Stand.

The gale was still blowing violently. Many of the smaller trees bowed their tops, as if ready to descend to the earth, while the rushing of the wind through the branches of the groves resembled the roar of distant chariots.

The air was filled with leaves, which, at that late season, were readily driven from their stems, and flew from island to island like flights of birds. With this exception, the spot seemed silent as the grave. That the savages still remained, was to be inferred from the fact that their canoes, together with the boats of the 55th, lay in a group in the little cove that had been selected as a harbor. Otherwise, not a sign of their presence was to be detected. Though taken entirely by surprise by the cutter, the sudden return of which was altogether unlooked-for, so uniform and inbred were their habits of caution while on the war-path, that the instant an alarm was given every man had taken to his cover with the instinct and cunning of a fox seeking his hole. The same stillness reigned in the blockhouse; for though Pathfinder and Cap could command a view of the channel, they took the precaution necessary to lie concealed. The unusual absence of anything like animal life on board the Scud, too, was still more remarkable. As the Indians witnessed her apparently undirected movements, a feeling of awe gained a footing among them, and some of the boldest of their party began to distrust the issue of an expedition that had commenced so prosperously. Even Arrowhead, accustomed as he was to intercourse with the whites on both sides of the lakes, fancied there was something ominous in the appearance of this unmanned vessel, and he would gladly at that moment have been landed again on the main.

In the meantime the progress of the cutter was steady and rapid. She held her way mid-channel, now inclining to the gusts, and now rising again, like the philosopher that bends to the calamities of life to resume his erect attitude as they pass away, but always piling the water beneath her bows in foam. Although she was under so very short canvas, her velocity was great, and there could not have elapsed ten minutes between the time when her sails were first seen glancing past the trees and bushes in the distance and the moment when she was abreast of the blockhouse. Cap and Pathfinder leaned forward, as the cutter came beneath their eyrie, eager to get a better view of her deck, when, to the delight of both, Jasper Eau-douce sprang upon his feet and gave three hearty cheers. Regardless of all risk, Cap leaped upon the rampart of logs and returned the greeting, cheer for cheer. Happily, the policy of the enemy saved the latter; for they still lay quiet, not a rifle being discharged. On the other hand, Pathfinder kept in view the useful, utterly disregarding the mere dramatic part of warfare. The moment he beheld his friend Jasper, he called out to him with stentorian lungs,—

“Stand by us, lad, and the day's our own! Give 'em a grist in yonder bushes, and you'll put 'em up like partridges.”

James Fenimore Cooper, from The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea

Perfume.

Plants then, as they go through the business of living, emit odours. Some, like the honey scents of flowers, are an added allurement to the insects; and if, as with heather, the scent is poured out most recklessly in the heat of the sun, that is because it is then that the insects are out in strength. But in other cases—as the fir trees—the fragrance is the sap, is the very life itself. When the aromatic savour of the pine goes searching into the deepest recesses of my lungs, I know it is life that is entering. I draw life in through the delicate hairs of my nostrils. Pines, like heather, yield their fragrance to the sun’s heat. Or when the foresters come, and they are cut, then their scent is strong. Of all the kinds that grow on the low reaches of these mountains, spruce throws the strongest perfume on the air when the saw goes through it. In hot sun it is almost like a ferment—like strawberry jam on the boil, but with a tang that tautens the membranes of nose and throat.

Nan Shepherd, from The Living Mountain

Watch.

Kelley, Untitled, n/d

THE SCARECROW

The Scarecrow

All winter through I bow my head

beneath the driving rain;

the North Wind powders me with snow

and blows me black again;

at midnight 'neath a maze of stars

I flame with glittering rime,

and stand above the stubble, stiff

as mail at morning-prime.

But when that child called Spring, and all

his host of children come,

scattering their buds and dew upon

these acres of my home,

some rapture in my rags awakes;

I lift void eyes and scan

the sky for crows, those ravening foes,

of my strange master, Man.

I watch him striding lank behind

his clashing team, and know

soon will the wheat swish body high

where once lay a sterile snow;

soon I shall gaze across a sea

of sun-begotten grain,

which my unflinching watch hath sealed

for harvest once again.

Walter de la Mare

Crossing.

All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom. I devoured those books by C.S. Lewis and William Dunthorn, Ellen Wentworth, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. When I could get them from the library, I read them out of order as I found them, and then in order, and then reread them all again, many times over. Because even when I was a child I knew it wasn't simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland. Instinctively I knew crossing over would mean more than fleeing the constant terror and shame that was mine at that time of my life. There was a knowledge – an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access ― telling me that by crossing over, I'd be coming home.

That's the reason I’ve yearned so desperately to experience the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of that world beyond the World As It Is. It's because I know that somewhere across the border there's a place for me. A place of safety and strength and learning, where I can become who I'm supposed to be. I've tried forever to be that person here, but whatever I manage to accomplish in the World As It Is only seems to be an echo of what I could be in that other place that lies hidden somewhere beyond the borders.

Charles de Lint

John Anderson, "True Messenger"

Near.

Speaking.

Though the quiet of deep solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water ripped, and at places even roared along the shores; and now and then was heard the creaking of a branch or a trunk, as it rubbed against some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a nicely balanced body.

James Fenimore Cooper, from Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea

Abundance.

The gift of abundance this year.

Thank you, Kurt.

Schubert, Hungarian Melody in B minor, D. 817

András Schiff performs ...

Happy Birthday, Cooper

Jarvis, James Fenimore Cooper, 1830

I want no thunder or lightning to remind me of my God, nor am I as apt to bethink on most of all His goodness in trouble and tribulations as on a calm, solemn, quiet day in a forest, when His voice is heard in the creaking of a dead branch or in the song of a bird, as much in my ears at least as it is ever heard in uproar and gales.  I have attended church-service in the garrisons, and tried hard to join in the prayers, but never could raise within me the solemn feelings and true affection that I feel when alone with God in the forest. There I seem to stand face to face with my Master; all around me is fresh and beautiful, as it came from His hand; and there is no nicety or doctrine to chill the feelings. No no; the woods are the true temple after all, for there the thoughts are free to mount higher even than the clouds.

James Fenimore Cooper, born on this day in 1789, from the excellent book, Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea

Released.

Jethro Tull released Stormwatch on this day in 1979.

"Dun Ringill" ...

The Oyster Months are nearly here.

Done.

Done and done.

Thanks to Walker's Arms.

Witnessing.

Moran, By Dawn's Early Light, 1913

On this day in 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812.

Let's just make James Earl Jones' respectful interpretation standard operating procedure from now on ...

Happy Birthday, Dahl

TELEVISION

The most important thing we’ve learned,

So far as children are concerned,

Is never, NEVER, NEVER let

Them near your television set –

Or better still, just don’t install

The idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we’ve been,

We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.

They loll and slop and lounge about,

And stare until their eyes pop out.

(Last week in someone’s place we saw

A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit

Until they’re hypnotised by it,

Until they’re absolutely drunk

With all that shocking ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,

They don’t climb out the window sill,

They never fight or kick or punch,

They leave you free to cook the lunch

And wash the dishes in the sink –

But did you ever stop to think,

To wonder just exactly what

This does to your beloved tot?

IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!

IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES!

‘All right!’ you’ll cry. 'All right!’ you’ll say,

'But if we take the set away,

What shall we do to entertain

Our darling children? Please explain!’

We’ll answer this by asking you,

'What used the darling ones to do?

'How used they keep themselves contented

Before this monster was invented?’

Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?

We’ll say it very loud and slow:

THEY … USED … TO … READ! They’d READ and READ,

AND READ and READ, and then proceed

To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!

One half their lives was reading books!

The nursery shelves held books galore!

Books cluttered up the nursery floor!

And in the bedroom, by the bed,

More books were waiting to be read!

Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales

Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales

And treasure isles, and distant shores

Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,

And pirates wearing purple pants,

And sailing ships and elephants,

And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,

Stirring away at something hot.

(It smells so good, what can it be?

Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)

The younger ones had Beatrix Potter

With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,

And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,

And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-

Just How The Camel Got His Hump,

And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,

And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,

There’s Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-

Oh, books, what books they used to know,

Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

Go throw your TV set away,

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books,

Ignoring all the dirty looks,

The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,

And children hitting you with sticks-

Fear not, because we promise you

That, in about a week or two

Of having nothing else to do,

They’ll now begin to feel the need

Of having something to read.

And once they start – oh boy, oh boy!

You watch the slowly growing joy

That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen

They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen

In that ridiculous machine,

That nauseating, foul, unclean,

Repulsive television screen!

And later, each and every kid

Will love you more for what you did.

Roald Dahl, born on this day in 1916

Happy Birthday, Peart

The Professor, Neil Peart, was born on this day in 1952.

"YYZ" ...

Wonderful.

Outside on the rue de I’Odeon I was disgusted with myself for having complained about things. I was doing  what I did of my own free will and I was doing it  stupidly. I should have bought a large piece of bread  and eaten it instead of skipping a meal. I could taste the  brown lovely crust. But it is dry in your mouth without  something to drink. You God-damn complainer. You dirty phony saint and mart}^’, I said to myself. You quit journalism of your own accord. You have credit and  Sylvia would have loaned you money. She has, plenty of  times. Sure. And then the next thing you would be  compromising on something else. Hunger is healthy and the pictures do look better when you are hungry.  

Eating is wonderful too and do you know where you're going to eat right now? 

Lipp's is where you are going to eat, and drink too. 

It was a quick walk to Lipp's and every place I  passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes or my nose made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down  on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a litre, and for potato salad. 

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes à l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draught of beer I drank and ate very slowly. 

When pommes à l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce. 

I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it drawn. It seemed colder than the distingui and I drank half of it. 

Ernest Hemingway, from A Moveable Feast

Beware.

Beware of anything that promises freedom or enlightenment – traps for eager and clever fools – a dog has a keener nose – every creature in a cave can justify himself. Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

Gary Snyder, from The Gray Snyder Reader

Never.

Gratitude.

FDNY Engine 28 Firefighter Mike Kehoe headed up on September 11, 2001.

In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Late.

I.

Thinking of my buddy, Kurt, swimming in the sobering seas of the Great North ...

THE MYSTERY

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,

I am the wave of the ocean,

I am the murmur of the billows,

I am the ox of the seven combats,

I am the vulture upon the rocks,

I am the beam of the sun,

I am the fairest of plants,

I am the wild boar in valour,

I am a salmon in the water,

I am a lake in the plain,

I am a word of science,

I am the point of the lance of battle,

I am the God who created in the head the fire.

Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?

Who announces the ages of the moon?

Who teaches the place where couches the sun?

                                    (If not I)

 Amergin

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

As a kid, I remember this album in my Mum's collection.

Thanks, Mum.

Memory.

My love of words stems from my school days and many inspirational, informal English classes where poems and prose were deconstructed, analysed and re-understood.

That inspiration took me down many wonderful roads and I found, quite naturally, that from the ensuing torrent certain fragments stuck and became embedded in my memory. This continues to be the case.

As in my watercolours and etchings, there is no definable plan. It may be an instinctive search for clarity and image – something profoundly simple, produced, hopefully, with precision.

In these attributes etching, watercolour and poetry have much in common.

W. H. Auden sums it up beautifully:

                             …to give a stunning

display of concinnity and elegance

is the least we can do, and its dominant

mood should be that of a Carnival.

or Allen Ginsburg:

A naked lunch is natural to us

We eat reality sandwiches.

But allegories are so much lettuce.

Don’t hide the madness.

Norman Ackroyd

Perfect.

View this post on Instagram

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

W. Somerset Maugham, from The Painted Veil

Published.

He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.

Ernest Hemingway, from The Old Man and the Sea, published in its novel form on this day in 1952.

Average.

Ackroyd, Holkham Norfolk, 2007

Error is boundless.

Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.

J.V. Cunningham, from "Meditation on Statistical Method"

Reminded.

Wülfing, Little Mermaid, 1953

Sept. 7. 

Our ecstatic states, which appear to yield so little fruit, have this value at least: though in the seasons when our genius reigns we may be powerless for expression, yet, in calmer seasons, when our talent is active, the memory of those rarer moods comes to color our picture and is the permanent paint-pot, as it were, into which we dip our brush. Thus no life or experience goes unreported at last; but if it be not solid gold it is gold-leaf, which guild the furniture of the mind. It is an experience of infinite beauty on which we unfailingly draw, which enables us to exaggerate ever truly. Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Henry David Thoreau, from The Journal: 1837-1861

Hungry.

To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.  Better late than never, of course. Do you feel up to it?  

It means you must still take long walks at night around your city or town, or walks in the country by day. 

And long walks, at any time, through bookstores and libraries. And while feeding, How to Keep Your Muse is our final problem.

The Muse must have shape. You will write a thousand words a day for ten or twenty years in order to try to give it shape, to learn enough about grammar and story construction so that these become part of the Subconscious, without restraining or distorting the Muse.

By living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing as you read, you have fed Your Most Original Self. By training yourself in writing, by repetitious exercise, imitation, good example, you have made a clean, well-lighted place to keep the Muse. You have given her, him, it, or whatever, room to turn around in. And through training, you have relaxed yourself enough not to stare discourteously when inspiration comes into the room.

Ray Bradbury, "How to Keep and Feed a Muse"

Wonder.

Steve's getting wonder-filled ...

Every year at leaf-fall, Pwyll and his men rode to Arberth.  Riding through a valley five valleys from home they were like an old story Taliesin would tell.  And they had it in them to go with the story.  They had it in them, living now, riding now to Arberth, to be a tale told by a fireside in the far past, to be a tale told by a fireside in the far future.  And they would say, would sometimes say, that their only reason for being in the world was to give the world a chance to live out its own strangeness, its own danger, and its own wonder in them.

John Moriarty, from Dreamtime

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the excellent image. 

Happy Birthday, Chrissie

Chrissie Hynde was born on this day in 1951.

Pretenders, "Porcelain" ...

Last.

They say he didn't have an enemy

His was a greatness to behold

He was the last surviving progeny

The last one on this side of the world

He measured a half mile from tip to tail

Silver and black with powerful fins

They say he could split a mountain in two

That's how we got the Grand Canyon

Last great American whale

Learn.

True.

Yeats, Derrynane, 1927

Rain, hail, snow and ice:

All are different,

But when they fall

They become the same water

As the valley stream.

The ways of proclaiming

The Mind vary,

But the same heavenly truth

Can be seen

In each and every one.

Cover your path

With the fallen pine needles

So no one will be able

To locate your

True dwelling place.

Ikkyu

Frank Sinatra & John Denver, "September Song"

Happy Birthday, Capanella

Cozza, Portrait of Tommaso Campanella, 1638

Man lives in a double world: according to the mind he is contained by no physical space and by no walls, but at the same time he is in heaven and on earth, in Italy, in France, in America, wherever the mind's thrust penetrates and extends by understanding, seeking, mastering. But indeed according to the body he exists not, except in only so much space as is least required, held fast in prison and in chains to the extent that he is not able to be in or to go to the place attained by his intellect and will, nor to occupy more space than defined by the shape of his body; while with the mind he occupies a thousand worlds.

Tommaso Campanella, born on this day in 1568

Over-Reach.

Kneller, Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, 1698

On this day in 1698, Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards and the over-reach just snowballed from there.

Locatelli.

Isabelle Faust and Giovanni Antonini's Il Giardino Armonico perform a program of Locatelli concertos ...

Child.

I want to be a child of wonder and astonishment.

Dot's digging Eliot, too.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Merry.

Disneau, The Melted Car, 1944

There is in the long run only one way in which we can taste this illustrious experience with safety. And Bunyan has indicated it in the same passage. It was in the House of the Interpreter, after they had been bathed, sealed and freshly clothed in "White Raiment" that the women saw one another in this light. If we remember the bathing, sealing and robing, we shall be safe. And the higher the common ground of the Friendship is, the more necessary the remembrance. In an explicitly religious Friendship, above all, to forget it would be fatal. 

For then it will seem to us that we we four or five have chosen one another, the insight of each finding the intrinsic beauty of the rest, like to like, a voluntary nobility; that we have ascended above the rest of mankind by our native powers. The other loves do not invite the same illusion. Affection obviously requires kinships or at least proximities which never depended on our own choice. And as for Eros, half the love songs and half the love poems in the world will tell you that the Beloved is your fate or destiny, no more your choice than a thunderbolt, for "it is not in our power to love or hate." Cupid's archery, genes anything but ourselves. But in Friendship, being free of all that, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few  more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host. 

Not that we must always partake of it solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It is one of the difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and win to treat them often as lightly as a game. But there will be a time for saying more about this in the next chapter. For the moment I will only quote Dunbar's beautifully balanced advice: 

Man, please thy Maker, and be merry, 

And give not for this world a cherry.

C.S. Lewis, from The Four Loves

Happy Birthday, Sullivan

Sullivan, Home Building Association Bank, Nerk, Ahia, 1914

Louis Sullivan was born on this day in 1856.

The Art Institute of Chicago looks at "The Architecture of Louis Sullivan".

Lindsey Buckingham, "September Song"

The Jam, "Just Who is the Five O'Clock Hero"

Critical.

Mr. Comerford documents T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis' meeting for tea at The Mitre in Oxford ...

But members of the Inklings also created a moment in literary in the Mitre almost 80 years ago, when Charles Williams, one of the leading Inklings, invited his mutual friends CS Lewis and TS Eliot, along with another Inkling, Father Gervase Mathew, to tea at the Mitre Hotel one afternoon in 1945.

‘Mr Lewis,’ Eliot exclaimed, ‘you are a much older man than you appear in photographs!’ The meeting could only go downhill after that. ‘I must tell you,’ Eliot continued, ‘I consider A Preface to Paradise Lost your best book.’

Lewis was in disbelief, it is said. He had dedicated that book to Charles Williams, but in it had been highly critical of Eliot. Lewis had once dismissed ‘The Waste Land’ as ‘infernal poetry’ and ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ as ‘pleasantly unpleasant’, an ‘example of the decay of proper feelings’ and morally dangerous.

Only Blanche appreciated Eliot.

Becoming.

I kind of miss that "becoming" stage, as most times you really don't know what's around the corner. Now, of course, I've kind of knocked on the door and heard a muffled answer. Nevertheless, I still don't know what the voice is saying, or even what language it's in.  I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring. 

David Bowie

"Buddha of Suburbia" ...

Glenn Tilbrook, "I Hear You Knocking"

You'll need an extra side of ranch for this one ...

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

I wish he'd do an album of these.

Quick.

WHAT the BIRD SAID EARLY in the YEAR

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:

This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees

This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,

Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back

To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.

C.S. Lewis

Ian McCulloch, "September Song"

Both.

Wyeth, Apples on a Bough, Study Before Picking, 1942

Dog days are over, and here comes September. Not Autumn, yet; simply September, which can be as sweltering as mid-July and as chill as late October, and usually manages to be both. Flowers still bloom in September, but sumac and swampland maples give them the lie by turning a gorgeous Autumn scarlet. 

Birds that we haven't seen or heard since June come trooping back with their songs ...

From New York Times, August 31, 1942

The scent of ancient apples, sun-warmed in an orchard.

Buffett.

In 2020, Rolling Stone spoke with Jimmy Buffett about Hunter Thompson, hanging out on a boat with Bob Dylan, and how to listen to "Margarittaville" ...

Mac.

Released.

RUSH released A Farewell to Kings on this day in 1977.

"Xanadu" ...

Treasures.

On the following morning, the sun darted his beams from over the hills through the low lattice window. I rose at an early hour, and looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the casement. To my surprise Scott was already up and forth, seated on a fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed on the new building. I had supposed, after the time he had wasted upon me yesterday, he would be closely occupied this morning, but he appeared like a man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine and amuse himself.

I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about his proposed plans of Abbotsford; happy would it have been for him could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple, yet hearty and hospitable style, in which he lived at the time of my visit. The great pile of Abbotsford, with the huge expense it entailed upon him, of servants, retainers, guests, and baronial style, was a drain upon his purse, a tax upon his exertions, and a weight upon his mind, that finally crushed him.

As yet, however, all was in embryo and perspective, and Scott pleased himself with picturing out his future residence, as he would one of the fanciful creations of his own romances. "It was one of his air castles," he said, "which he was reducing to solid stone and mortar." About the place were strewed various morsels from the ruins of Melrose Abbey, which were to be incorporated in his mansion. He had already constructed out of similar materials a kind of Gothic shrine over a spring, and had surmounted it by a small stone cross.

Among the relics from the Abbey which lay scattered before us, was a most quaint and antique little lion, either of red stone, or painted red, which hit my fancy. I forgot whose cognizance it was; but I shall never forget the delightful observations concerning old Melrose to which it accidentally gave rise. The Abbey was evidently a pile that called up all Scott's poetic and romantic feelings; and one to which he was enthusiastically attached by the most fanciful and delightful of his early associations. He spoke of it, I may say, with affection. "There is no telling," said he, "what treasures are hid in that glorious old pile. It is a famous place for antiquarian plunder; there are such rich bits of old time sculpture for the architect, and old time story for the poet. There is as rare picking in it as a Stilton cheese, and in the same taste—the mouldier the better."

Washington Irving, from "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey"

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the image.

Delight.

Spenser, September in The Shepheardes Calender (detail), 1579

The SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: SEPTEMBER

Harvest awakes the morning still,

And toil's rude groups the valleys fill;

Deserted is each cottage hearth

To all life, save the cricket's mirth;

Each burring wheel its sabbath meets,

Nor walks a gossip in the streets;

The bench beneath the eldern bough,

Lined o'er with grass, is empty now,

Where blackbirds, caged from out the sun,

Would whistle while their mistress spun:

All haunt the thronged fields, to share

The harvest's lingering bounty there.

As yet, no meddling boys resort

About the streets in idle sport;

The butterfly enjoys its hour,

And flirts, unchased, from flower to flower;

The humming bees, which morning calls

From out the low hut's mortar walls,

And passing boy no more controls —

Fly undisturb'd about their holes;

The sparrows in glad chirpings meet,

Unpelted in the quiet street.

None but imprison'd children now

Are seen, where dames with angry brow

Threaten each younker to his seat,

Who, through the window, eyes the street;

Or from his hornbook turns away,

To mourn for liberty and play.

Yet loud are morning's early sounds;

The farm or cottage yard abounds

With creaking noise of opening gate,

And clanking pumps, where boys await

With idle motion, to supply

The thirst of cattle crowding nigh.

Upon the dovecote's mossy slates,

The pigeons coo around their mates;

And close beside the stable wall,

Where morning sunbeams earliest fall,

The basking hen, in playful rout,

Flaps the powdery dust about.

Within the barn-hole sits the cat

Watching to seize the thirsty rat,

Who oft at morn its dwelling leaves

To drink the moisture from the eaves;

The red-breast, with his nimble eye,

Dares scarcely stop to catch the fly,

That, tangled in the spider's snare,

Mourns in vain for freedom there.

The dog beside the threshold lies,

Mocking sleep, with half-shut eyes —

With head crouch'd down upon his feet,

Till strangers pass his sunny seat —

Then quick he pricks his ears to hark,

And bustles up to growl and bark;

While boys in fear stop short their song,

And sneak in startled speed along;

And beggar, creeping like a snail,

To make his hungry hopes prevail

O'er the warm heart of charity,

Leaves his lame halt and hastens by.

The maid afield now leaves the farm,

With dinner basket on her arm,

Loitering unseen in narrow lane,

To be o'ertook by following swain,

Who, happy thus her truth to prove,

Carries the load and talks of love.

Soon as the dew is off the ground,

Rumbling like distant thunder round,

The waggons haste the corn to load,

And hurry down the dusty road;

While driving boy with eager eye

Watches the church clock passing by —

Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun —

To see how far the hours have run;

Right happy, in the breathless day,

To see time wearing fast away.

But now and then a sudden shower

Will bring to toil a resting hour;

Then, under sheltering shocks, a crowd

Of merry voices mingle loud,

Draining, with leisure's laughing eye,

Each welcome, bubbling bottle dry;

Till peeping suns dry up the rain,

Then off they start to toil again.

Anon the fields are getting clear,

And glad sounds hum in labour's ear;

When children halloo " Here they come! "

And run to meet the Harvest Home,

Cover'd with boughs, and throng'd with boys,

Who mingle loud a merry noise,

And, when they meet the stack-throng'd yard,

Cross-buns and pence their shouts reward.

Then comes the harvest-supper night,

Which rustics welcome with delight;

When merry game and tiresome tale,

And songs, increasing with the ale,

Their mingled uproar interpose,

To crown the harvest's happy close;

While Mirth, that at the scene abides,

Laughs, till she almost cracks her sides.

Now harvest's busy hum declines,

And labour half its help resigns.

Boys, glad at heart, to play return;

The shepherds to their peace sojourn,

Rush-bosom'd solitudes among,

Which busy toil disturb'd so long.

The gossip, happy all is o'er,

Visits again her neighbour's door,

On scandal's idle tales to dwell,

Which harvest had no time to tell;

And free from all its sultry strife,

Enjoys once more her idle life.

A few, whom waning toil reprieves,

Thread the forest's sea of leaves,

Where the pheasant loves to hide,

And the darkest glooms abide,

Beneath the old oaks moss'd and grey,

Whose shadows seem as old as they;

Where time hath many seasons won,

Since aught beneath them saw the sun;

Within these brambly solitudes,

The ragged, noisy boy intrudes,

To gather nuts, that, ripe and brown,

As soon as shook will patter down.

Thus harvest ends its busy reign,

And leaves the fields their peace again;

Where Autumn's shadows idly muse

And tinge the trees in many hues:

Amid whose scenes I'm fain to dwell,

And sing of what I love so well.

But hollow winds, and tumbling floods,

And humming showers, and moaning woods,

All startle into sudden strife,

And wake a mighty lay to life;

Making, amid their strains divine,

Unheard a song so mean as mine.

John Clare