The Hammock Papers: Own.

02 February 2021

Own.

Homer, The Lone Boat, North Woods Club, Adirondacks, 1892

SONG

I peeled bits of straws and I got switches too

From the grey peeling willow as idlers do,

And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone

Till my flesh, blood, and marrow was turned to dry bone.

My illness was love, though I knew not the smart,

But the beauty of love was the blood of my heart.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude

And fled to the silence of sweet solitude.

Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades,

Unseen of all shepherds and flower-loving maids--

The hermit bees find them but once and away.

There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.

I looked on the eyes of a fair woman too long,

Till silence and shame stole the use of my tongue:

When I tried to speak to her I'd nothing to say,

So I turned myself round and she wandered away.

When she got too far off, why, I'd something to tell,

So I sent sighs behind her and walked to my cell.

Willow switches I broke and peeled bits of straws,

Ever lonely in crowds, in Nature's own laws--

My ball room the pasture, my music the bees,

My drink was the fountain, my church the tall trees.

Who ever would love or be tied to a wife

When it makes a man mad all the days of his life?

John Clare

No comments:

Post a Comment

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