Tinge.

Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender: September, 1579

The SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: SEPTEMBER

Harvest awakes the morning still

And toils rude groups the valleys fill

Deserted is each cottage hearth

To all life save the crickets mirth

Each burring wheel their sabbath meets

Nor walks a gossip in the streets

The bench beneath its eldern bough

Lined oer with grass is empty now

Where blackbirds caged from out the sun

Could whistle while their mistress spun.

All haunt the thronged fields still to share

The harvests lingering bounty there

As yet no meddling boys resort

About the streets in idle sport

The butterflye enjoys his hour

And flirts unchaced from flower to flower

And humming bees that morning calls

From out the low huts mortar walls

Which passing boy no more controuls

Flye undisturbed about their holes

And sparrows in glad chirpings meet

Unpelted in the quiet street

None but imprison'd childern now

Are seen where dames with angry brow

Threaten each younker to his seat

That thro' the school door eyes the street

Or from his horn book turns away

To mourn for liberty and play

Loud are the mornings early sounds

That farm and cottage yard surrounds

The creaking noise of opening gate

And clanking pumps where boys await

With idle motion to supply

The thirst of cattle crowding bye

The low of cows and bark of dogs

And cackling hens and wineing hogs

Swell high-while at the noise awoke

Old goody seeks her milking cloak

And hastens out to milk the cow

And fill the troughs to feed the sow

Or seeking old hens laid astray

Or from young chickens drives away

The circling kite that round them flyes

Waiting the chance to seize the prize

Hogs trye thro gates the street to gain

And steal into the fields of grain

From nights dull prison comes the duck

Waddling eager thro the muck

Squeezing thro the orchard pales

Where mornings bounty rarely fails

Eager gobbling as they pass

Dew worms thro the padded grass

Where blushing apples round and red

Load down the boughs and pat the head

Of longing maid that hither goes

To hang on lines the drying cloaths

Who views them oft with tempted eye

And steals one as she passes bye

Where the holly oak so tall

Far oer tops the garden wall

That latest blooms for bees provide

Hived on stone benches close beside

The bees their teazing music hum

And threaten war to all that come

Save the old dame whose jealous care

Places a trapping bottle there

Filled with mock sweets in whose disguise

The honey loving hornet dies

Upon the dovecoats mossy slates

The piegons coo around their mates

Where morns sunbeams early fall

By the barn or stable wall

Basking hens in playfull rout

Flap the smoaking dust about

In the barn hole sits the cat

Watching within the thirsty rat

Who oft at morn its dwelling leaves

To drink the moisture from the eves

The redbreast with his nimble eye

Dare scarcely stop to catch the flye

That tangled in the spiders snare

Mourns in vain for freedom there

The dog beside the threshold lyes

Mocking sleep with half shut eyes

With head crouched 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 on hurrys fears along

And beggar creeping like a snail

To make his hungry hopes prevail

Oer the warm heart of charity

Leaves his lame halt and hastens bye

The maid afield now leaves the farm

With brimming bottles on her arm

Loitering unseen in narrow lane

To be oertook by following swain

Who happy thus her truth to prove

Carrys the load and talks of love

Full soon the harvest waggons sound

Rumbling like thunder all around

In ceasless speed the corn to load

Hurrying down the dusty road

While driving boy with eager eye

Watches the church clock passing bye

Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun

To see how far the hours have run

Right happly in the breathless day

To see it wearing fast away

Yet now and then a sudden shower

Will bring to toil a resting hour

When under sheltering shocks a crowd

Of merry voices mingle loud

Wearing the short lived boon along

With vulgar tale and merry song

Draining with leisures laughing eye

Each welcome bubbling bottle drye

Till peeping suns dry up the rain

Then off they start to toil again

Anon the fields are wearing clear

And glad sounds hum in labours ear

When childern halo 'here they come

And run to meet the harvest home

Stuck thick with boughs and thronged with boys

Who mingle loud a merry noise

Glad that the harvests end is nigh

And weary labour nearly bye

Where when they meet the stack thronged yard

Cross bunns or 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 harvests happy close

While rural mirth that there abides

Laughs till she almost cracks her sides

Now harvests busy hum declines

And labour half its help resigns

Boys glad at heart to play return

The shepherds to their peace sojourn

Rush-bosomed solitudes among

Which busy toil disturbed so long

The gossip happy all is oer

Visits again her neighbours door

For scandals idle tales to dwell

Which harvest had no time to tell

And on each bench at even tide

Which trailing vine leaves nearly hide

And free from all its sultry strife

Enjoy once more their idle life

A few whom waning toil reprieves

Thread the forests sea of leaves

Where the pheasant loves to hide

And the darkest glooms abide

Beneath the old oaks mossd 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 autumns shadows idly muse

And tinge the trees with many hues

Amid whose scenes I'm feign 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

All songs in vain so mean as mine

John Clare

Here.

Quiet.

Spenser, Month of August, 1579

SHEPHERD's CALENDAR: August

Harvest approaches with its bustling day

The wheat tans brown and barley bleaches grey

In yellow garb the oat land intervenes

And tawney glooms the valley thronged with beans

Silent the village grows, wood wandering dreams

Seem not so lovely as its quiet seems

Doors are shut up as on a winters day

And not a child about them lies at play

The dust that winnows neath the breezes feet

Is all that stirs about the silent street

Fancy might think that desert spreading fear

Had whisperd terrors into quiets ear

Or plundering armys past the place had come

And drove the lost inhabitants from home

The fields now claim them where a motley crew

Of old and young their daily tasks pursue

The barleys beard is grey and wheat is brown

And wakens toil betimes to leave the town

The reapers leave their beds before the sun

And gleaners follow when home toils are done

To pick the littered ear the reaper leaves

And glean in open fields among the sheaves

The ruddy child nursed in the lap of care

In toils rude ways to do its little share

Beside its mother poddles oer the land

Sun burnt and stooping with a weary hand

Picking its tiney glean of corn or wheat

While crackling stubbles wound its legs and feet

Full glad it often is to sit awhile

Upon a smooth green baulk to ease its toil

And feign would spend an idle hour to play

With insects strangers to the moiling day

Creeping about each rush and grassy stem

And often wishes it was one of them

In weariness of heart that it might lye

Hid in the grass from the days burning eye

That raises tender blisters on his skin

Thro holes or openings that have lost a pin

Free from the crackling stubs to toil and glean

And smiles to think how happy it had been

Whilst its expecting mother stops to tye

Her handful up and waiting his supply

Misses the resting younker from her side

And shouts of rods and morts of threats beside

Pointing to the grey willows while she tells

His fears shall fetch one if he still rebells

Picturing harsh truths in its unpracticed eye

How they who idle in the harvest lye

Shall well deserving in the winter pine

Or hunt the hedges with the birds and swine

In vain he wishes that the rushes height

Were tall as trees to hide him from her sight

Leaving his pleasant seat he sighs and rubs

His legs and shows scratchd wounds from piercing stubs

To make excuse for play but she disdains

His little wounds and smiles while he complains

And as he stoops adown in troubles sore

She sees his grief and bids him sob no more

As bye and bye on the next sabbath day

She'll give him well earned pence as well as play

When he may buy almost with out a stint

Sweet candied horehound cakes and pepper mint

Or streaking sticks of lusious lolipop

What ere he chuses from the tempting shop

Wi in whose diamond winder shining lye

Things of all sorts to tempt his eager eye

Rich sugar plumbs in phials shining bright

In every hue young fancys to delight

Coaches and ladys of gilt ginger bread

And downy plumbs and apples streaked with red

Such promises all sorrows soon displace

And smiles are instant kindled in his face

Scorning all troubles which he felt before

He picks the trailing ears and mourns no more

The fields are all alive with busy noise

Of labours sounds and insects humming joys

Some oer the glittering sickle sweating stoop

Startling full oft the partridge coveys up

Some oer the rustling scythe go bending on

And shockers follow where their toils have gone

First turning swaths to wither in the sun

Where mice from terrors dangers nimbly run

Leaving their tender young in fears alarm

Lapt up in nests of chimbled grasses warm

And oft themselves for safty search in vain

From the rude boy or churlish hearted swain

Who beat their stone chinkd forks about the groun(

And spread an instant murder all around

Tho oft the anxious maidens tender prayer

Urges the clown their little lives to spare

Who sighs while trailing the long rake along

At scenes so cruel and forgets her song

And stays wi love his murder aiming hand

Some ted the puffing winnow down the land

And others following roll them up in heaps

While cleanly as a barn door beesome sweeps

The hawling drag wi gathering weeds entwind

And singing rakers end the toils behind

When the sun stoops to meet the western sky

And noons hot hours have wanderd weary bye

They seek an awthorn bush or willow tree

Or stouk or shock where coolest shadows be

Where baskets heapd and unbroachd bottles lye

Which dogs in absence watchd with wary eye

To catch their breath awhile and share the boon

Which beavering time alows their toil at noon

All gathering sit on stubbs or sheaves the hour

Where scarlet poppys linger still in flower

Stript in his shirt the hot swain drops adown

And close beside him in her unpind gown

Next to her favoured swain the maiden steals

Blushing at kindness which her love reveals

Who makes a seat for her of things around

And drops beside her on the naked ground

Wearied wi brambles catching at her gown

And pulling nutts from branches pulld adown

By friendly swain the maid Wi heaving breast

Upon her lovers shoulder leans at rest

Then from its cool retreat the beer they bring

And hand the stout hooped bottle round the ring

Each swain soaks hard-the maiden ere she sips

Shrieks at the bold whasp settling on her lips

That seems determined only hers to greet

As if it fancied they were cherrys sweet

So dog forgoes his sleep awhile or play

Springing at frogs that rustling jump away

To watch each morsel that the boon bestows

And wait the bone or crumb the shepherd throws

For shepherds are no more of ease possest

But share the harvests labours with the rest

When day declines and labour meets repose

The bawling boy his evening journey goes

At toils unwearied call the first and last

He drives his horses to their nights repast

In dewey close or meadow to sojourn

And often ventures on his still return

Oer garden pales or orchard walls to hie

When sleeps safe key hath locked up dangers eye

All but the mastiff watching in the dark

Who snufts and knows him and forbears to bark

With fearful haste he climbs each loaded tree

And picks for prizes which the ripest be

Pears plumbs or filberts covered oer in leams

While the pale moon creeps high in peaceful dreams

And oer his harvest theft in jealous light

Fills empty shadows with the power to fright

And owlet screaming as it bounces nigh

That from some barn hole pops and hurries bye

Scard at the cat upon her nightly watch

For rats that come for dew upon the thatch

He hears the noise and trembling to escape

While every object grows a dismal shape

Drops from the tree in fancys swiftest dread

By ghosts pursued and scampers home to bed

Quick tumbling oer the mossy mouldering wall

And looses half his booty in the fall

Where soon as ere the morning opes its eyes

The restless hogs will happen on the prize

And crump adown the mellow and the green

And makes all seem as nothing ne'er had been

Amid the broils of harvests weary reign

How sweet the sabbath wakes its rest again

For each weary mind what rapture dwells

To hear once more its pleasant chiming bells

That from each steeple peeping here and there

Murmur a soothing lullaby to care

The shepherd journying on his morning rounds

Pauses awhile to hear their pleasing sounds

While the glad childern free from toils employ

Mimic the ding dong sounds and laugh for joy

The fields themselves seem happy to be free

Where insects chatter with unusual glee

While solitude the stubbs and grass among

Apears to muse and listen to the song

In quiet peace awakes the welcomed morn

Men tired and childern with their gleaning worn

Weary and stiff lye round their doors the day

To rest themselves with little heart for play

No more keck horns in homestead close resounds

As in their school boy days at hare and hounds

Nor running oer the street from wall to wall

With eager shouts at 'cuck and catch the ball'

In calm delight the sabbath wears along

Yet round the cross at noon a tempted throng

Of little younkers with their pence repair

To buy the downy plumb and lucious pear

That melt i' th mouth-which gardners never fail

For gains strong impulse to expose for sale

And on the circling cross steps in the sun

Sit when the parson has his sermon done

When grandams that against his rules rebell

Come wi their baskets heapd wi fruit to sell

That thither all the season did pursue

Wi mellow goosberrys of every hue

Green ruffs and raspberry reds and drops of gold

That makes mouths water often to behold

Sold out to clowns in totts oft deemd too small

Who grudging much the price eat husks and all

Nor leaves a fragment round to cheer the eye

Of searching swine that murmurs hungry bye

And currans red and white on cabbage leaves

While childerns fingers itches to be thieves

And black red cherrys shining to the sight

As rich as brandy held before the light

Now these are past he still as sunday comes

Sits on the cross wi baskets heapd wi plumbs

And Jenitens streakd apples suggar sweet

Others spice scented ripening wi the wheat

And pears that melt ith' mouth like honey which

He oft declares to make their spirits itch

They are so juicy ripe and better still

So rich they een might suck em thro a quill

Here at their leisure gather many a clown

To talk of grain and news about the town

And here the boy wi toils earnd penny comes

In hurrying speed to purchase pears or plumbs

And oer the basket hangs wi many a smile

Wi hat in hand to hold his prize the while

Not so the boys that begs for pence in vain

Of deaf eard dames that threat while they complain

Who talk of the good dinners they have eat

And wanting more as nothing but consiet

Vowing they ne'er shall throw good pence away

So bids them off and be content wi play

Reaching her rod that hangs the chimney oer

And scaring their rude whinings to the door

Who sob aloud and hang their hats adown

To hide their tears and sawn along the town

Venturing wi sullen step his basket nigh

And often dipping a desiring eye

Stone hearted dames thrifts errors to believe

Who make their little bellys yearn to thieve

But strong temptation must to fears resign

For close beside the stocks in terror shine

So choaking substitutes for loss of pelf

He keeps his hungry fingers to himself

And mopes and sits the sabbath hours away

Wi heart too weary and too sad for play

So Sunday's scenes and leisure passes bye

In rests soft peace and home tranquillity

Till Monday morning doth its cares pursue

And wakes the harvests busy toils anew

John Clare

Thirty-one days until The Oyster Months.

Strawberry.

Right about ... now.

Thanks, Kurt.

Exceed.

Scott, Pixies Dancing in a Ring by the Firelight, 1885

The National Trust has the traditions of Midsummer ...

A time when the normal laws of nature or divinity could be suspended, when spirits and fairies could contact humans, when humans could exceed the usual limitations of their world.

Summer.

As Summer is beginning right about ... now, here's the introduction to Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury ...

JUST THIS SIDE OF BYZANTIUM: an introduction

This book, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

It was with great relief, then, that in my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head.

I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weigh the word and show me its meaning in my own life. An hour or two hours later, to my amazement, a new story would be finished and done. The surprise was total and lovely. I soon found that I would have to work this way for the rest of my life.

First I rummaged my mind for words that could describe my personal nightmares, fears of night and time from my childhood, and shaped stories from these.

Then I took a long look at the green apple trees and the old house I was born in and the house next door where lived my grandparents, and all the lawns of the summers I grew up in, and I began to try words for all that.

What you have here in this book then is a gathering of dandelions from all those years. The wine metaphor which appears again and again in these pages is wonderfully apt. I was gathering images all of my life, storing them away, and forgetting them. Somehow I had to send myself back, with words as catalysts, to open the memories out and see what they had to offer.

So from the age of twenty-four to thirty-six hardly a day passed when I didn’t stroll myself across a recollection of my grandparents’ northern Illinois grass, hoping to come across some old half-burnt firecracker, a rusted toy, or a fragment of letter written to myself in some young year hoping to contact the older person I became to remind him of his past, his life, his people, his joys, and his drenching sorrows.

It became a game that I took to with immense gusto: to see how much I could remember about dandelions themselves, or picking wild grapes with my father and brother, rediscovering the mosquito-breeding ground rain barrel by the side bay window, or searching out the smell of the gold-fuzzed bees that hung around our back porch grape arbor. Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

An then I wanted to call back what the ravine was like, especially on those nights when walking home late across town, after seeing Lon Chaney’s delicious fright The Phantom of the Opera, my brother Skip would run ahead and hide under the ravine-creek bridge like the Lonely One and leap out and grab me, shrieking, so I ran, fell, and ran again, gibbering all the way home. That was great stuff.

Along the way I came upon and collided, through word-association, with old and true friendships. I borrowed my friend John Huff from my childhood in Arizona and shipped him East to Green Town so that I could say good-bye to him properly.

Along the way I sat me down to breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with the long dead and much loved. For I was a boy who did indeed love his parents and grandparents and his brother, even when that brother “ditched” him.

Along the way, I found myself in the basement working the wine-press for my father, or on the front porch Independence night helping my Uncle Bion load and fire his home-made brass cannon.

Thus I fell into surprise. No one told me to surprise myself, I might add. I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blunwas somehow true.

So I turned myself into a boy running to bring a dipper of clear rainwater out of that barrel by the side of the house. And, of course, the more water you dip out the more flows in. The flow has never ceased. Once I learned to keep going back and back again to those times, I had plenty of memories and sense impressions to play with, not work with, no, play with. Dandelion Wine is nothing if it is not the boy-hid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lord on the green grass of other Augusts in the midst of starting to grow up, grow old, and sense darkness waiting under the trees to seed the blood.

I was amused and somewhat astonished at a critic a few years back who wrote an article analyzing Dandelion Wine plus the more realistic work of Sinclair Lewis, wondering how I could have been born and raised in Waukegan, which I renamed Green Town for my novel, and not noticed how ugly the harbor was and how depressing the coal docks and railyards down below the town.

But, of course, I had noticed them and, genetic enchanter that I was, was fascinated by their beauty. Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about. Counting boxcars is a prime activity of boys. Their elders fret and fume and jeer at the train that holds them up, but boys happily count and cry the names of the cars as they pass from far places.

And again, that supposedly ugly railyard was where carnivals and circuses arrived with elephants who washed the brick pavements with mighty streaming acid waters at five in the dark morning.

As for the coal from the docks, I went down in my basement every autumn to await the arrival of the truck and its metal chute, which clanged down and released a ton of beauteous meteors that fell out of far space into my cellar and threatened to bury me beneath dark treasures.

In other words, if your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him; which is, of course, what horse manure has always been about.

Perhaps a new poem of mine will explain more than this introduction about the germination of all the summers of my life into one book.

Here’s the start of the poem:

Byzantium, I come not from,
But from another time and place
Whose race was simple, tried and true;
As boy
I dropped me forth in Illinois.
A name with neither love nor grace
Was Waukegan, there I came from
And not, good friends, Byzantium.
The poem continues, describing my lifelong relationship to my birthplace:
And yet in looking back I see
From topmost part of farthest tree
A land as bright, beloved and blue
As any Yeats found to be true.
Waukegan, visited by me often since, is neither homelier nor more beautiful than any other small Midwestern town. Much of it is green. The trees do touch in the middle of streets. The street in front of my old home is still paved with red bricks. In what way then was the town special? Why, I was born there. It was my life. I had to write of it as I saw fit:
So we grew up with mythic dead
To spoon upon midwestern bread
And spread old gods’ bright marmalade
To slake in peanut-butter shade,
Pretending there beneath our sky
That it was Aphrodite’s thigh…
While by the porch-rail calm and bold
His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold
My grandfather, a myth indeed,
Did all of Plato supercede
While Grandmama in rockingchair
Sewed up the raveled sleeve of care
Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright
To winter us on summer night.
And uncles, gathered with their smokes
Emitted wisdoms masked as jokes,
And aunts as wise as Delphic maids
Dispensed prophetic lemonades
To boys knelt there as acolytes
To Grecian porch on summer nights;
Then went to bed, there to repent
The evils of the innocent;
The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears
Said, through the nights and through the years
Not Illinois nor Waukegan
But blither sky and blither sun.
Though mediocre all our Fates
And Mayor not as bright as Yeats
Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum?
Byzantium.
Byzantuim.

Waukegan/ Green Town/ Byzantium.
Green Town did exist, then?
Yes, and again, yes.

Was there a real boy named John Huff? There was. And that was truly his name. But he didn’t go away from me, I went away from him. But, happy ending, he is still alive, forty-two years later, and remembers our love.

Was there a Lonely One? There was, and that was his name. And he moved around at night in my home town when I was six years old and he frightened everyone and was never captured.

Most importantly, did the big house itself, with Grandpa and Grandma and the boarders and uncles and aunts in it exist? I have answered that.

Is the ravine real and deep and dark at night? It was, it is. I took my daughters there a few years back, fearful that the ravine might have gone shallow with time. I am relieved and happy to report that the ravine is deeper, darker, and more mysterious than ever. I would not, even now, go home through there after seeing The Phantom of the Opera.

So there you have it. Waukegan was Green Town was Byzantium, with all the happiness that that means, with all the sadness that these names imply. The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. And, after all, isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh, so that’s how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that.

Here is my celebration, then, of death as well as life, dark as well as light, old as well as young, smart and dumb combined, sheer joy as well as complete terror written by a boy who once hung upside down in trees, dressed in his bat costume with candy fangs in his mouth, who finally fell out of the trees when he was twelve and went and found a toy-dial typewriter and wrote his first “novel.”

A final memory.

Fire balloons.

You rarely see them these days, though in some countries, I hear, they are still filled with warm breath from a small straw fire hung beneath.

But in 1925 Illinois, we still had them, and one of the last memories I have of my grandfather is the last hour of a Fourth of July night forty-eight years ago when Grandpa and I walked out on the lawn and lit a small fire and filled the pear-shaped red-white-and-blue-striped paper balloon with hot air, and held the flickering bright-angel presence in our hands a final moment in front of a porch lined with uncles and aunts and cousins and mothers and fathers, and then, very softly, let the thing that was life and light and mystery go out of our fingers up on the summer night air and away over the beginning-to-sleep houses, among the stars, as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.

I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this.

No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn’t they? And that one is me.

The wine still waits in the cellars below.

My beloved family still sits on the porch in the dark.

The fire balloon still drifts and burns in the night sky of an as yet unburied summer.

Why and how?

Because I say it is so.

Ray Bradbury
Summer, 1974

Your hymnal is here.

Fire balloons afloft in Thailand ...



Basic fire balloon how-to is here.

Arrival.

The arrival of Spring ...

Whistles.

Spenser, The Shepherd's Calendar: May, 1579

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: MAY

Come queen of months in company

Wi all thy merry minstrelsy

The restless cuckoo absent long

And twittering swallows chimney song

And hedge row crickets notes that run

From every bank that fronts the sun

And swathy bees about the grass

That stops wi every bloom they pass

And every minute every hour

Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower

And toil and childhoods humming joys

For there is music in the noise

The village childern mad for sport

In school times leisure ever short

That crick and catch the bouncing ball

And run along the church yard wall

Capt wi rude figured slabs whose claims

In times bad memory hath no names

Oft racing round the nookey church

Or calling ecchos in the porch

And jilting oer the weather cock

Viewing wi jealous eyes the clock

Oft leaping grave stones leaning hights

Uncheckt wi mellancholy sights

The green grass swelld in many a heap

Where kin and friends and parents sleep

Unthinking in their jovial cry

That time shall come when they shall lye

As lowly and as still as they

While other boys above them play

Heedless as they do now to know

The unconcious dust that lies below

The shepherd goes wi happy stride

Wi moms long shadow by his side

Down the dryd lanes neath blooming may

That once was over shoes in clay

While martins twitter neath his eves

Which he at early morning leaves

The driving boy beside his team

Will oer the may month beauty dream

And cock his hat and turn his eye

On flower and tree and deepning skye

And oft bursts loud in fits of song

And whistles as he reels along

Crack[ing] his whip in starts of joy

A happy dirty driving boy

The youth who leaves his corner stool

Betimes for neighbouring village school

While as a mark to urge him right

The church spires all the way in sight

Wi cheerings from his parents given

Starts neath the joyous smiles of heaven

And sawns wi many an idle stand

Wi bookbag swinging in his hand

And gazes as he passes bye

On every thing that meets his eye

Young lambs seem tempting him to play

Dancing and bleating in his way

Wi trembling tails and pointed ears

They follow him and loose their fears

He smiles upon their sunny faces

And feign woud join their happy races

The birds that sing on bush and tree

Seem chirping for his company

And all in fancys idle whim

Seem keeping holiday but him

He lolls upon each resting stile

To see the fields so sweetly smile

To see the wheat grow green and long

And list the weeders toiling song

Or short not[e] of the changing thrush

Above him in the white thorn bush

That oer the leaning stile bends low

Loaded wi mockery of snow

Mozzld wi many a lushing thread

Of crab tree blossoms delicate red

He often bends wi many a wish

Oer the brig rail to view the fish

Go sturting by in sunny gleams

And chucks in the eye dazzld streams

Crumbs from his pocket oft to watch

The swarming struttle come to catch

Them where they to the bottom sile

Sighing in fancys joy the while

Hes cautiond not to stand so nigh

By rosey milkmaid tripping bye

Where he admires wi fond delight

And longs to be there mute till night

He often ventures thro the day

At truant now and then to play

Rambling about the field and plain

Seeking larks nests in the grain

And picking flowers and boughs of may

To hurd awhile and throw away

Lurking neath bushes from the sight

Of tell tale eyes till schools noon night

Listing each hour for church clocks hum

To know the hour to wander home

That parents may not think him long

Nor dream of his rude doing wrong

Dreading thro the night wi dreaming pain

To meet his masters wand again

Each hedge is loaded thick wi green

And where the hedger late hath been

Tender shoots begin to grow

From the mossy stumps below

While sheep and cow that teaze the grain

will nip them to the root again

They lay their bill and mittens bye

And on to other labours hie

While wood men still on spring intrudes

And thins the shadow solitudes

Wi sharpend axes felling down

The oak trees budding into brown

Where as they crash upon the ground

A crowd of labourers gather round

And mix among the shadows dark

To rip the crackling staining bark

From off the tree and lay when done

The rolls in lares to meet the sun

Depriving yearly where they come

The green wood pecker of its home

That early in the spring began

Far from the sight of troubling man

And bord their round holes in each tree

In fancys sweet security

Till startld wi the woodmans noise

It wakes from all its dreaming joys

The blue bells too that thickly bloom

Where man was never feared to come

And smell smocks that from view retires

Mong rustling leaves and bowing briars

And stooping lilys of the valley

That comes wi shades and dews to dally

White beady drops on slender threads

Wi broad hood leaves above their heads

Like white robd maids in summer hours

Neath umberellas shunning showers

These neath the barkmens crushing treads

Oft perish in their blooming beds

Thus stript of boughs and bark in white

Their trunks shine in the mellow light

Beneath the green surviving trees

That wave above them in the breeze

And waking whispers slowly bends

As if they mournd their fallen friends

Each morning now the weeders meet

To cut the thistle from the wheat

And ruin in the sunny hours

Full many wild weeds of their flowers

Corn poppys that in crimson dwell

Calld 'head achs' from their sickly smell

And carlock yellow as the sun

That oer the may fields thickly run

And 'iron weed' content to share

The meanest spot that spring can spare

Een roads where danger hourly comes

Is not wi out its purple blooms

And leaves wi points like thistles round

Thickset that have no strength to wound

That shrink to childhoods eager hold

Like hair-and with its eye of gold

And scarlet starry points of flowers

Pimpernel dreading nights and showers

Oft calld 'the shepherds weather glass'

That sleep till suns have dyd the grass

Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom

Till clouds or threatning shadows come

Then close it shuts to sleep again

Which weeders see and talk of rain

And boys that mark them shut so soon

will call them 'John go bed at noon

And fumitory too a name

That superstition holds to fame

Whose red and purple mottled flowers

Are cropt by maids in weeding hours

To boil in water milk and way1

For washes on an holiday

To make their beauty fair and sleak

And scour the tan from summers cheek

And simple small forget me not

Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot

I'th'2 middle of its tender blue

That gains from poets notice due

These flowers the toil by crowds destroys

And robs them of their lowly joys

That met the may wi hopes as sweet

As those her suns in gardens meet

And oft the dame will feel inclind

As childhoods memory comes to mind

To turn her hook away and spare

The blooms it lovd to gather there

My wild field catalogue of flowers

Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers

Tedious and long as they may be

To some, they never weary me

The wood and mead and field of grain

I coud hunt oer and oer again

And talk to every blossom wild

Fond as a parent to a child

And cull them in my childish joy

By swarms and swarms and never cloy

When their lank shades oer morning pearls

Shrink from their lengths to little girls

And like the clock hand pointing one

Is turnd and tells the morning gone

They leave their toils for dinners hour

Beneath some hedges bramble bower

And season sweet their savory meals

Wi joke and tale and merry peals

Of ancient tunes from happy tongues

While linnets join their fitful songs

Perchd oer their heads in frolic play

Among the tufts of motling may

The young girls whisper things of love

And from the old dames hearing move

Oft making 'love knotts' in the shade

Of blue green oat or wheaten blade

And trying simple charms and spells

That rural superstition tells

They pull the little blossom threads

From out the knapweeds button heads

And put the husk wi many a smile

In their white bosoms for awhile

Who if they guess aright the swain

That loves sweet fancys trys to gain

Tis said that ere its lain an hour

Twill blossom wi a second flower

And from her white breasts hankerchief

Bloom as they ne'er had lost a leaf

When signs appear that token wet

As they are neath the bushes met

The girls are glad wi hopes of play

And harping of the holiday

A hugh blue bird will often swim

Along the wheat when skys grow dim

Wi clouds-slow as the gales of spring

In motion wi dark shadowd wing

Beneath the coming storm it sails

And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails

That came to live wi spring again

And start when summer browns the grain

They start the young girls joys afloat

Wi 'wet my foot' its yearly note

So fancy doth the sound explain

And proves it oft a sign of rain

About the moor 'mong sheep and cow

The boy or old man wanders now

Hunting all day wi hopful pace

Each thick sown rushy thistly place

For plover eggs while oer them flye

The fearful birds wi teazing cry

Trying to lead their steps astray

And coying him another way

And be the weather chill or warm

Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm

Holding each prize their search has won

They plod bare headed to the sun

Now dames oft bustle from their wheels

Wi childern scampering at their heels

To watch the bees that hang and swive

In clumps about each thronging hive

And flit and thicken in the light

While the old dame enjoys the sight

And raps the while their warming pans

A spell that superstition plans

To coax them in the garden bounds

As if they lovd the tinkling sounds

And oft one hears the dinning noise

Which dames believe each swarm decoys

Around each village day by day

Mingling in the warmth of may

Sweet scented herbs her skill contrives

To rub the bramble platted hives

Fennels thread leaves and crimpld balm

To scent the new house of the swarm

The thresher dull as winter days

And lost to all that spring displays

Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand

Swings his frail round wi weary hand

While oer his head shades thickly creep

And hides the blinking owl asleep

And bats in cobweb corners bred

Sharing till night their murky bed

The sunshine trickles on the floor

Thro every crevice of the door

And makes his barn where shadows dwell

As irksome as a prisoners cell

And as he seeks his daily meal

As schoolboys from their tasks will steal

ile often stands in fond delay

To see the daisy in his way

And wild weeds flowering on the wall

That will his childish sports recall

Of all the joys that came wi spring

The twirling top the marble ring

The gingling halfpence hussld up

At pitch and toss the eager stoop

To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays

Neath hovels upon sabbath days

When parson he is safe from view

And clerk sings amen in his pew

The sitting down when school was oer

Upon the threshold by his door

Picking from mallows sport to please

Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese

And hunting from the stackyard sod

The stinking hen banes belted pod

By youths vain fancys sweetly fed

Christning them his loaves of bread

He sees while rocking down the street

Wi weary hands and crimpling feet

Young childern at the self same games

And hears the self same simple names

Still floating on each happy tongue

Touchd wi the simple scene so strong

Tears almost start and many a sigh

Regrets the happiness gone bye

And in sweet natures holiday

His heart is sad while all is gay

How lovly now are lanes and balks

For toils and lovers sunday walks

The daisey and the buttercup

For which the laughing childern stoop

A hundred times throughout the day

In their rude ramping summer play

So thickly now the pasture crowds

In gold and silver sheeted clouds

As if the drops in april showers

Had woo'd the sun and swoond to flowers

The brook resumes its summer dresses

Purling neath grass and water cresses

And mint and flag leaf swording high

Their blooms to the unheeding eye

And taper bowbent hanging rushes

And horse tail childerns bottle brushes

And summer tracks about its brink

Is fresh again where cattle drink

And on its sunny bank the swain

Stretches his idle length again

Soon as the sun forgets the day

The moon looks down on the lovly may

And the little star his friend and guide

Travelling together side by side

And the seven stars and charleses wain1

Hangs smiling oer green woods agen

The heaven rekindles all alive

Wi light the may bees round the hive

Swarm not so thick in mornings eye

As stars do in the evening skye

All all are nestling in their joys

The flowers and birds and pasture boys

The firetail, long a stranger, comes

To his last summer haunts and homes

To hollow tree and crevisd wall

And in the grass the rails odd call

That featherd spirit stops the swain

To listen to his note again

And school boy still in vain retraces

The secrets of his hiding places

In the black thorns crowded cops~e1

Thro its varied turns and stops

The nightingale its ditty weaves

Hid in a multitude of leaves

The boy stops short to hear the strain

And 'sweet jug jug' he mocks again

The yellow hammer builds its nest

By banks where sun beams earliest rest

That drys the dews from off the grass

Shading it from all that pass

Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze

That hunts thro evry secret maze

He finds its pencild eggs agen

All streakd wi lines as if a pen

By natures freakish hand was took

To scrawl them over like a book

And from these many mozzling marks

The school boy names them 'writing larks'

Bum barrels twit on bush and tree

Scarse bigger then a bumble bee

And in a white thorns leafy rest

It builds its curious pudding-nest

Wi hole beside as if a mouse

Had built the little barrel house

Toiling full many a lining feather

And bits of grey tree moss together

Amid the noisey rooky park

Beneath the firdales branches dark

The little golden crested wren

Hangs up his glowing nest agen

And sticks it to the furry leaves

As martins theirs beneath the eaves

The old hens leave the roost betimes

And oer the garden pailing climbs

To scrat the gardens fresh turnd soil

And if unwatchd his crops to spoil

Oft cackling from the prison yard

To peck about the houseclose sward

Catching at butterflys and things

Ere they have time to try their wings

The cattle feels the breath of may

And kick and toss their heads in play

The ass beneath his bags of sand

Oft jerks the string from leaders hand

And on the road will eager stoop

To pick the sprouting thistle up

Oft answering on his weary way

Some distant neighbours sobbing bray

Dining the ears of driving boy

As if he felt a fit of joy

Wi in its pinfold circle left

Of all its company bereft

Starvd stock no longer noising round

Lone in the nooks of foddering ground

Each skeleton of lingering stack

By winters tempests beaten black

Nodds upon props or bolt upright

Stands swarthy in the summer light

And oer the green grass seems to lower

Like stump of old time wasted tower

All that in winter lookd for hay

Spread from their batterd haunts away

To pick the grass or lye at lare

Beneath the mild hedge shadows there

Sweet month that gives a welcome call

To toil and nature and to all

Yet one day mid thy many joys

Is dead to all its sport and noise

Old may day where's thy glorys gone

All fled and left thee every one

Thou comst to thy old haunts and homes

Unnoticd as a stranger comes

No flowers are pluckt to hail the now

Nor cotter seeks a single bough

The maids no more on thy sweet morn

Awake their thresholds to adorn

Wi dewey flowers-May locks new come

And princifeathers cluttering bloom

And blue bells from the woodland moss

And cowslip cucking balls to toss

Above the garlands swinging hight

Hang in the soft eves sober light

These maid and child did yearly pull

By many a folded apron full

But all is past the merry song

Of maidens hurrying along

To crown at eve the earliest cow

Is gone and dead and silent now

The laugh raisd at the mocking thorn

Tyd to the cows tail last that morn

The kerchief at arms length displayd

Held up by pairs of swain and maid

While others bolted underneath

Bawling loud wi panting breath

'Duck under water' as they ran

Alls ended as they ne'er began

While the new thing that took thy place

Wears faded smiles upon its face

And where enclosure has its birth

It spreads a mildew oer her mirth

The herd no longer one by one

Goes plodding on her morning way

And garlands lost and sports nigh gone

Leaves her like thee a common day

Yet summer smiles upon thee still

Wi natures sweet unalterd will

And at thy births unworshipd hours

Fills her green lap wi swarms of flowers

To crown thee still as thou hast been

Of spring and summer months the queen.

John Clare

Delightful.

van Gogh, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain, 1890

APRIL SHOWERS

Delightful weather for all sorts of moods

& most for him – grey morn and swarthy eye

Found rambling up the little narrow lane

Where primrose banks amid the hazly woods

Peep most delightfully on passers bye

While Aprils little clouds about the sky

Mottle & freak unto fancy lie

Idling and ending travel for the day

Till darker clouds sail up with cumberous heave

South oer the woods & scares them all away

Then comes the rain pelting with pearly drops

The primrose crowds until they stoop & lie

All fragrance to his mind that musing stops

Beneath the hawthorn till the shower is bye

John Clare

Emboldened.

 Böcklin, Spring Evening, 1879

And now that the year wearily turns and stretches herself before the perfect waking, the god emboldened begins to blow a clearer note.

Kenneth Grahame, from "The Rural Pan (An April Essay)"

Telemann, Violin Concerto in A, TWV 51:A4, “The Frogs”

Orchestre à Cordes de l'Uliège performs under the guidance of Loïc Duchêne with Émilie Herwats, violon ...

Now.

Shepard, Ratty's Picnic, 1908

Spring is upon us right about ... now.

EARLY SPRING

The Spring is come, and Spring flowers coming too,

    The crocus, patty kay, the rich hearts' ease;

The polyanthus peeps with blebs of dew,

    And daisy flowers; the buds swell on the trees;

    While oer the odd flowers swim grandfather bees

In the old homestead rests the cottage cow;

    The dogs sit on their haunches near the pail,

The least one to the stranger growls "bow wow,"

    Then hurries to the door and cocks his tail,

To knaw the unfinished bone; the placid cow

    Looks o’er the gate; the thresher's lumping flail

Is all the noise the spring encounters now.

John Clare

Bone-Fires.

Kasamatsu, Bonfire, 1959

Prepare Ye ...

To the early Anglo-Saxons, November was “wint-monath”, or wind month, the start of the storm season. It was sacred to the weather god Thunor, the Anglo-Saxon name for Thor, whose hammering made the thunder – Thunor is Old English for thunder. His popularity was reflected in the widespread presence of hammer-shaped ornaments in Anglo-Saxon graves.

Thunor was honoured in November with huge fires to drive away evil spirits. These bone-fires or bonfires also had a practical function: animals had been slaughtered to provide food for winter, and the fires turned the bones into fertiliser. German pagans sometimes put a straw effigy of Thor on top of their bonfires, and Anglo-Saxons may have done the same with Thunor.

Scourings.

Rockwell, Ichabod Crane, 1937

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed.

He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch’s token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, “in linked sweetness long drawn out,” floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!

But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!

Washington Irving, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", found among the papers of the late Dietrich Knickerbocker in Geoffrey Crayon's Sketchbook

Stir.

Feel wind stir the greenwood, 

Or turn pages of a book made from his flesh -- 

Lean close, then, and hear, 

Green Man's voice.

Lauren Raine

Praise.

Wood, Autumn Oaks, 1933

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

E.B. White, from Charlotte’s Web

What if the cricket's song is one praising Autumn's joy and glorious transformation?

Subsides.

Parrish, The Lantern Bearers, 1908

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Autumn.

'Tis Autumn.

Tang.

LATE SEPTEMBER

Tang of fruitage in the air;

Red boughs bursting everywhere;

Shimmering of seeded grass;

Hooded gentians all a'mass.

Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind

Tearing off the husky rind,

Blowing feathered seeds to fall

By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.

Beech trees in a golden haze;

Hardy sumachs all ablaze,

Glowing through the silver birches.

How that pine tree shouts and lurches!

From the sunny door-jamb high,

Swings the shell of a butterfly.

Scrape of insect violins

Through the stubble shrilly dins.

Every blade's a minaret

Where a small muezzin's set,

Loudly calling us to pray

At the miracle of day.

Then the purple-lidded night

Westering comes, her footsteps light

Guided by the radiant boon

Of a sickle-shaped new moon.

Amy Lowell

Dream.

Whittredge, The Brook in the Woods, 1886

TOWARD the END of AUGUST

Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how

this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and

leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything

will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward

the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for

that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all

those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is

already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon

will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do

but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come.

David Budbill