No.27

BOWL OF FLOWERS

Slava Raskaj

1877-1906

Nationality - Croatian

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ADLESTROP
Edward Thomas

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

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The Sayings of Lao-Tsu

Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth.
This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.

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“A row of trees far away, there on the hillside.
But what is it, a row of trees? It’s just trees.
Row and the plural trees aren’t things, they’re names.” 

― Alberto Caeiro

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Three Poems by Thomas Hardy

HER SECRET

That love's dull smart distressed my heart
He shrewdly learnt to see,
But that I was in love with a dead man
Never suspected he.

He searched for the trace of a pictured face,
He watched each missive come,
And a note that seemed like a love-line
Made him look frozen and glum.

He dogged my feet to the city street,
He followed me to the sea,
But not to the neighbouring churchyard
Did he dream of following me.

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THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN

Queer are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands In a careworn craze, And looks at the sands And the seaward haze With moveless hands And face and gaze, Then turns to go... And what does he see when he gazes so? They say he sees as an instant thing More clear than to-day, A sweet soft scene That once was in play By that briny green; Yes, notes alway Warm, real, and keen, What his back years bring— A phantom of his own figuring. Of this vision of his they might say more: Not only there Does he see this sight, But everywhere In his brain–day, night, As if on the air It were drawn rose bright– Yea, far from that shore Does he carry this vision of heretofore:
A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried, He withers daily, Time touches her not, But she still rides gaily In his rapt thought On that shagged and shaly Atlantic spot, And as when first eyed Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.
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OUTSIDE THE WINDOW

‘My stick!’ he says, and turns in the lane
To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
And he sees within that the girl of his choice
Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
For something said while he was there.

‘At last I behold her soul undraped!’
Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
‘My God!—'tis but narrowly I have escaped.—
My precious porcelain proves it delf.’
His face has reddened like one ashamed,
And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

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NUDE IN DAPPLED SUNLIGHT
1915
Frederick Carl Frieseke
1874-1937
Nationality - American

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Can you remember the last time a doctor looked down your throat and asked you to say Ah? Or held your wrist to feel your pulse? Or listened to your chest through his stethoscope?

When he had finished the examination, he would write out a prescription which you would present to the chemist. Invariably you would get a bottle of mixture with a horrible taste, specially concocted just for you!

In most homes there was a corner of a shelf in the kitchen where a selection of medicine bottles stood. Apart from those which had been prescribed in previous years, there would be essentials like Syrup of Figs, Emulsion, Malt and the dreaded Castor Oil!!!

For some children the cure for constipation was blackberries and for others raw or cooked onions.

It seems that a mixture of sulphur and treacle was given once a week to many children, and that’s something I hadn’t heard of.

Also new to me was brown paper sprinkled with vinegar and pepper applied to the cheek to combat the toothache. In our family the cure was the application of oil of cloves to the gum, but I don’t remember it being all that successful.

I don’t know if warts are still a problem for children. When I was young, quite a few boys in my class had warts, usually on their hands.

Some years ago, I was fascinated to find those old “cures” listed in a newspaper.

1) Take an eel, cut off its head, and rub the wart with the blood from the severed wound. Then bury the eel’s head in the ground. As the head rots, the wart will gradually disappear.

 2)Steal a very small piece of lean meat from the butcher’s, rub it on the wart three times from left to right. Bury the meat immediately and repeat: As you rot, so departs my wart.

3) Rub the wart with a blackberry, then throw it away. As soon as it is eaten by a bird or animal, the wart will disappear.

4) Prick the wart with a pin, then stick the pin into the trunk of an ash tree. Recite the following rhyme: Ashen tree, ashen tree, pray buy these warts from me. The warts will be transferred to the tree.

I‘m remembering that Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer knew how to get rid of warts, but their method was certainly not to be recommended.

They had to go to the cemetery at midnight and wait beside a grave in which a wicked man had just been buried. The devil would appear to take away the dead man and the boys had to recite, “Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I’m done with ye!.”

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CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE
c.1885
John Singer Sargent
1856-1925
Anglo-American

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