The bluebells are out.
So for those of you who don't have these wild and fragrant flowers growing... here are a couple of photos I took on a recent walk.
This first includes the creamy-white addition of wild garlic (great for adding to home-made pesto)
And in the second is a very HOBBIT-LIKE TREE! (Which looks exactly like an elephant's trunk)
In other news - apart from battling with my latest hero, Gabe Steel - I'm haunted by the memory of part of a tantalising poem called Dimensions, by Laura Riding. She was American and apparently, had a very complicated relationship with Robert Graves. This excerpt was put on her gravestone but if anyone has the complete, amazing poem (Megan Crane, are you out there?) - then I'd love to read it.
Measure me by myself
And not by time or love or space
Or beauty. Give me this last grace:
That I may be on my low stone
A gage unto myself alone.
I would not have these old faiths fall
To prove that I was nothing at all.
Gorgeous photos Sharon! Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteDo you have bluebells in Canada?
DeleteI've found the poem! Here's the full text:
ReplyDelete"Measure me for a burial
That my low stone may neatly say
In a precise, Euclidean way
How I am three-dimensional.
Yet can life be so thin and small?
Measure me in time. But time is strange
And still and knows no rule or change
But death and death is nothing at all.
Measure me by beauty.
But beauty is death's earliest name
For life, and life's first dying, a flame
That glimmers, an amaranth that will fade
And fade again in death's dim shade.
Measure me not by beauty, that fears strife.
For beauty makes peace with death, buying
Dishonor and eternal dying
That she may keep outliving life.
Measure me then by love--yet no,
For I remember times when she
Sought her own measurements in me,
But fled, afraid I might foreshow
How broad I was myself and tall
And deep and many-measured, moving
My scale upon her and thus proving
That both of us were nothing at all.
Measure me by myself
And not by time or love or space
Or beauty. Give me this last grace:
That I may be on my low stone
A gage unto myself alone.
I would not have these old faiths fall
To prove that I was nothing at all."
And now I have to investigate Laura Riding further--I've never heard of her before!
Thanks so much for finding the full text of this, Megan.
DeleteIt's such a beautiful poem (she sounds a very interesting woman).
And now I must away - to look up *Euclidean*!
xx