Mouldiwarp

 A Dead Mole - Andrew Young

Strong - shouldered mole,

That so much lived below the ground,

Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,

For you to raise a mound

Was as for us to make a hole;

What wonder now that being dead

Your body lies here stout and square

Buried within the blue vault of the air?

On a happier and more topical note for August, 

Mole's thoughts on returning home after travelling Abroad:

He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was;

but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him,

and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence.

He did not at all want to abandon the new life

and its splendid spaces,

to turn his back on the sun and air

and all they offered him and creep home and stay there;

the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still,

even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage.

But it was good to think he had this to come back to,

this place which was all his own,

these things which were so glad to see him again

and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.

From the chapter Dulce Domum - Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

The last punnet

of ripe red cherries on the stall,

and in fact, the last in their orchard.

All the rest are black cherries from now on.

Hone's Everyday Book records that cherries were brought up from Kent 

and sold by the London Barrow Woman.

This is cherry season, but it is not to me as cherry seasons were. 

I like a great deal that is, but I have an affection for what was. 

By-gone days seem to have been more fair than these; 

and I cannot help trying to

"catch the manners dying as they fall."

I have lived through the extremity of one age, 

into the beginning of another, and I believe better;

yet the former has been too much detracted; 

everything new is not, therefore, good;

nor was everything old, bad.

When I was a boy, I speak of just after the French revolution broke out, 

my admiration and taste were pure and natural, 

and one of my favourite at all times, and in cherry time especially, 

was the London Barrow Woman.

There are no barrow women now.

They have quite "gone out", or, rather,

they have been "put down",

and by many they are not even missed.

Look around; there is not one to be seen.

Round and sound.

Tuppence a pound.

Cherries rare ripe cherries!

Cherries a ha'penny a stick.

Come and pick! come and pick!

Cherries as big as plums.

Who comes, who comes.

as small as a world

maggie and molly and milly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

 milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays languid five fingers were;

 and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

 may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose, (like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea

E.E. Cummings

A weekend walk

I resent 

the early curtailment

 of each day

but must relent

when it presents

a mild still stroll

in Advent.

Lent by autumn

when it is meant

 to be winter.

This heaven-sent sky,

the main event.

Even when the light faded

and all colour leached from the beach

this yellow horned poppy

shone like the midday sun.

A poppy grows upon the shore,

Bursts her twin cups in summer late:

Her leaves are glaucous-green and hoar,

Her petals yellow, delicate.

She has no lovers like the red,

That dances with the noble corn:

Her blossoms on the waves are shed,

Where she stands shivering and forlorn.

Shorter Poems Robert Bridges.

Tootles the taxi and other rhymes

Today is National Poetry Day,

so I bring you some excerpts from Tootles the Taxi

by Joyce B. Clegg

illustrations by John Kenney.

 A trip to the pillar box at the top of our road

was my first solo outing.

It felt as though I had walked miles.

The responsibility of posting that letter weighed heavily.

 The verse that is missing from my edition  goes:

I'm Billy the baker's van,

Painted bright red;

I carry the sugar buns,

Pastry and bread.

I take all the orders

Round to each door,

And all of my customers

Come back for more!

We had just such a van calling at my primary school,

and the baker, clad in a brown overall, carried

an enormous wicker basket full of loaves.

He called me Lucinda which I found

simultaneously flattering and worrying.

The bread at home, two white bloomers,

was delivered by Michael on his bike

from O'Brien's the grocer.
The sugar buns were collected from the corner shop 
at the bottom of the road.
That was my second solo destination
and I had a to buy a pot of strawberry jam.

 We didn't have a car so an inordinate amount of time

was spent waiting for trolley buses.

I have never had such cold feet again.

I remember the high banks of filthy snow at the kerbside

during the winter of 1963.

Our first milkman had to pull his trolley

which was a battery assisted cart.

I asked him to name a new doll and he said,

'Why not call her Mary Ann?' so I did.

 Learning to ride a bike was an all or nothing business.

No training wheels, no helmet, just

a swift push on the bumpy driveway

down a steepish slope and a messy crash

into a rhododendron bush.

Later I used to cycle round the block.

A girl called Pamela West waved from across the street

 and invited me to tea.

I said I would have to go home and ask.

When I got back, she had disappeared 

and I didn't have the nerve to knock at the door

of her large and silent house,

so I went home again.

A trip in a taxi was a rare event

and certainly not a casual jaunt for lone children.

A man called Wallace was sometimes booked 

to take us to the station when we went on our annual holiday.

The luggage had been packed in a huge tin trunk 

and sent ahead of us to one or other seaside hotel,

sometimes Cornwall, often Bournemouth.

This meant dressing in very odd clothes until we left.

Goodness that sounds antediluvian.

In fact we may well have stayed in school uniform

as the boys here and in Just William always seemed to do.

Epithalamion

a walk and a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and waterblowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer’s sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies huddling out,
Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about.

This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast
Into such a sudden zest
Of summertime joys
That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best
There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;
Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood
By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there,
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with—down he dings
His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:
Careless these in coloured wisp
All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks
Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp
Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots
Fast he opens, last he offwrings
Till walk the world he can with bare his feet
And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks
Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks
And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shivès and shoots
And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,
Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet
Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs
Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims.
Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean
I should be wronging longer leaving it to float
Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note—
What is … the delightful dene?
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends
Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns
Rankèd round the bower

If you click to enlarge,

you will see that the air was filled with dragonflies.

13:09 from Epithalamion

The rushy glen

All the way along on our new favourite walk

I was haunted by the first two lines

of a long forgotten poem.

I had no idea it was so long,

or so sinister.

The Fairies

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren't go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore

Some make their home,

They live on crispy pancakes

Of yellow tide-foam;

Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain lake,

With frogs for their watch-dogs,

All night awake.

High on the hill-top

The old King sits;

He is now so old and gray

He's nigh lost his wits.

With a bridge of white mist

Columbkill he crosses,

On his stately journeys

From Slieveleague to Rosses;

Or going up with music

On cold starry nights

To sup with the Queen

Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget

For seven years long;

When she came down again

her friends were all gone.

They took her lightly back,

Between the night and morrow,

They thought that she was fast asleep,

But she was dead with sorrow.

They have kept her ever since

Deep within the lake,

On a bed of flag leaves,

Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,

Through the mosses bare,

They have planted thorn-trees

For pleasure here and there.

If any man so daring

As dig them up in spite,

He shall find their sharpest thorns

In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren't go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather!

William Allingham 1824-1889

If I should live to be

this age, without mishap,
 I may have had to upgrade my regimen,
in order to achieve this
quite remarkable degree of strength and flexibility.


Meanwhile perhaps I can improve my mental elasticity
by learning to recite this poem.

Extra

February 29

Odd, waif-like Day, the changeling of

Man's 'time' unreckoned in his years;

The moon already shows above

Thy fickle sleet - now tears!

As brief thy stay has been as though

Next Spring might seal our tryst again.

Alas, fall must four winters' snow

Ere you come back. And then?

I love thy timid aconite,

Crocus, and scilla's deep- sea blue;

Hark, too, that rainbird, out of sight,

Mocking the woodland through!

But see, it's evening in the west:

Tranquil, withdrawn, aloof, devout.

Soon will the darkness drape your breast,

And midnight shut you out!...

Sweet February Twenty Nine!-

This is our grace-year, as I live!

Quick now! this foolish heart of mine:

Seize thy prerogative!

Evening in the west has passed

And darkness wrapped me round

I didn't seize the day alas,

For to the house was bound.

I waited in from Two 'til Nine!-

At John Lewis' bidding,

There was an ancient wash machine

I needed to be ridding.

But stay! Twas not all squander'd though,

I planted up my seed trays,

With myriad herbs and flowers to grow

In coming grace-filled spring days!

With apologies to Walter de la Mare.

Gleanings

I was so pleased to see a pair of these

busy in our garden.

Too busy for me to catch on camera,

so this image is from the RSPB website.

A first sighting for me, they look like a patchwork bird.

As I tried to identify them, flitting at some distance,

in and out of view,

 I thought Thrush?

Huge sparrow? Redwing? Cuckoo?

But they are Fieldfares and apparently they visit town gardens

during a severe winter when the countryside is under snow.

They were feeding on our pyracantha berries.

JofIndia posted this picture 

taken in the Wayanad hills, Kerala.

I used to make, and sometimes sell,

pictures using layers of tissue paper,

a technique called marouflage,

although I think that originally referred to canvas stuck to walls.

This picture made me want to pick it up again.

And finally this:

'The grand essentials of happiness are 

something to do

something to love

and something to hope for.'

Left by Belinda here, and a reminder of this song,

which my boys learnt at school.

The Pipers, Issey Miyake and Sandy Calder

In one of those lovely moments of synchronicity

I had half-planned a post for today

based on this passage from

Over the Hills and Far Away, an English Odyssey

by Candida Lycett Green which I am reading again.

Her parents, John Betjeman and Penelope Chetwode

were great friends of the artist 

John Piper and his wife Myfanwy.

My father had met John in 1937 when they

began to collaborate on the Shell Guides 

and Myfanwy and my mum hit it  off instantly.

The Pipers were my paragons and their simple,

solid, flint-and-brick farmhouse

near Henley-on-Thames, my ideal.

I always wanted to live like them, but never got near it.

They had the artist's clarity of vision and there was a calm,

spare, almost Shaker-like quality about their style.

The washed-out sycamore table in the living/eating room

always had a jug of garden flowers on it

(we never had flowers in our house except when

my brother and I arranged them) and

white china candlesticks; an upright piano

stood on one side of the room and

a grand piano on the other.

John and his son Edward played duets after lunch -

'Chattanooga Choo Choo' or music-hall songs

like 'Joshua, Joshua', which we all sang along to.

Through the doorway to the kitchen you could see

the dresser full of bowls and brightly coloured mugs

bought on successive trips to France.

The apple-pie order of the Piper's domestic life

dovetailed with their diligent work routine -

John in his studio painting,

as well as designing stage sets, stained glass

and pottery; Myfanwy writing librettos for

Benjamin Britten at her desk.

Lunch and supper were prepared with ritualistic care 

by Myfanwy, using the best fresh ingredients 

and vegetables from the garden.

Everything they did they did well and elegantly -

John staging spectacular firework displays,

Myfanwy wearing Issey Miyake clothes.

and Sandy Calder jewellery.

And there was the moment. 

I didn't know his work so I looked him up.

Sandy Calder is Alexander Calder (best known for his mobiles)

 and today Google featured him because it is his 113th birthday.

See here for more of his jewellery.

Their economy of style had nothing to do with virtuous piety; 

only a simple editing out of the unnecessary...

I think John and Myfanwy were better at the 'business' of life

than anyone else I have ever known.