The Hammock Papers: Welcome.

22 September 2022

Welcome.

Wyeth, N.C., Chadds Ford Hills, 1931

The AUTUMN WIND

The Autumn wind on suthering wings

Plays round the oak-tree strong

And through the hawthorn hedges sings

The years departing song

There's every leaf upon the whirl

Ten thousand times an hour

The grassy meadows crisp and curl

With here and there a flower

There's nothing in the world I find

That pleases like the Autumn wind.

The chaffinch flies from out the bushes

The bluecap " tee hees" on the tree

The wind sues on in merry gushes

His murmuring autumns minstrelsy

The robin sings his autumn song

Upon the crabtree overhead

The clouds like smoak slow sail along

Leaves rustle like the human tread

There's nothing suits my musing mind

So pleasant as the Autumn wind.

How many miles it suthers on

And stays to dally with the leaves

And when the first broad blast is gone

A stronger gust the foliage heaves

The poplar tree it turns to gray

As leaves lift up their underside

The birch it dances all the day

To rippling billows petrified

There's nothing calms the quiet mind

So welcome as the Autumn wind.

Sweet twittering o'er the meadow grass

Soft sueing o'er the fallow ground

The lark starts up as on they pass

With many a gush and moaning sound

It fans the feathers of the bird

And ruffs the robins ruddy breast

As round the hovel end it whirled

Then sobs and gallops o'er the west

In solitude the musing mind

Must ever love the Autumn wind.

John Clare

'Tis Autumn.

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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