GHOSTS One need not be a chamber to be haunted, One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place. Far safer, of a midnight meeting External ghost, Than an interior confronting That whiter host. Far safer through an Abbey gallop, The stones achase, Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter In lonesome place. Ourself, behind ourself concealed, Should startle most; Assassin, hid in our apartment, Be horror’s least. The prudent carries a revolver, He bolts the door, O’erlooking a superior spectre More near. FROM: Emily Dickinson SELECTED POEMS Unabridged Dover Thrift Editions
Category: A Diary of The Plague Year
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 94 17 June 2020: Quotidian Poetry: W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. II An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. III O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. FROM: LONGMAN ENGLISH SERIES POETRY 1900 TO 1975 Editor George MacBeth
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 92 15 June 2020: Quotidian Poetry: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
FROM King Richard II Act II Scene i Gaunt. This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-Paradise; This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in a silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England., This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home, For Christian service and true chivalry, As in the sepulchre, in stubborn Jewry, Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son; This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, Dear for her reputation through this world, Is now leased out – I die pronouncing it – Like to a tenement or pelting farm; England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the previous siege Of watery Neptune, is now bound with shame, With ink blots, and rotten parchment bonds: That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. William Shakespeare FROM: POEM FOR THE DAY 366 poems, old and new, worth learning by heart Edited by Nicholas Albery Sinclair-Stevenson
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 91 14 June 2020: Thunderstorms and Visitors
My lovely visitors! So lovely to see N and E and so nice to be able to have visitors again.
After thunderstorms all morning.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 90 13 June 2020: Transplanting
Rain. At last. Woken in the night.
Decided to transplant the cornus kousa, which has been looking more and more unhappy in the gale force winds lately, and replaced it with a cheap and cheerful dwarf cherry from the pound shop.
The cornus went into the orchard by the hedge and already is looking much happier. Time will tell. The cornus is billed as able to sustain wind but I don’t think these categories allow for the West Cork variety.
And managed to snap my spade in the process.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 88 11 June 2020: Quotidian Poetry: William Barnes (1801 – 1886)
THE WIFE A-LOST
Since I noo mwore do zee your fe{‘a}ce,
Up ste{‘a}rs or down below,
I’ll zit me in the lwonesome ple{‘a}ce,
Where flat-bough’d beech do grow;
Below the beeches’ bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An’ I don’t look to meet ye now,
As I do look at hwome.
Since you noo mwore be at my zide,
In walks in zummer het,
I’ll goo alwone where mist do ride,
Drough trees a-drippèn wet;
Below the ra{‘i}n-wet bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An’ I don’t grieve to miss ye now,
As I do grieve at hwome.
Since now bezide my dinner-bwoard
Your va{‘i}ce do never sound,
I’ll eat the bit I can avword,
A-vield upon the ground;
Below the darksome bough, my love,
Where you did never dine,
An’ I don’t grieve to miss ye now,
As I at hwome do pine.
Since I do miss your va{‘i}ce an’ fe{‘a}ce
In pra{‘y}er at eventide,
I’ll pray wi’ woone sad va{‘i}ce vor gre{‘a}ce
To goo where you do bide;
Above the tree an’ bough, my love,
Where you be gone avore,
An’ be a-w{‘a}itèn vor me now,
To come vor evermwore.
FROM:
The Oxford Library of English Poetry
Volume II
Darley to Heaney
Chosen & edited by John Wain
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 87 10 June 2020: New Garden Plants
Rain at last.
New plants in the garden:
Astilbe Chinensis “Glitter and Glamour”
Astilbe “Happy Spirit”
Astrantia “Hadspen Blood” Masterwort
Geranium “Daily Blue”
Veronicastrum virginicum “Red Arrows”
Aruncus “Misty Lace”
Worm Wood Artemisa “Powis Castle”
Catananche Caerulea Cupid’s Dart “Amor Blue”
Sisyrinchium californicum
Heuchera “Black Beauty” Coral Flower
Salvia nemerosa “Sensation Pink”
Salvia Concolor
Phlomis
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 87 10 June 2020: Quotidian Poetry: John Wilmot (1647 – 1680)
AGAINST CONSTANCY Tell me no more of constancy, The frivolous pretense Of cold age, narrow jealousy, Disease, and want of sense. Let duller fools, on whom kind chance Some easy heart has thrown, Despairing higher to advance, Be kind to one alone. Old men and weak, whose idle flame Their own defects discovers, Since changing can but spread their shame, Ought to be constant lovers. But we, whose hearts do justly swell With not vainglorious pride, Who know how we in love excel, Long to be often tried. Then bring my bath, and strew my bed, As each kind night returns, I’ll change a mistress till I’m dead – And fate change me to worms. FROM: The Oxford Library of English Poetry Volume II Sackville to Keats Chosen & edited by John Wain
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 86 9 June 2020: Quotidian Poetry: Edmund Spenser (1552/3 – 1599)
From: THE RUINES OF TIME A length, they all to mery London came, To mery London, my most kyndly Nurse, That to me gaue this Lifes first natiue sourse: Though from another place I take my name, A house of auncient fame. There when they came, whereas those bricky towres, The which on Temmes brode aged backe doe ryde, Where now the studious Lawyers haue their bowers, Where whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde, Till they decayd through pride: Next whereunto there standes a stately place, Where oft I gained giftes and goodly grace Of that great Lord, which therein wont to dwell, Whose want too well now feeles my freendles case: But Ah here fits not well Old woes but ioyes to tell Against the Brydale daye, which is not long: Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song. FROM: The Oxford Library of English Poetry Volume I Spenser to Dryden Chosen & edited by John Wain
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 85 8 June 2020: Boethius (477–524 AD)
IN THE DARK ‘Gazing at my grief-dejected face, Philosophy Deplored my chaotic mind’ DE CONS. I.I.14 Just look at him! his mind has sunk deep down, Has lost its inner light, become so dull; It reaches out towards external darkness Each time a toxic wave of worry swells Into a tsunami, launched by worldly gales. This was the man who loved the open heavens And journeyed down the trackways of the skies. He’d study rose-red suns and icy moons And calculate the planets’ sinuous paths, Subjecting them to mathematic laws. This was the man devoted to enquiring Why roaring hurricanes assault the sea What spirit turns the sphere of the fixed stars And why the sun climbs from the smouldering east Then drops beneath the waters of the west; And what ensures the gentle days of spring Become so temperate that rosebuds pop And multiply their beauty through the land; And who at harvest when the time is ripe Endows the autumn with its swollen grapes. Revealing nature’s secrets was his life. But he lies there, light of reason dead. His neck’s encumbered by such heavy chains His head is forced to loll towards the ground To contemplate the uninspiring mud.
THE CREEKSIDE HERMIT 