Category: Pictures

At the Window

D. H. Lawrence, 1885 – 1930

The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede,
Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed.

The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass
To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes
That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

In Flanders Fields

John McCrae, 1872 – 1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

North Bovey.

Another travel post.

North Bovey is a small village in the Dartmoor national park. We hired a cottage there as a base of operations last summer. There’s a fancy high-class pub, the Ring of Bells, rated by Egon Ronay, but fortunately regular places are easy to reach either by walking or driving. (Since the roads are mostly one lane, even the A-roads, walking is a good idea). It is a fairly easy drive to the nearby town of  Mortenhampstead (M’hampstead on the street signs) where there are groceries (a co-op) and various diversions. The roads are tiny, even by English standards, so if you hire a car (and to be honest there’s no other way to get there), you do not want a big one.

DSC_0791DSC_0765

The view from our bedroom.

DSC_0781DSC_0773DSC_0776

M’hampstead from the footpath. It’s about a 2Km walk, and well worth it.DSC_0843
This goat skull, bolted to a tree and hidden from view, greets visitors.DSC_0847

Cosmopolite

Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1880 – 1966

Not wholly this or that,
But wrought
Of alien bloods am I,
A product of the interplay
Of traveled hearts.
Estranged, yet not estranged, I stand
All comprehending;
From my estate
I view earth’s frail dilemma;
Scion of fused strength am I,
All understanding,
Nor this nor that
Contains me.

More Birds.

Playing with my long (500mm) cheap mirror lens again. I set the shutter speed to 1/4000 (as fast as the Nikon will go) and let the auto-ISO handle the rest. It has a relatively fast f5.6 that cannot be changed.  The other caution to watch for is the T-mount. It can unscrew a little and loosen while the lens is on the camera if it isn’t in tight.  That will cause difficulty with focusing.

We have resident pelicans. They are supposed to be rare. Ours aren’t.

DSC_0146 DSC_0147 DSC_0148

The herons perch on stumps out in our little branch of Lake Weiss.

DSC_0142

The image quality isn’t perfect, but it could be a lot worse. Not sure how much is the lens and how much is the ISO/low light.

 

Altitude

Lola Ridge, 1873

I wonder
how it would be here with you,
where the wind
that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
touches one cleanly,
as with a new-washed hand,
and pain
is as the remote hunger of droning things,
and anger
but a little silence
sinking into the great silence.

Gaeta

I really like Italy. It’s a disorganized, old, and new place – but one with great food and wine. Just be aware that the trains and buses don’t always run on Sundays. If you can learn a little Italian, then you can get around without too many problems.

These pictures are from Gaeta. I skipped out one afternoon from a scientific meeting to clear my head head and get some fresh air.

This looks like an oil tank, but is a Roman tomb.

Since I didn’t have a map, I took a picture from one of the signs.

Heavy Threads

Hazel Hall

When the dawn unfolds like a bolt of ribbon
Thrown through my window,
I know that hours of light
Are about to thrust themselves into me
Like omnivorous needles into listless cloth,
Threaded with the heavy colours of the sun.
They seem altogether too eager,
To embroider this thing of mine,
My Day,
Into the strict patterns of an altar cloth;
Or at least to stitch it into a useful garment.
But I know they will do nothing of the kind.
They will prick away,
And when they are through with it
It will look like the patch quilt my grandmother made
When she was learning to sew.

Ms. Hall (1886-1924) is a surprisingly modern poet.

Sunrise at Cumberland Island
(c) 2011 Robert W Harrison

The Gift to Sing

James Weldon Johnson

Sometimes the mist overhangs my path,
And blackening clouds about me cling;
But, oh, I have a magic way
To turn the gloom to cheerful day—
I softly sing.

And if the way grows darker still,
Shadowed by Sorrow’s somber wing,
With glad defiance in my throat,
I pierce the darkness with a note,
And sing, and sing.

I brood not over the broken past,
Nor dread whatever time may bring;
No nights are dark, no days are long,
While in my heart there swells a song,
And I can sing.

Cranes in flight
(c) 2015 Robert W Harrison

Mending Wall

Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’