The Hammock Papers: Glories.

03 October 2019

Glories.

Wyeth, Pine Needles, 1948

The POET'S RAMBLE in OCTOBER

Ripe are October's glories : Come away !
Hushed are the waiting woods : their rustling robes
Of mildest tints, create within my soul
Emotions meet for melancholy song !
See, Winter in white robes, with icy spear,
Comes slowly o'er the northern hills snow-capp'd.
Then pause with Nature, ye that live estranged
Amid the city's roar ; and list the voice
That calls you forth to cull emotions sweet,
And gaze entranced across the garnished woods.
Mark how the forest now hath doffed its green,
And Nature dons her cloak of many hues ;
Now reigns the holy beauty of Decay !
How calmly sleeps the lake : the coloured woods
Reflected on its face in thousand tints
Now flash across that dome of thought the mind
And brighter lift Imagination's eye.
Like rainbows wreck'd, all the gay woods do sing,
The Hawthorn hedge gleams like the Pheasant's breast.
Its silvery candelabra's lights long out
The Chestnut sweeps, in saffron hues, the lawn.
Skirting the field the Whin, repellant, throws
His golden offering at grim Winter's feet ;
And, "beautiful for ever," daisies lift
Their sleepy eyes to the receding sun.
See how Betula dreams herself away,
Or showers her myriad leaves on brakens brown ;
Sambucas, glittering, floods the groves with wine.

James Rigg

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL