Poem Of The Week

A much better day overall.Sunny and warm.Off to Dover for a visit or two.

Meanwhile , here is another poem -this time by Coleridge.

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness!
They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge;--that branchless ash,
Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.
Now, my friends emerge
Beneath the wide wide Heaven--and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hunger'd after Nature, many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence.
A delight
Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd
Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass
Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
Through the late twilight: and though now the bat
Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
Yet still the solitary humble-bee
Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory,
While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still,
Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

In Faversham

Well,after a delay on the roads and a bus breaking down ,i just did the one visit in the end, and then via a bus to Canterbury i ended up Faversham. I am now in the Leading Light drinking some beer as it is the penultimate day of Spoons beer festival.

I sold some books (in Faversham) earlier as well. Got eight quid for them - so not too bad. Picked up two new tomes as well from the excellent Fleurs Bookshop.


The weather remained sunny and warm.for this very nice Spring day.

Beer and Philosophy

Nothing better than this.

Saturday Music Selection - Jazzed

Another jazz kick - inspired by sandman_jazz.

Herbie Hancock - Watermelon Man

Personnel:
Herbie Hancock — piano
Freddie Hubbard — trumpet
Dexter Gordon — tenor saxophone
Butch Warren — bass
Billy Higgins — drum


( More jazz noodling here )

Enjoy.

Good Night Music

Alexander Scriabin - Poème-Nocturne Op. 61

- Composer: Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (6 January 1872 -- 27 April 1915)
- Performer: Sviatoslav Richter
- Year of recording: 1993

Poème-Nocturne for piano, Op. 61, written in 1911-1912.

Alexander Scriabin completed his Poème-Nocturne, Op. 61 for solo piano in 1912 and is one of his late 'mystical' works. The Poème-Nocturne displays a profound sensitivity to the previous hundred years of piano literature, as well as a personal voice that is highly intriguing and would cause many composers to write in Scriabin's tonal language, which happened so often that the term 'scriabinistic' was coined to describe that particular style of composing.

The Poème-Nocturne offers a sensual and intriguing musical atmosphere. Like all of Scriabin's mature work, it has a distinctly French flavor to it, featuring textures that are reminiscent of both Chopin and Debussy. In this work, the passionate yearning and the comfort of shadows, dominant in the nocturnes of Chopin, are effectively reordered. The yearning is replaced by ambiguity, emphasized by a large vocabulary of ornamental effect. These ornaments can be found among the works of Debussy. Scriabin uses the groundbreaking textures and ornaments that Debussy seemingly was always capable of discovering, and applies them to the gentle, discreet sensuality of Chopin's nocturnes. With a heightened diversity of sound, and an absence of aria-like departures in Scriabin's Poème-Nocturne, the romantic yearning is replaced by something of an intrigue among lovers. The piano seems to almost describe something perhaps carnal between two people. They may be coupling, sleeping, whispering; Scriabin's sound seems to demonstrate a fundamental truth, that other people's love lives are impossible to actually penetrate. This natural shield that protects the privacy of all lovers is a beautiful thing to hear sensitively illustrated. Demonstrating that one cannot see thwarts the romantic idea that the artist is limitless. This discreet, modernist truth reveals that the composer, like Mahler and Schoenberg, was attempting to be as honest as possible in his music.

More Good Night Music

I love his music ,so an extra piece of Scriabin -

Scriabin - Le Poème de L' Extase (The Poem of Ecstasy), Op.54

"THE POEM OF ECSTASY" sounds are used to delineate mental and emotional states (an almost exclusively textural and harmonic narrative structure). At the opening, the flute gesture searches longingly, the clarinet dreams, and the trumpet foretells a still-distant victory. An equestrian stride commences, only to be abruptly halted to make room for an ardent violin solo. As the many levels of expression unfold the music is highly chromatic, but not particularly dissonant. A glorious climax draws the music to an appropriately ecstatic finish in C major - a key that had, for Scriabin, a cleansing and focusing quality.

The painting -
Wassily Kandinsky - "Composition VII", 1913.