No.10

TWO PAINTINGS BY PIERRE BONNARD 1867-1947
Nationality - French

Dining Room on the Garden

1934/5

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Untitled

before 1923

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TRESPASS

John Clare 1793-1864

I dreaded walking where there was no path

And pressed with cautious tread the meadow swath

And always turned to look with wary eye

And always feared the owner coming by;

Yet everything about where I had gone

Appeared so beautiful I ventured on

And when I gained the road where all are free

I fancied every stranger frowned at me

And every kinder look appeared to say

“You’ve been on trespass in your walk today.”

I’ve often thought, the day appeared so fine,

How beautiful if such a place were mine;

But, having naught, I never feel alone

And cannot use another’s as my own.

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One evening in October 2009 there was a completely cloudless sky here, and I was so impressed with the very bright full moon that I called on Jean to come and have a look.

I then went to get something to read, and I found a paperback I had bought many years ago, but hadn’t looked at for quite a while - “365 Tao” by Deng Ming-Dao, a collection of thoughts for every day of the year. As I picked it up, it fell open at 3rd October - what a coincidence! Yes, that very day was October 3rd.

But that wasn’t all. You can imagine my astonishment when I read the words on that page. 

Silver disc: Let me call you goddess -

You, with your mirrored face,

Tonight, of all nights, your shape is perfect,

Your presence sublime.

You know it too. You appear before the sun has even set,

Glorious without your cloak of night,

Gazing down in supreme splendour,

To make this dusty world pastoral.

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"Let's try the Charleston now!"

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THREE POEMS BY THOMAS HARDY

HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL

I should not have shown in the flesh,

I ought to have gone as a ghost;

It was awkward, unseemly almost,

Standing solidly there as when fresh,

Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,

My pinions yet furled

From the winds of the world.

After waiting so many a year

To wait longer, and go as a sprite

From the tomb at the mid of some night

Was the right, radiant way to appear;

Not as one wanzing weak

From life's roar and reek,

His rest still to seek:

Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glass

Of green moonlight, by me greener made,

When they'd cry, perhaps, "There sits his shade

In his olden haunt - just as he was

When in Walkingame he

Conned the grand Rule-of-Three

With the bent of a bee."

But to show in the afternoon sun,

With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,

When none wished to see me come there,

Was a garish thing, better undone.

Yes; wrong was the way;

But yet, let me say,

I may right it - some day.

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THE MARKET-GIRL

Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey kerb,

All eager to sell her honey and apples and bunches of garden herb;

And if she had offered to give her wares and herself with them too that day,

I doubt if a soul would have cared to take a bargain so choice away.

But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace that morning as I passed nigh,

I went and I said "Poor maidy dear! - and will none of the people buy?"

And so it began; and soon we knew what the end of it all must be,

And I found that though no others had bid, a prize had been won by me.

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THE CAGED GOLDFINCH

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,
I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save
Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye,
And once it tried to sing;
Of him or her who placed it there, and why,
No one knew anything.

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Under the Blossom that hangs on the Bough

1917

Oil on Canvas

61 cm x 81.3 cm

John William Godward 1861-1922

Nationality - British

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NEXT POST FRIDAY 1st MARCH

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