A beautiful thing....

 Have been scouring over some of my oldest poetry books again. This "Treasury of Great Poems" (1942) was one of my mothers. Saved from a church bazaar where it was headed for recycling in 1975. She  penned her name " Nessie" in genteel scrawl on the inside pages, and wrote notes here and there ,in the margins. Wonderful old book. Scribbled on with abandon. She loved the classics, and would read  aloud to me, on hot summer days in the garden.  I think I was bored of it then.....But now, here I am , years later,  devouring Shelley, Emerson and Keats, as if they were  chocolate bars.
      John Keats ( 1795-1821) has been likened to Shakespeare: such a great mastery of the word and imagery. I thought this was lovely to go with  garden images.  Excerpts from  "A Thing of Beauty" by John Keats.

 A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.

 A bower quiet for us, and  a sleep full of sweet dreams.....

 Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing a flowery band to bind us to the earth,

 Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, and o'er darkened ways

 Made for our searching; yes, in spite of all,

 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall from our dark spirits.

 Such the sun,the moon,  

trees old and young,

 sprouting a shady boon

 for simple sheep;

 and such are daffodils with the green world they live in;

 and clear rills

 that for themselves a cooling convert make

 make gainst the hot season;

 the mid forest brake,

 Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk rose blooms;

 And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

 We have imagined for the mighty dead

 All lovely tales that we have heard or read

 An endless fountain of immortal drink

 Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink ( from Endymion)

 "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or not....." (John Keats )

Excerpts from "A Treasury of Great Poems" (1942) by Simon and Schuster
Photographs by Michelle McConachie Woods 2016

JUNE COLLAGE

 JUNE is the month of the summer solstice. The Anglo Saxons called it the "dry month". Everything grows lush and rich  and ripens in the days ahead. The grapes begin to hang from vines, and  cats  languish across fences in the afternoon sun........
(Quotes are from BACCHANALIA by Matthew Arnold 1822-1888)

 The evening comes, the fields are still.

 The tinkle of the thirsty rill

 Deserted is the half-mown plain,

 Silent the swathes! the ringing wain,

 The mower's cry, the dogs alarms,

 all housed within the sleeping farms!

 The business of the day is done. The last -left haymaker is gone.

 And from the thyme upon the height,

 And from the elder-blossom white

 And pale dog-roses in the hedge,

 And from the mint plant in the sedge,

 In puffs of balm the night air blows the perfume which the day fore-goes.

 And on the pure horizon far,

 Saee, pulsing with the first born star,

 The liquid sky above the hill!

 The evening comes.

 The fields are still.........

Excerpts from Bacchanalia by Matthew Arnold. Poem is said to use images of nature to represent how the world should always be viewed. Beautiful and transcendent.