feeling vaguely guilty all day because I hadn't written my post yet!  I guess I need to follow Longfellow's exhortation to "let us then be up and doing" a little more closely and sit down to write early in the morning, even on the weekends.  I hope everyone has had a pleasant day, filled with enjoyable activities that set the weekend apart from the busy work week.  While I certainly didn't set the world on fire today, I thoroughly enjoyed the book I finished (an interesting mystery by Barbara Michaels, Vanish with the Rose, that featured old roses and made me want to run right out to a nursery), went to a movie (Total Recall, my husband's pick), and tried two new recipes for supper (mango salsa and baked herbed tomatoes).  Not a bad Saturday!

My mother mentioned on the phone this morning that she had put up applesauce from her apple tree, and it reminded me of a poem that I first encountered in freshman English Literature and have loved ever since.  You can find the full poem at http://www.potw.org/archive/potw279.html, if you would like to read more.

To Autumn

John Keats

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-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-treees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

Wth 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-brimmed their clammy cells.



Apple tree at Robert Frost Farm, New Hampshire



Were any of you able to tear your eyes away from the television yesterday as we watched beautiful Gabby earn her gold medal?  I was so excited to see her so confident and smiling on the mat during her floor exercise--her smile lit up the room!  Her enthusiasm and joy of life brought to mind this favorite poem of mine, attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (but more likely written by Bessie Stanley in 1905 in a slightly different version)

SUCCESS

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty,
To find the best in others,
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.




I had one of those perfect summer evenings last night....sitting on the grass, sipping wine, listening to an amazing orchestra play an English-themed outdoor concert.  The cicadas joined in, and for awhile all was right with the world.  When they played Percy Grainger's beautifully orchestrated arrangement of English Country Garden I pictured Queen Mary's Rose Garden in Regent's Park, where my mother and I discovered gorgeous blue delphiniums in bloom during our magical visit to London several years ago.  I was also transported back in time to the television show Captain Kangaroo, which would occasionally play this tune and show pictures of England--and one little girl and her mother dreamed of going there someday and seeing the flowers for ourselves.  Don't you love it when dreams come true?

English Country Garden

(Traditional)

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
In an English country garden?
We'll tell you now of some that we know
Those we miss you'll surely pardon
Daffodils, heart's ease and flox
Meadowsweet and lady smocks
Gentian, lupine and tall hollihocks
Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots
In an English country garden

How many insects come here and go
In an English country garden?
We'll tell you now of some that we know
Those we miss you'll surely pardon
Fireflies, moths, gnats and bees
Spiders climbing in the trees
Butterflies drift in the gentle breeze
There are snakes, ants that sting
And other creeping things
In an English country garden

How many songbirds fly to and fro
In an English country garden?
We'll tell you now of some that we know
Those we miss you'll surely pardon
Bobolink, cuckoo and quail
Tanager and cardinal
Bluebird, lark, thrush and nightingale
There is joy in the spring
When the birds begin to sing
In an English country garden

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

All photographs are my own. Please do not copy without permission.

Happy August!  August meant vacation time in my family, and each year my parents would load up our station wagon (five kids, no air conditioning and definitely no DVD players or I-pods!) and head to Indiana to visit my mother's side of the family.  One of my favorite memories was going blackberry picking with my Dad.  We would take buckets out to the pasture, braving those pesky chiggers (think mosquitoes but five times worse!) and bring back fresh blackberries for Grandma to turn into delicious blackberry cobbler with homemade ice cream.  It was such a sweet, innocent time, filled with family, love, good food and lots of pink calamine lotion for the chigger bites!  Here is a fun poem about that special time in my life:

Blackberry-Picking 

by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.



Dad and I by Grandpa's fishing pond, mid 1960's

What memories make you smile?  I'd love to hear about them!