darlings
we are Meant to be Working.
*wistfulLookOutOfTheWindow*
Tasks To Do.
(nice ones. but sometimes one just wants to go next door and lie down and read because there’s a Delicious pile of books by the bed. you know how it is.)
but just wanted to share something we came across while surfing-the-interweb working.
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
W.B. Yeats
isn’t that divine?
someone (many moons ago) once gave us a palest pink scent bottle with a translucent glass stopper in it with the last line engraved in tiny gold script as a gift.
no idea what happened to it……
or them.
but such is the ephemeral nature of gifts and exchanges and experiences……
*lookintomiddledistance*
we had a lovely business-yet-pleasurable breakfast this morning with someone who had shoes like those perhaps worn by Scheherazade.
the kind people at Project Gutenberg have made the whole story (or the thousand and one nights of them) available here.
will you indulge us with one more poetic reference?
when we walked to our breakfast this morning the birds were singing boldly in the trees and our hands brushed on lavender plants which always makes us think of another poet – this time Keats (and you know we adore Keats).
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
*sighs*
the interweb is Awfully distracting isn’t it?
back to the Work at hand, darlings.
but just in CASE we need to come and check in with you and find out what your favo(u)rite lines of poetry (or movies about Poets) are – would you let us know?
we truly appreciate you stopping by.
*smiling*
ok.
*shufflesPapers*
grown-up attention span required again.
*lookslonginglyoutofthewindow*
perhaps we need a walk mid-afternoon – with the Grown Up Camera……..
one more?
of course *smilesIndulgently*
glad you’re still reading……..
do you remember when we had to chose to conform and wear a ballgown to an Establishment Event?
we thought of nothing less than Larkin and Whitsun Weddings and it gave comfort (when the ballet shoes rubbed a little at the ankle being an unfamiliar covering on our feet therein).
so we end with Larkin.
Whitsun Weddings – Philip Larkin
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,
As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that
Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known
Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem
Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
Philip Larkin, “The Whitsun Weddings” from Collected Poems. Used by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Phillip Larkin.
Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux)
and now we Promise to get back to Work.
but only if You promise to leave us some poetry lines (your own would be delicious and very clever indeed) in the comment fields below.
*smiles*
*wavingfromlosangeles*
and now *concentratingVeryHard*
back. to. work.
