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.

Minstrelsy.

The LAST of SUMMER

A beauty on the scene attends

Ere autumn comes & summer ends

When summers glory first we see

As staind with its mortality

A tree turnd yellow ere & there

& some already nearly bare

Who in the sun fade sick & fall

& leave a lesson with us all

& clouded skyes that hourly wain

& brighten into smiles again

Oer clearing fields & parched bowers

& witherd tufts that once was flowers

Nor can I wish those scenes away

So beautiful in their decay

For summers smiles to yearly be

Or give springs hopes eternity

Around me wood & valley seems

Fading in visionary dreams

A fairey scene that once begun

To fade & sicken in the sun

Decks in new beautys wood & hill

& like enchantment varies still

A rainbow glory nature weaves

Around her dwelling ere she leaves

Her autumns sickning toils to keep

Her sabbath rest of winter sleep

Oft in my earlier days of leisure

I felt a mellancholy pleasure

To track the sun burnt heaths & plains

When summers dazzling glory wains

When flowers had left the open walks

& nought appeard but rustling stalks

& those still lingering loath to fade

Were daily sickening in the shade

When orchard apple reddening mellow

& woodland branches sickening yellow

Proclaim the summers first decay

& autumn hastning on his way

& I do love this season still

To ramble round the scenes at will

To rove the smoothly shaven meadow

Were fading summer like a widow

Bewails in silence heavy hearted

The pleasant din of days departed

When sweeping mowers late & soon

From sunrise to eves dewy moon

Toild cheerful oer its level ground

& whetting sythes kept tinkling round

When swain & maid in artless glee

Sing round the haycock merrily

Mixing with grass[h]opper & bee

The summers soul of mellody

So sweet that ecchos extasys

Murmurd their mirth in mild replys

Tho these are gone & in their stead

A silent scene around is spread

A russet level bleak & bare

With yellow blossom here & there

Sickly smiling on the sun

As tho they wishd their end to shun

Till noon tide bids their hopes be oer

& evens dews can heal no more

Then dropping in their grave the grass

They claim our pity as we pass

Tho no fond bee with cheering hum

To their lorn bosoms cares to come

Tho fled the din of sythe & men

& but an odd lark now & then

Starts from its lonley naked way

To hope & sing for summers stay

Yet wandering in these fields at will

I feel a saddend pleasure still

Each morn wakes wan its sunlight wains

On yellowing leaves & fading plains

Green fields no more the summer views

All sicknd into ripend hues

Of brown & grey & darksome glooms

That mark the path were autum comes

& in each woodlands buried way

The dew drop lives for half the day

Dank mists oft creep 'tween earth & skye

& dreaming dim the mornings eye

& dullness wears along the while

As if the sun was loath to smile

Yet at mid day his feebld powers

Will brighten up in sultry hours

& sweating toil that often stops

To wipe aside the falling drops

Piercd with his downward daily ray

Wishes the lagging hours away

By swallows we may plain percieve

When summers on the point to leave

Who shun the pond & rippeling spring

Were oft they dipt their sutty wing

& green lanes were from morn till night

They joyd to weel their circling flight

Now perchd on cottage tops to rest

They twit & prune each dingy breast

Or flock together in the skye

As if to learn their young to flye

Preparing each unpractisd wing

For flight to seek another spring

Each orchard now is smiling gay

Glittering in the morning ray

Rich clustering plums of varied hue

Of freckld red & misty blue

& suntand pears with ruddy streak

Brown as was summers lusty cheek

& blushing apples round & red

Whose loaded branches pat the head

Of longing maid who hither goes

To hang on lines the bleaching cloaths

She views the fruit with tempting eye

& steals one as she saunters bye

& boys will often slive from play

& in the orchard find a way

Hurling up stones with jerking spring

Or sti[c]ks with many a sturdy swing

Till on the foot markd batterd ground

The pears & apples patter round

& truant school boys stealing play

Oft sneaks along some secret way

Tho neer a nest his eye percieves

Tho pootys hide in falling leaves

Yet are there hips & haws to seek

& suntand crabs with ruddy cheek

& with harsh grin & w[r]inkld frown

He chews the unpleasant prizes down

& arching oer the woodland way

Blackberrys tempt his thoughts astray

Sloes powderd oer with misty down

From hedges too he scrambles down

By shepherds deemd a pleasant treat

Tho not till winter makes them sweet

When frost nipt they awake desire

& anxious to his cottage fire

On the clear blaze each branch he th[r]ows

& roasts the hissing sputtering sloes

Now mushrooms with the morning light

Above the whet grass glisten white

Whose shade perhaps in nights wet hours

May serve the faireys sports for bowers

& often in the morning hours

That cheer awhile half witherd flowers

Ive markd suprisd as passing bye

Unseen save by each curious eye

From bent to bent oer closes spread

The slender cobwebs silken thread

By unseen insects finely spun

Glittering in the gleaming sun

Nor is the summers farewell hours

Always left without their flowers

The majoram oft in shady lane

Nights plentious dews revive again

Long scorchd in summers earlier hours

It now will freshen into flowers

On hills & roads & every where

The ragwort blossoms half the year

& thistles on each rushy baulk

Are constant blushing in our walk

That towers in scornful majesty

Oer oddling daiseys peeping nigh

Untouchd by sheep that hither stray

Who from its pr[i]ckles sneak away

& endive flowering closly bye

That steals its colors from the sky

The old-mans-beard too in its prime

Covers the hedges like a rime

With downy flowers that thickly twind

Oft shields the swain from rain & wind

These live till summers last decay

& lingering oft in fond delay

With autumn if she enters mild

Are sought & found by many a child

Who sort their blooms in poseys fair

& garlands glad her yellow hair

O Autumn now thy reign is nigh

I feign woud hail thy majesty

But hollow winds & tumbling floods

& singing showers & yellow woods

These are thy mighty minstrelsy

Who maddening into life with thee

Woud make amid their strains divine

Unheard the song so tame as mine.

John Clare

Thanks for the reminder, Kurt.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

There are those days which seem a taking in of breath which, held, suspends the whole earth in its waiting. Some summers refuse to end.

So along the road those flowers spread that, when touched, give down a shower of autumn rust. By every path it looks as if a ruined circus had passed and loosed a trail of ancient iron at every turning of a wheel. The rust was laid out everywhere, strewn under trees and by river-banks and near the tracks themselves where once a locomotive had gone but went no more. So flowered flakes and railroad track together turned to moulderings upon the rim of autumn.

Gone.

From Ray Bradbury's Farewell Summer ...

Confidence.

Grandfather smiled in his sleep. 

Feeling the smile and wondering why it was there, he awoke. He lay quietly listening, and the smile was explained. 

For he heard a sound which was far more important than birds or the rustle of new leaves. Once each year he woke this way and lay waiting for the sound which meant that summer had officially begun. And it began on a morning such as this when a boarder, a nephew, a cousin, a son or a grandson came out on the lawn below and moved in consecutively smaller quadrangles north and east and south and west with a clatter of rotating metal through the sweet summer grass. Clover blossoms, the few unharvested dandelion fires, ante, sticks, pebbles, remnants of last year’s July Fourth squibs and punks, but predominantly clear green, a fount leaped up from the chattering mower. A cool soft fount; Grandfather imagined it tickling his legs, spraying his warm face, filling his nostrils with the timeless scent of a new season begun, with the promise that, yes, we’ll all live another twelve months. 

God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Year’s Day No, they should set a man to watch the grasses across a million Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa lawns, and on that morning when it was long enough for cutting, instead of rachets and horns and yelling, there should be a great swelling symphony of lawn mowers reaping fresh grass upon the prairie lands. Instead of confetti and serpentine, people should throw grass spray at each other on the one day each year that really represents Beginning! 

He snorted at his own lengthy discussion of the affair, went to the window and leaned out into the mellow sun shine, and sure enough, there was a boarder, a young newspaperman named Forrester, just finishing a row. 

“Morning, Mr. Spaulding!” 

“Give ’em hell, Bill!” cried Grandpa heartily, and soon downstairs eating Grandma’s breakfast, with the window open so the rattling buzz of the lawn mower lolled about his eating. “It gives you confidence,” Grandpa said. 

“That lawn mower. Listen to it!”

Ray Bradbury, from Dandelion Wine

Tilting.

Grimshaw, The Spirit of the Night, 1879

Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.

Ray Bradbury, from Dandelion Wine

Working.

Collins, Bread and Butter, 2022

Every hand, every head, every mouth made a big or little motion. You could hear their faraway voices under glass. You could hear someone singing in a high sweet voice. You could smell bread baking, too, and you knew it was real bread that would soon be covered with real butter. Everything was there and it was working.

Ray Bradbury, from Dandelion Wine

Hum.

Spenser, A Shepherd's Calendar: July, 1579

JULY

Loud is the Summer's busy song,

The smallest breeze can find a tongue,

While insects of each tiny size

Grow teasing with their melodies,

Till noon burns with its blistering breath

Around, and day lies still as death

The busy noise of man and brute

Is on a sudden lost and mute;

Even the brook that leaps along,

Seems weary of its bubbling song,

And, so soft its waters creep,

Tired silence sinks in sounder sleep;

The cricket on its bank is dumb;

The very flies forget to hum;

And, save the wagon rocking round,

The landscape sleeps without a sound.

The breeze is stopped, the lazy bough

Hath not a leaf that danceth now;

The taller grass upon the hill,

And spider's threads, are standing still;

The feathers, dropped from moorhen's wing

Which to the water's surface cling,

Are steadfast, and as heavy seem

As stones beneath them in the stream;

Hawkweed and groundsel's fanny downs

Unruffled keep their seedy crowns;

And in the over-heated air

Not one light thing is floating there,

Save that to the earnest eye

The restless heat seems twittering by.

Noon swoons beneath the heat it made,

And flowers e'en within the shade;

Until the sun slopes in the west,

Like weary traveler, glad to rest

On pillowed clouds of many hues.

Then Nature's voice its joy renews,

And chequered field and grassy plain

Hum with their summer songs again,

A requiem to the day's decline,

Whose setting sunbeams coolly shine;

As welcome to day's feeble powers

As falling dews to thirsty flowers.

John Clare

Honey-Slow.

MIDSUMMER

This starbreak is celestial air, 

Just silver; earthlight, dying amber.

Underneath an arch of pallor

Summer keeps her brightened chamber.

Bright beauty of the risen dust

And deep flood-mark of beauty pressed

Up from earth in lovely flower,

High against my lonely breast;

Thou rhythm like the changing moon’s

The catch to which the waters play,

That as they kiss moon-silver sink,—

As soon to spurn the baffled clay;

Only before the waters fall

Is Paradise shore for gaining now.

The grasses drink the berry-bright dew;

The small fruits jewel all the bough.

Heart-breaking summer beyond taste,

Ripeness and frost are soon to know;

But might such color hold the west,

And time, and time, be honey-slow! 

Léonie Adams

Shaping.

Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, 1786

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

William Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Statistics.

He brought out a yellow nickel tablet. He brought out a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. He opened the tablet. He licked the pencil. 

“Tom,” he said, “you and your statistics gave me an idea. I’m going to do the same, keep track of things. For instance: you realize that every summer we do things over and over we did the whole darn summer before?” 

“Like what, Doug?” 

“Like making dandelion wine, like buying these new tennis shoes, like shooting off the first firecracker of the year, like making lemonade, like getting slivers in our feet, like picking wild fox grapes. Every year the same things, same way, no change, no difference. That’s one half of summer, Tom.” 

“What’s the other half?”

“Things we do for the first time ever.” 

“Like eating olives?” 

“Bigger than that. Like finding out maybe that Grandpa or Dad don’t know everything in the world.” 

“They know every dam thing there is to know, and don’t you forget it!” 

“Tom, don’t argue, I already got it written down under Discoveries and Revelations. They don’t know everything. But it’s no crime. That I discovered, too.” 

“What other new crazy stuff you got in there?” 

“I’m alive.” 

“Heck, that’s old!” 

“Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really. I’m going to divide the summer up in two parts. First part of this tablet is titled: RITES AND CEREMONIES. The first root beer pop of the year. The first time running barefoot in the grass of the year. First time almost drowning in the lake of the year. First watermelon. First mosquito. First harvest of dandelions. Those are the things we do over and over and over and never think. Now here in back, like I said, is DISCOVERIES AND REVELATIONS or maybe ILLUMINATIONS, that’s a swell word, or INTUITIONS, okay? In other words you do an old familiar thing, like bottling dandelion wine, and you put that under RITES AND CEREMONIES. And then you think about it, and what you think, crazy or not, you put under DISCOVERIES AND REVELATIONS. Here’s what I got on the wine: Every rime you bottle it, you got a whole chunk of 1928 put away, safe. How you like that, Tom?” 

“I got lost a mile back somewhere.” 

“Let me show you another. Up front under CEREMONIES I got: First argument and licking of Summer 1928 by Dad, morning of June 24th. In back under REVELATIONS I got: The reason why grownups and kids fight is because they belong to separate races. Look at them, different from us. Look at us, different from them. Separate races, and never the twain shall meet. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Tom!” 

“Doug, you hit it, you hit it! That’s right! That’s exactly why we don’t get along with Mom or Dad. Trouble, trouble, from sunrise to supper! Boy, you’re a genius!” 

“Any time this next three months you see something done over and over, tell me. Think about it, and tell me that. Come Labor Day, we’ll add up the summer and see what we got!” 

“I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I’ll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those dam five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there’d be no night! There you are; something old, something new.” 

“That’s old and new, all right.” Douglas licked the yellow Ticonderoga pencil, whose name he dearly loved. “Say it again.” 

“Shadows are under five billion trees . . .”

Ray Bradbury, from Dandelion Wine

Realest.

She learned a lot about music during these free nights in the summer-time. When she walked out in the rich parts of town every house had a radio. All the windows were open and she could hear the music very marvelous. After a while she knew which houses tuned in for the programs she wanted to hear. There was one special house that got all the good orchestras. And at night she would go to this house and sneak into the dark yard to listen. There was beautiful shrubbery around this house, and she would sit under a bush near the window. And after it was all over she would stand in the dark yard with her hands in her pockets and think for a long time. That was the realest part of all the summer—her listening to this music on the radio and studying about it.

Carson McCullers, from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Tennis.

Tennis anyone?

Summer.

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.

Pitched'st.

Thomson, Summer Day, 1915

TO SUMMER

O Thou who passest thro’ our vallies in 

Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat 

That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer, 

Oft pitched’st here thy golden tent, and oft 

Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld 

With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair. 

Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard 

Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car 

Rode o’er the deep of heaven; beside our springs 

Sit down, and in our mossy vallies, on 

Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy 

Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream: 

Our vallies love the Summer in his pride. 

Our bards are fam’d who strike the silver wire: 

Our youth are bolder than the southern swains: 

Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance: 

We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy, 

Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven, 

Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat. 

William Blake

Home-Tranquillity.

Spenser, The Shepheard's Calendar: August, 1579

The SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: AUGUST

Harvest approaches with its busy day;

The wheat tans brown, and barley bleaches grey;

In yellow garb the oatland intervenes,

And tawny glooms the valley throng'd with beans.

Silent the village grows, — wood-wandering dreams

Seem not so lonely as its quiet seems;

Doors are shut up as on a winter's day,

And not a child about them lies at play;

The dust that winnows 'neath the breeze's feet

Is all that stirs about the silent street:

Fancy might think that desert-spreading Fear

Had whisper'd terrors into Quiet's ear,

Or plundering armies 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 reapers leave their rest before the sun,

And gleaners follow in the toils begun

To pick the litter'd ear the reaper leaves,

And glean in open fields among the sheaves.

The ruddy child, nursed in the lap of Care,

In Toil's rude strife to do its little share,

Beside its mother poddles o'er the land,

Sunburnt, and stooping with a weary hand,

Picking its tiny glean of corn or wheat,

While crackling stubbles wound its little feet.

Full glad it often is to sit awhile

Upon a smooth green bank to ease its toil,

And fain would spend an idle hour in play

With insects, strangers to the moiling day,

Creeping about each rush and grassy stem,

And often wishes it were one of them:

Meanwhile the expecting mother stops to tie

Her handful up, and, waiting his supply,

Misses the idle younker from her side;

Then shouts of rods, and morts of threats beside

Picture harsh truths in his unpractised breast, —

How they, who idle in the harvest rest,

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 scatch'd 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 mourn no more,

For by and by, on the next Sabbath-day,

He shall have well-earn'd pence as well as play,

When he may buy, almost without a stint,

Sweet candied horehound, cakes, and peppermint,

At the gay shop, within whose window lie

Things of all sorts to tempt his eager eye:

Rich sugar-plums in phials shining bright,

In every hue, young fancies to delight;

Coaches and ladies of gilt gingerbread;

And downy plums, and apples streak'd with red.

Such promises all sorrow soon displace,

And smiles are instant kindled in his face;

Scorning the troubles which he felt before,

He picks the trailing ears, and mourns no more.

The fields are all alive with sultry noise

Of labour's sounds, and insects' busy joys.

The reapers o'er their glittering sickles stoop,

Startling full oft the partridge coveys up;

Some o'er the rustling scythe go bending on;

And shockers follow where their toils have gone,

Heaping the swaths that rustle in the sun,

Where mice from Terror's dangers nimbly run,

Leaving their tender young in fear's alarm,

Lapt up in nests of chimbled grasses warm,

Hoping for safety from their flight in vain;

While the rude boy, or churlish-hearted swain,

Pursues with lifted weapons o'er the ground,

And spreads an instant murder all around.

In vain the anxious maiden's tender prayer

Urges the clown their little lives to spare;

She sighs, while trailing the long rake along,

At scenes so cruel, and forgets her song.

When the Sun stoops to meet the western sky,

And Noon's hot hours have wander'd weary by,

Seeking a hawthorn bush or willow-tree

For resting-places that the coolest be,

Where baskets heaped and unbroached bottles lie,

Which dogs in absence watch'd with wary eye,

They catch their breath awhile, and share the boon

Which bevering-time allows their toil at noon.

Next to her favour'd swain the maiden steals,

Blushing at kindness which his love reveals;

Making a seat for her of sheaves around,

He drops beside her on the naked ground.

Then from its cool retreat the beer they bring,

And hand the stout-hoop'd bottle round the ring.

Each swain soaks hard; the maiden, ere she sips,

Shrieks at the bold wasp settling on her lips,

That seems determined only her's to greet,

As if it fancied they were cherries sweet!

The dog foregoes his sleep awhile, or play,

Springing at frogs that rustling jump away,

To watch each morsel carelessness bestows,

Or wait the bone or crust the shepherd throws;

For shepherds are no more of ease possest,

But share in harvest-labours with the rest.

When day declines and others meet repose,

The bawling boy his evening journey goes;

At toil's unwearied call the first and last,

He drives his horses to their night's repast,

In dewy close or meadow to sojourn;

And often ventures, on his still return,

O'er garden pales, or orchard walls, to hie,

When sleep's safe key hath lock'd up danger's eye,

All but the mastiff watching in the dark,

Who snuffs and knows him, and forbears to bark.

With fearful haste he climbs each loaded tree,

And picks for prizes, that the ripest be;

While the pale moon, creeping with jealous light,

Fills empty shadows with the power to fright;

And, from the barn-hole, pops and hurries by,

The grey owl, screaming with a fearful cry; —

He hears the noise, and, hastening to escape,

Thinks each thing grows around a dismal shape.

Quick tumbling o'er the mossy, mould'ring wall,

He loses half his booty in the fall;

Where, soon as ever Morning opes its eyes,

The restless hogs will happen on the prize,

And crump adown the mellow and the green,

Making all seem as nothing e'er had been.

Amid the broils of harvest's weary reign,

How sweet the Sabbath wakes its rest again!

And on each weary mind what rapture dwells,

To hear once more the pleasant chiming bells,

That from each steeple, peeping here and there,

Murmur a soothing lullaby to care.

The shepherd, journeying on his morning rounds,

Pauses awhile to hear the pleasing sounds,

While the glad children, free from toil's employ,

Mimic the " ding dong " hums, and laugh for joy.

The fields themselves seem happy to be free,

Where insects chatter with unusual glee;

While Solitude, the grass and stubs among,

Appears to muse and listen to the song.

In quiet peace awakes the welcome morn;

Men tired, and children with their gleaning worn,

Weary and stiff, lie round the doors all day,

To rest themselves, with little heart for play.

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 plum and luscious pear

That melts i' th' mouth, which gardeners never fail,

For gain's strong impulse, to expose for sale;

Placed on the circling Cross-steps in the sun,

What time the parson has his sermon done.

There, soon the boy his sore-earn'd penny spends;

And he the while, that pennyless attends,

In sullen, silent mood, approaching nigh,

Full often drops a keen, desiring eye,

Upon each loaded basket, to perceive,

What makes his little fingers itch to thieve; —

But, close at hand, the stocks in terror shine,

And temptings strong, to stronger fears resign.

Thus Sunday's leisure passes swiftly by

In rest, soft peace, and home-tranquillity,

Till Monday morning doth its cares pursue,

Rousing the harvest's busy toils anew.

John Clare

Relax.

An excellent album ...

SUMMER'S CAULDRON

Drowning here in summer's cauldron

Under mats of flower lava

Please, don't pull me out

This is how I would want to go

Breathing in the boiling butter

Fruit of sweating golden Inca

Please, don't heed my shout

I'm relax in the undertow

When Miss Moon lays down

And Sir Sun stands up

Me, I'm found floating 'round and 'round

Like a bug in brandy in this big bronze cup

Drowning here in summer's cauldron

Trees are dancing drunk with nectar

Grass is waving underwater

Please, don't pull me out

This is how I would want to go

Insect bomber Buddhist droning

Copper chord of August's organ

Please, don't heed my shout

I'm relax in the undertow

When Miss Moon lays down (in her hilltop bed)

And Sir Sun stands up (raise his regal head)

Me, I'm found floating 'round and 'round

Like a bug in brandy in this big bronze cup

Drowning here in summer's cauldron

Andy Partridge

 

 Thanks, GRF III

Imagination.

It's later on a Wednesday, the sun is going down

I'm standing naked by a swimming pool, there's no one around

My imagination wanders back, red dust is always there

We lay together in the jungle, and love was in the air

As I dive into the water, both time and motion freeze

I'm hanging there suspended like a feather in the breeze

Below is your reflection, like an image from the past

But I can't be sure if it's really you, because you're wearing a tribal mask ...

Roger Glover, from "The Mask"

Smell.

Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he’s been through; it is a sheath of memories and security. 

Tove Jansson, from The Summer Book