No.24

THE BEACH

Edvard Munch 1863-1944

Nationality - Norwegian

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SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS

William Wordsworth 

1770-1850

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove, 

A Maid whom there were none to praise 

And very few to love: 

A violet by a mossy stone 

Half hidden from the eye! 

—Fair as a star, when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be; 

But she is in her grave, and, oh, 

The difference to me! 

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The Sayings of Lao-Tsu

Care about what other people think
and you will always be their prisoner.

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Just a pretty picture -

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Three poems by Thomas Hardy

THE RAMBLER

I do not see the hills around, 
Nor mark the tints the copses wear; 
I do not note the grassy ground 
And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note 
Of cuckoos hid on either hand, 
The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat 
When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree and mead-- 
All eloquent of love divine-- 
Receives their constant careful heed: 
Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear, 
The aspects, meanings, shapes I see, 
Are those far back ones missed when near, 
And now perceived too late by me! 

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CHANNEL FIRING

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

“That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening....

“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, “than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.
“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

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AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER

The ten hours’ light is abating,
And a late bird wings across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
That none will in time be seen.


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GIRL AT A WINDOW
Marie Therese Heumesser
Nationality-Austrian
no further info. about the artist

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THERE IS PLEASURE IN THE PATHLESS WOODS
 George Gordon, Lord Byron 1788-1824

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar: 
I love not man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

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I shall go and sit under a tree -  Which tree, Ma? -  Oh, there are many trees in this life, she said. It does not matter which tree you choose, as long as you choose the right one.

― Alexander McCall Smith

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In March 2012, this photo appeared in our local newspaper. Taken in the Council Room of Tom Johnston House, Kirkintilloch, it shows Provost Eric Gotts with some councillors and a group of people who had been nominated for the Freedom of Kirkintilloch award. You'll probably have difficulty recognising me in the line-up - I’m fourth from the right, standing.

The successful nominee was Frank Dunn a retired Consultant Cardiologist at Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow. He is just the seventh person to be given this honour.

In 1931 the first person to be granted the Freedom of the town was Tom Johnston who later became Secretary of State for Scotland during the war in Churchill’s government.

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CLOUD TOWER
1904
Akceli Gallen-Kallela 
1865-1931
Nationality-Finnish

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