November 26: Winter overtakes Autumn.

Hoar frost at Nonnington, Kent.

Bitter for Sweet

Summer is gone with all its roses,
  Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,
  Its warm air and refreshing showers:
    And even Autumn closes.

 Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,
  And winter comes which is yet colder;
  Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder,
    And the last buds cease blowing."

From Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti.

With a different title, this would have been a straightforward descriptive poem but maybe we should think again. Summer, Autumn and Winter; why no mention of Spring and the hope it brings? Because the poet is feeling bitter, or examining bitterness?

There are people today, Christian people, who seem to have lost hope and become bitter. It was not Christina Rossetti’s default position, but clearly one she experienced and understood. Disappointment in love, twice over, may have contributed.

Not for us to succumb to bitterness. There maybe naught for our comfort in the news about the climate and the future of our grandchildren across the world, but we must acknowledge the reality of the bitterness and the realities that contribute to it. Which of those can we make even the smallest dent or scratch in? What do we, can we, repent of?

I’ll be out litterpicking tomorrow. That’s two spiritual works of mercy, I reckon: to instruct (by example) the ignorant who leave rubbish about, and to bear wrongs patiently. It’s a start.

And if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

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November 17: There’s nothing like the sun.

Sweet last-left damsons.

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountain side or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning's storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,
Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,
Or January's, or February's, great days:
And August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said—
Or, if I could live long enough, should say—
"There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day."
There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.

Edward Thomas.

Edward Thomas challenged his melancholy by getting out of doors, with friends such as Robert Frost but often enough alone. November sun in England, especially against a south wall, or south cliff, is warming. Mid-November last year we went walking and foraged damsons, sweeter than they would have been a month earlier, but recorded that in prose, not poetry.

‘There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead’, and then? Why then we shall learn who the sun is like.

And there shall be no night there; 
and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; 
for the Lord God giveth them light: 
and they shall reign for ever and ever. 
                                                                                    Revelation 22:5.

6 November: Providing for Autumn and Winter.

No need to disturb an anthill to illustrate this post. This is the work of a provident mouse, who amassed these apricot stones, snatching the blessings of the plenteous days of summer.
Doctor Johnson paraphrased Proverbs 6:6-11 in the verses below.

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” Proverbs: 6-11.

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes, 
Observe her labours, sluggard, and be wise: 
No stern command, no monitory voice, 
Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; 

Yet, timely provident, she hastes away, 
To snatch the blessings of the plenteous day; 
When fruitful summer loads the teeming plain, 
She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. 

How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, 
Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy pow'rs; 
While artful shades thy downy couch inclose, 
And soft solicitation courts repose? 

Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, 
Year chases year with unremitted flight, 
Till want now following, fraudulent and slow, 
Shall spring to seize thee like an ambush'd foe.   

From "Volume 1 The Works of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., in Nine Volumes", via Kindle.

This is one of those instances where we actually have to think when trying to live by Bible teaching. Panic buying, anyone?

After the parable of the rich farmer filling his new barns with grain up to the day before his death, Jesus goes on to say: Consider the ravens, for they sow not, neither do they reap, neither have they storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them. How much are you more valuable than they? Luke 12:24.

We should be thinking of other people’s barns, empty because of climate change or conflict. There are Cafod and other Church and secular agencies that we can help fill them.

5 November: Autumn.

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away, —
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone, —
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.”

 

We should perhaps have posted this earlier in Autumn, when Summer was still perceptible in the afternoon, but we were then in the season of Creation and listening to Pope Francis. But here it is now, a remembrance of the beauty of summer and a challenge to seek the different beauties of the present season. Emily is in a less fraught state than yesterday, inviting us to spend time in quietness, looking over Nature’s shoulder.

(from “Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete” by Emily Dickinson)

13 September: Leaves, Creation XV.

 Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower, 
Some in the chill, some in the warmer hour: 
Alike they flourish and alike they fall, 
And Earth who nourished them receives them all. 
Should we, her wiser sons, be less content 
To sink into her lap when life is spent?

                                               Walter Savage Landor.

Landor was born in 1775, the year that Johnson sailed and preached on death. Landor’s take is rather different, but does not quite address Johnson’s point. Why, rather, should we be content simply to sink into earth’s lap? Is our existence then ultimately meaningless, vanity? Is there any point in repairing some of the damage that’s been done to our Mother Earth?

Christ intervened to restore meaning to human life, to answer such questions as these. He lived and died a perfect life but still cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ The stoical acceptance Landor espouses here is another matter altogether and ultimately nihilist. True wisdom is more than intellectual; there is wisdom in love, in care for others, in care for creation: we have reason not to be content to sink into Mother Earth’s lap when we consider how much of our life has done her harm.

You are invited to click on this link and so continue reflecting on the Psalms with Sister Johanna of Minster Abbey:

When we pray things like “O God whom I praise, do not be silent, for the mouths of deceit and wickedness are opened against me” (108:1), or “When I think I have lost my foothold, your mercy Lord, holds me up” (93:18), or “I am beset with evils…” (39:13) and so on, the “I” in any given psalm can become our “I” when we’re praying, no matter what our mood might be at that particular time.

6 September: Season of Creation VIII: Unloved?

the sun-flower, shining fair, Ray round with flames her disk of seed.

In Memoriam Stanza CI

Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway,
    The tender blossom flutter down,
    Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
  This maple burn itself away;

 Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, 
    Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
    And many a rose-carnation feed
  With summer spice the humming air;

 Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
    The brook shall babble down the plain, 
    At noon or when the lesser wain
  Is twisting round the polar star;

 Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
    And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
    Or into silver arrows break 
  The sailing moon in creek and cove;

 Till from the garden and the wild
    A fresh association blow,
    And year by year the landscape grow
  Familiar to the stranger's child; 

 As year by year the labourer tills
    His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
    And year by year our memory fades
  From all the circle of the hills." 

(from In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson.)

After Tennyson lost a dear friend of his youth, Arthur Henry Hallam, he worked through his grief in his epic poem, ‘In Memoriam, AHH, which took some 17 years to complete. Here he reflects upon mortality, and how the time will come when no-one remembers us, and others will be at home in what was once home to us. Does this melancholy stanza express despair or acceptance of mortality? To have been composing this epic for 17 years suggests that Tennyson’s love for his friend did not fade away, though it will have changed.

The loss of a friend’s love affects how the poet sees the landscape as unloved, uncared for: but others can love it into freshness. Perhaps there are neglected plots near you, in town or country, that would benefit from a little love, a few poppies or sunflowers.

Poppy Bridge, Didsbury, Manchester. Poppy seeds were sown on the land to the right and came up in profusion the following year.

During the Great War, British POWs grew sunflowers for decoration, passing the seeds to their Russian counterparts who regarded them as a delicacy. *

Notes:

• The beech trees’ leaves turn brown in Autumn, the maples’ become red and yellow
• Lesser wain, or lesser bear, Ursa Minor, the constellation that includes Polaris, the Pole Star, which appears constant in the Northern sky.
• Hern is the heron, crake is the corncrake, a bird that nests in cornfields.
• A glebe is a parcel of land, usually allotted to the village priest.
  • * Where Poppies Blow, John Lewis-Stempel, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016, p225.

2 September, Season of Creation III: Seasons turning.

September! We are moving into Autumn, fruit, grain harvest, swelling pumpkins … return to school, reluctant scholars yet glad to see their friends. remembering Oscar Wilde yesterday, here is the XVII Century English-speaking Welsh poet, Henry Vaughan, looking for the luxuries of out-of-season flowers and fruit. He’d find them today of course, rushed to us from around the world. But note his conclusion!

The tender vine in our garden suffered from the North’s cold wind last winter, but we have a few bunches of grapes swelling; are they to be food for humans or starlings?

Who the violet doth love, 
Must seek her in the flow'ry grove, 
But never when the North's cold wind 
The russet fields with frost doth bind. 
If in the spring-time—to no end— 
The tender vine for grapes we bend, 
We shall find none, for only—still— 
Autumn doth the wine-press fill. 
Thus for all things—in the world's prime— 
The wise God seal'd their proper time.

St David’s Cathedral.

Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II.

7 November: By the way

Literally ‘by the way’ these impressive soft bracket fungi caught my eye. Without a Polish Babcia to advise me, I thought I’d best leave them for whichever creature has been eating the one at the right. After all, the birds eat yew berries that are poison to us.

A feast for my eyes, at any rate. Laudato si!

5 November: My Youth by W. H. Davies

My youth was my old age,
    Weary and long;
It had too many cares
    To think of song;
My moulting days all came
    When I was young.

Now, in life's prime, my soul
    Comes out in flower;
Late, as with Robin, comes
    My singing power;
I was not born to joy
    Till this late hour." 
                                                  W. H. Davies

Another Welsh poet today, this one writing in English. Davies was famously discovered as a poet when he was living in a homeless hostel, walking through London, selling a little booklet of verse from door to door. Before that he had shipped cattle across the Atlantic and tramped over much of North America: the Supertramp.
Not a life conducive to singing power.

Never give up on life! Joy comes to many at a late hour, and with it perspective and understanding of the trials and depressions of youth.

The European robin sings through Autumn and Winter to defend its territory but is less vocal when moulting – growing a new suit of feathers.

The art of the city

smart

As part of the Canterbury Festival, much pruned down this year, L’Arche Kent and others have produced an art trail or pilgrimage across the city. I’ve captured a few of the pictures, but the some of the photos are beset with reflections; if I’d used the flash it would have bounced off the windows, hiding the pictures, so here the windows are, mostly taken on a wet day.

Are we inside looking out, or outside looking in? The reflection makes a different picture to what the artists intended!

More from L’Arche Kent’s Rainbow artists, and in the next picture.

Support for the National Health Service staff with the rainbows here.

A window with a message, linked to the next, which showcases some recycled clothes. I saw the artist assembling this exhibit; he seemed to be enjoying herself and doubtless enjoyed the making of the party outfits. The arch is a ghost image from across the street.

People’s experience of being locked down. Have a good read!

Catching Lives is a local organisation for people who are homeless.

Finally the front window of L’Arche Kent itself at the Saint Radigund’s Street Office! A show of talent.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little autumn pilgrimage across Canterbury. Do keep L’Arche, Catching Lives and all struggling artists in your prayers.