Now that's what I call art

comes to an end today

The new blog 

My Virtual Gallery of Favourite Paintings

begins tomorrow at

myvirtualgalleryoffavouritepaintings.blogspot.com

-o0o-

Today's poem 

Epitaph

I never cared for Life: Life cared for me,

And hence I owed it some fidelity.

It now says, "Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind

Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind,

And I dismiss thee not without regard

That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward,

Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find."

-o0o-

Autumn In King's Hintock Park

Here by the baring bough

Raking up leaves,

Often I ponder how

Springtime deceives, -

I, an old woman now,

Raking up leaves.

Here in the avenue

Raking up leaves,

Lords' ladies pass in view,

Until one heaves

Sighs at life's russet hue,

Raking up leaves!

Just as my shape you see

Raking up leaves,

I saw, when fresh and free,

Those memory weaves

Into grey ghosts by me,

Raking up leaves.

Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,

Raking up leaves,

New leaves will dance on high -

Earth never grieves! -

Will not, when missed am I

Raking up leaves.

-o0o-

At The Piano

A woman was playing,

A man looking on;

And the mould of her face,

And her neck, and her hair,

Which the rays fell upon

Of the two candles there,

Sent him mentally straying

In some fancy-place

Where pain had no trace.

A cowled Apparition

Came pushing between;

And her notes seemed to sigh,

And the lights to burn pale,

As a spell numbed the scene.

But the maid saw no bale,

And the man no monition;

And Time laughed awry,

And the Phantom hid nigh.

-o0o-

At The Wicket-Gate

There floated the sounds of church-chiming,

But no one was nigh,

Till there came, as a break in the loneness,

Her father, she, I.

And we slowly moved on to the wicket,

And downlooking stood,

Till anon people passed, and amid them

We parted for good.

Greater, wiser, may part there than we three

Who parted there then,

But never will Fates colder-featured

Hold sway there again.

Of the churchgoers through the still meadows

No single one knew

What a play was played under their eyes there

As thence we withdrew.

-o0o-

At Mayfair Lodgings

How could I be aware,

The opposite window eyeing

As I lay listless there,

That through its blinds was dying

One I had rated rare

Before I had set me sighing

For another more fair?

Had the house-front been glass,

My vision unobscuring,

Could aught have come to pass

More happiness-insuring

To her, loved as a lass

When spouseless, all-alluring?

I reckon not, alas!

So, the square window stood,

Steadily night-long shining

In my close neighbourhood,

Who looked forth undivining

That soon would go for good

One there in pain reclining,

Unpardoned, unadieu'd.

Silently screened from view

Her tragedy was ending

That need not have come due

Had she been less unbending.

How near, near were we two

At that last vital rending, -

And neither of us knew!

-o0o-

At Madame Tussaud's In Victorian Years

"That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night

Here fiddled four decades of years ago;

He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,

Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

"But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,

And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;

Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,

In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

"Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem

That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;

To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him

With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal.

* * *

Ah, but he played staunchly - that fiddler - whoever he was,

With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:

May he find the Fair Haven! For did he not smile with good cause?

Yes; gamuts that graced forty years'-flight were not a small thing!

-o0o-

IMPORTANT
A favourite blog comes to an end
A new blog takes its place

The first post at
now that's what I call art
appeared on 13th April 2014 and the final post will be made on Sunday 30th September 2018

The new blog 
My Virtual Gallery of Favourite Paintings
will begin on Monday 1st September at
myvirtualgalleryoffavouritepaintings.blogspot.com

-o0o-

At A House In Hampstead Sometime The Dwelling Of John Keats

O poet, come you haunting here

Where streets have stolen up all around,

And never a nightingale pours one

Full-throated sound?

Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills,

Thought you to find all just the same

Here shining, as in hours of old,

If you but came?

What will you do in your surprise

At seeing that changes wrought in Rome

Are wrought yet more on the misty slope

One time your home?

Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs?

Swing the doors open noisily?

Show as an umbraged ghost beside

Your ancient tree?

Or will you, softening, the while

You further and yet further look,

Learn that a laggard few would fain

Preserve your nook? . . .

Where the Piazza steps incline,

And catch late light at eventide,

I once stood, in that Rome, and thought,

"'Twas here he died."

I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,

Where day and night a pyramid keeps

Uplifted its white hand, and said,

"'Tis there he sleeps."

Pleasanter now it is to hold

That here, where sang he, more of him

Remains than where he, tuneless, cold,

Passed to the dim.

-o0o-

The Convergence of the Twain

(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

I 

            In a solitude of the sea 

            Deep from human vanity, 

And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. 

II 

            Steel chambers, late the pyres 

            Of her salamandrine fires, 

Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. 

III 

            Over the mirrors meant 

            To glass the opulent 

The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. 

IV 

            Jewels in joy designed 

            To ravish the sensuous mind 

Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. 

V 

            Dim moon-eyed fishes near 

            Gaze at the gilded gear 

And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ... 

VI 

            Well: while was fashioning 

            This creature of cleaving wing, 

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything 

VII 

            Prepared a sinister mate 

            For her — so gaily great — 

A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. 

VIII 

            And as the smart ship grew 

            In stature, grace, and hue, 

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. 

IX 

            Alien they seemed to be; 

            No mortal eye could see 

The intimate welding of their later history, 

X 

            Or sign that they were bent 

            By paths coincident 

On being anon twin halves of one august event, 

XI 

            Till the Spinner of the Years 

            Said "Now!" And each one hears, 

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

-o0o-

An Autumn Rain-Scene

There trudges one to a merry-making

With a sturdy swing,

On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament

Is another bent,

On whom the rain comes down.

One slowly drives his herd to the stall

Ere ill befall,

On whom the rain comes down.

This bears his missives of life and death

With quickening breath,

On whom the rain comes down.

One watches for signals of wreck or war

From the hill afar,

On whom the rain comes down.

No care if he gain a shelter or none,

Unhired moves one,

On whom the rain comes down.

And another knows nought of its chilling fall

Upon him at all,

On whom the rain comes down.

-o0o-

An Anniversary

It was at the very date to which we have come,

In the month of the matching name,

When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,

Its couch-time at night being the same.

And the same path stretched here that people now follow,

And the same stile crossed their way,

And beyond the same green hillock and hollow

The same horizon lay;

And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.

Let so much be said of the date-day's sameness;

But the tree that neighbours the track,

And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness,

Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack.

And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded

With mosses of many tones,

And the garth up afar was not overcrowded

With a multitude of white stones,

And the man's eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the socket- bones.

-o0o-

An Ancient To Ancients

Where once we danced, where once sang,

Gentlemen,

The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,

And cracks creep; worms have fed upon

The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then

Than now, with harps and tabrets gone,

Gentlemen!

Where once we rowed, where once we sailed,

Gentlemen,

And damsels took the tiller, veiled

Against too strong a stare (God wot

Their fancy, then or anywhen!)

Upon that shore we are clean forgot,

Gentlemen!

We have lost somewhat, afar and near,

Gentlemen,

The thinning of our ranks each year

Affords a hint we are nigh undone,

That we shall not be ever again

The marked of many, loved of one,

Gentlemen.

In dance the polka hit our wish,

Gentlemen,

The paced quadrille, the spry schottische,

"Sir Roger." And in opera spheres

The "Girl" (the famed "Bohemian"),

And "Trovatore," held the ears,

Gentlemen.

This season's paintings do not please,

Gentlemen,

Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise;

Throbbing romance has waned and wanned;

No wizard wields the witching pen

Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand,

Gentlemen.

The bower we shrined to Tennyson,

Gentlemen,

Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon

Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,

The spider is sole denizen;

Even she who read those rhymes is dust,

Gentlemen!

We who met sunrise sanguine-souled,

Gentlemen,

Are wearing weary. We are old;

These younger press; we feel our rout

Is imminent to Aides' den, -

That evening's shades are stretching out,

Gentlemen!

And yet, though ours be failing frames,

Gentlemen,

So were some others' history names,

Who trode their track light-limbed and fast

As these youth, and not alien

From enterprise, to their long last,

Gentlemen.

Sophocles, Plato, Socrates,

Gentlemen,

Pythagoras, Thucydides,

Herodotus, and Homer, yea,

Clement, Augustin, Origen,

Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day,

Gentlemen.

And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list,

Gentlemen;

Much is there waits you we have missed;

Much lore we leave you worth the knowing,

Much, much has lain outside our ken:

Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going,

Gentlemen.

-o0o-

Afternoon Service At Mellstock

On afternoons of drowsy calm

We stood in the panelled pew,

Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm

To the tune of "Cambridge New."

We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,

The clouds upon the breeze,

Between the whiles of glancing at our books,

And swaying like the trees.

So mindless were those outpourings! -

Though I am not aware

That I have gained by subtle thought on things

Since we stood psalming there.

-o0o-

A Wife Comes Back

This is the story a man told me

Of his life's one day of dreamery.

A woman came into his room

Between the dawn and the creeping day:

She was the years-wed wife from whom

He had parted, and who lived far away,

As if strangers they.

He wondered, and as she stood

She put on youth in her look and air,

And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed

Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair

While he watched her there;

Till she freshed to the pink and brown

That were hers on the night when first they met,

When she was the charm of the idle town

And he the pick of the club-fire set . . .

His eyes grew wet,

And he stretched his arms: "Stay rest! "

He cried. "Abide with me so, my own!"

But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;

She had vanished with all he had looked upon

Of her beauty: gone.

He clothed, and drew downstairs,

But she was not in the house, he found;

And he passed out under the leafy pairs

Of the avenue elms, and searched around

To the park-pale bound.

He mounted, and rode till night

To the city to which she had long withdrawn,

The vision he bore all day in his sight

Being her young self as pondered on

In the dim of dawn.

" The lady here long ago -

Is she now here? young or such age as she is?"

" She is still here." "Thank God. Let her know;

She'll pardon a comer so late as this

Whom she'd fain not miss."

She received him an ancient dame,

Who hemmed, with features frozen and numb,

"How strange! I'd almost forgotten your name! -

A call just now is troublesome;

Why did you come?"

-o0o- 

A Man Was Drawing Near To Me

On that gray night of mournful drone,

A part from aught to hear, to see,

I dreamt not that from shires unknown

In gloom, alone,

By Halworthy,

A man was drawing near to me.

I'd no concern at anything,

No sense of coming pull-heart play;

Yet, under the silent outspreading

Of even's wing

Where Otterham lay,

A man was riding up my way.

I thought of nobody not of one,

But only of trifles legends, ghosts 

Though, on the moorland dim and dun

That travellers shun

About these coasts,

The man had passed Tresparret Posts.

There was no light at all inland,

Only the seaward pharos-fire,

Nothing to let me understand

That hard at hand

By Hennett Byre

The man was getting nigh and nigher.

There was a rumble at the door,

A draught disturbed the drapery,

And but a minute passed before,

With gaze that bore

My destiny,

The man revealed himself to me.

-o0o-

Lying Awake

You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east, 

I know it as if I saw you; 

You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least; 

Had I paper and pencil I'd draw you. 

You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew, 

I see it as if I were there; 

You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew, 

The names creeping out everywhere.

-o0o-

Evening Shadows

The shadows of my chimneys stretch afar

Across the plot, and on to the privet bower,

And even the shadows of their smokings show,

And nothing says just now that where they are

They will in future stretch at this same hour,

Though in my earthen cyst I shall not know.

And at this time the neighbouring Pagan mound,

Whose myths the Gospel news now supersede,

Upon the greensward also throws its shade,

And nothing says such shade will spread around

Even as to-day when men will no more heed

The Gospel news than when the mound was made.

-o0o-

A Sheep Fair

The day arrives of the autumn fair,

And torrents fall,

Though sheep in throngs are gathered there,

   Ten thousand all,

Sodden, with hurdles round them reared:

And, lot by lot, the pens are cleared,

And the auctioneer wrings out his beard,

And wipes his book, bedrenched and smeared,

And takes the rain from his face with the edge of his hand,

   As torrents fall.

The wool of the ewes is like a sponge

   With the daylong rain:

Jammed tight, to turn, or lie, or lunge,

   They strive in vain.

Their horns are soft as finger-nails,

Their shepherds reek against the rails,

The tied dogs soak with tucked-in tails,

The buyers’ hat-brims fill like pails,

Which spill small cascades when they shift their stand

   In the daylong rain.

POSTSCRIPT

Time has trailed lengthily since met

   At Pummery Fair

Those panting thousands in their wet

   And woolly wear:

And every flock long since has bled,

And all the dripping buyers have sped,

And the hoarse auctioneer is dead,

Who ‘Going – going!’ so often said,

As he consigned to doom each meek, mewed band

   At Pummery Fair.

-o0o-

A Spellbound Palace

(Hampton Court) 

On this kindly yellow day of mild low-travelling winter sun 

The stirless depths of the yews 

Are vague with misty blues: 

Across the spacious pathways stretching spires of shadow run, 

And the wind-gnawed walls of ancient brick are fired vermilion. 

Two or three early sanguine finches tune 

Some tentative strains, to be enlarged by May or June: 

From a thrush or blackbird 

Comes now and then a word, 

While an enfeebled fountain somewhere within is heard. 

Our footsteps wait awhile, 

Then draw beneath the pile, 

When an inner court outspreads 

As 'twere History's own asile, 

Where the now-visioned fountain its attenuate crystal sheds 

In passive lapse that seems to ignore the yon world's clamorous clutch, 

And lays an insistent numbness on the place, like a cold hand's touch. 

And there swaggers the Shade of a straddling King, plumed, sworded, with sensual face, 

And lo, too, that of his Minister, at a bold self-centred pace: 

Sheer in the sun they pass; and thereupon all is still, 

Save the mindless fountain tinkling on with thin enfeebled will.

-o0o-

After A Romantic Day

The railway bore him through

An earthen cutting out from a city:

There was no scope for view,

Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon

Fell like a friendly tune.

Fell like a liquid ditty,

And the blank lack of any charm

Of landscape did no harm.

The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,

And moon-lit, was enough

For poetry of place: its weathered face

Formed a convenient sheet whereon

The visions of his mind were drawn.

-o0o-

The Selfsame Song

A bird sings the selfsame song, 

With never a fault in its flow, 

That we listened to here those long 

Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how 

A strain of such rapturous rote 

Should have gone on thus till now 

unchanged in a note!

--But its not the selfsame bird.-- 

No: perished to dust is he.... 

As also are those who heard 

That song with me. 

-o0o-

I Sometimes Think

I sometimes think as here I sit

Of things I have done,

Which seemed in doing not unfit

To face the sun:

Yet never a soul has paused a whit

On such-not one.

There was that eager strenuous press

To sow good seed;

There was that saving from distress

In the nick of need;

There were those words in the wilderness:

Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no?

For one did care,

And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,

Like wind on the stair,

Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though

I may despair. 

-o0o-

Weathers

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,

And so do I;

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,

And nestlings fly:

And the little brown nightingale bills his best,

And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,”

And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,

And citizens dream of the south and west,

And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,

And so do I;

When beeches drip in browns and duns,

And thresh, and ply;

And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,

And meadow rivulets overflow,

And drops on gate-bars hang in a row,

And rooks in families homeward go,

And so do I. 

-o0o-

Old Excursions

"What's the good of going to Ridgeway,

Cerne, or Sydling Mill,

Or to Yell'ham Hill,

Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way

As we used to do?

She will no more climb up there,

Or be visible anywhere

In those haunts we knew."

But to-night, while walking weary,

Near me seemed her shade,

Come as 'twere to upbraid

This my mood in deeming dreary

Scenes that used to please;

And, if she did come to me,

Still solicitous, there may be

Good in going to these.

So, I'll care to roam to Ridgeway,

Cerne, or Sydling Mill,

Or to Yell'ham Hill,

Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way

As we used to do,

Since her phasm may flit out there,

And may greet me anywhere

In those haunts we knew.

-o0o-

The Week End Blog
The Best of My Choice My Delight
was updated today

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

During Wind and Rain 

They sing their dearest songs— 

       He, she, all of them—yea, 

       Treble and tenor and bass, 

            And one to play; 

      With the candles mooning each face. . . . 

            Ah, no; the years O! 

How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! 

       They clear the creeping moss— 

       Elders and juniors—aye, 

       Making the pathways neat 

            And the garden gay; 

       And they build a shady seat. . . . 

            Ah, no; the years, the years, 

See, the white storm-birds wing across. 

       They are blithely breakfasting all— 

       Men and maidens—yea, 

       Under the summer tree, 

            With a glimpse of the bay, 

       While pet fowl come to the knee. . . . 

            Ah, no; the years O! 

And the rotten rose is ript from the wall. 

       They change to a high new house, 

       He, she, all of them—aye, 

       Clocks and carpets and chairs 

          On the lawn all day, 

       And brightest things that are theirs. . . . 

          Ah, no; the years, the years; 

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

-o0o-

A Merrymaking In Question

"I will get a new string for my fiddle,

And call to the neighbours to come,

And partners shall dance down the middle

Until the old pewter-wares hum:

And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!"

From the night came the oddest of answers:

A hollow wind, like a bassoon,

And headstones all ranged up as dancers,

And cypresses droning a croon,

And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune.

-o0o-

On a Midsummer Eve

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

-o0o-

First Sight of Her and After

A day is drawing to its fall

I had not dreamed to see;

The first of many to enthrall

My spirit, will it be?

Or is this eve the end of all

Such new delight for me?

I journey home: the pattern grows

Of moonshades on the way:

"Soon the first quarter, I suppose,"

Sky-glancing travellers say;

I realize that it, for those,

Has been a common day.

-o0o-

At the Word "Farewell"

She looked like a bird from a cloud

        On the clammy lawn,

Moving alone, bare-browed

        In the dim of dawn.

The candles alight in the room

        For my parting meal

Made all things withoutdoors loom

        Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost,

        And it seemed to me then

As of chances the chance furthermost

        I should see her again.

I beheld not where all was so fleet

        That a Plan of the past

Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet

        Was in working at last:

No prelude did I there perceive

        To a drama at all,

Or foreshadow what fortune might weave

        From beginnings so small;

But I rose as if quicked by a spur

        I was bound to obey,

And stepped through the casement to her

        Still alone in the gray.

"I am leaving you . . . Farewell!" I said,

As I followed her on

By an alley bare boughs overspread;

"I soon must be gone!"

Even then the scale might have been turned

Against love by a feather,

- But crimson one cheek of hers burned

When we came in together.

-o0o-

On the Death-bed

‘I'll tell—being past all praying for—

Then promptly die. . . . He was out at the war,

And got some scent of the intimacy

That was under way between her and me;

And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost

One night, at the very time almost

That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,

And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

‘The news of the battle came next day;

He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,

Got out there, visited the field,

And sent home word that a search revealed

He was one of the slain; though, lying alone

And stript, his body had not been known.

‘But she suspected. I lost her love,

Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;

And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score,

Though it be burning for evermore.’

-o0o-

In the Study

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair

Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,

A type of decayed gentility;

And by some small signs he well can guess

That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

“I have called—I hope I do not err—

I am looking for a purchaser

Of some score volumes of the works

Of eminent divines I own,—

Left by my father—though it irks

My patience to offer them.” And she smiles

As if necessity were unknown;

"But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles

I have wished, as I am fond of art,

To make my rooms a little smart,

And these old books are so in the way.”

And lightly still she laughs to him,

As if to sell were a mere gay whim,

And that, to be frank, Life were indeed

To her not vinegar and gall,

But fresh and honey-like; and Need

No household skeleton at all. 

-o0o-