“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
Winter’s shortest day
3
Category Archives: literature
Winter walk
I HAD for my winter evening walk
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.
And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.
I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.
Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.–Robert Frost
Dunstanburgh Castle
Today I thought I’d share some images taken at Dunstanburgh Castle on Northumberland’s beautiful Heritage Coast. The castle is the largest in Northumberland. In 1313, Earl Thomas of Lancaster, cousin of Edward II of England began construction and John of Gaunt added to it later in the century.
During the Wars of the Roses, the castle was badly damaged and it slowly fell into decay. The castle is now owned by the National Trust and in the care of English Heritage. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I listed building.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstanburgh_Castle
This beautiful and evocative ruin can hardly fail to inspire, perched on a rocky outcrop above the coast and the plain below. Some great painters have immortalised it, including Turner and, one of my favourite contemporary artists, Michael Morgan.
Lilburn Tower, the most intact of the castle buildings, seems to demand a moody black and white treatment. Can you imagine a knight riding along that path, perhaps to rescue a princess from the tower? I kept thinking instead of Macbeth, riding to meet the three weird sisters, perhaps because Roman Polanski’s film, Macbeth was shot in the area.
Dunstanburgh Castle is reached via a footpath from Craster, a sleepy fishing village to the South. Or via the beautiful sands of Embleton Bay to the North.
I chased down a rainbow there on our visit, only just managing one hasty exposure before the colours faded, from which I made this, rather more painterly than usual, image with a little help from Topaz Simplify:
For all that I enjoyed the, admittedly rather over the top, colours of the last two images, it remains, for me, the black and white images that suit this location more. If you get the chance to visit this atmospheric ruin, I thoroughly recommend it.
Stepping off the path
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
If there is a path it is someone else’s path and you are not on the adventure.
– Joseph Campbell
The Watcher
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
– John Keats, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Celebrating Autumn
St. Aubin, Jersey
But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September. It stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.
― Stephen King, Salem’s Lot
Windsor, England
Clandon, Surrey
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
― Robert Frost
Windsor Great Park
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn–that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness–that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
― Jane Austen, Persuasion
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
… For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things…
William Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798), ll.88-102
Lovers on the Cobb
I wonder if he has just proposed?
A couple kiss on the Cobb, Lyme Regis’s iconic harbour wall. Many writers have been inspired by this landmark, including Jane Austen who featured it in Persuasion and John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The scene where the heroine (played by Meryl Streep in the film) walks to the end of the Cobb during a storm has made its way into movie legend. Perhaps this couple are fans.
The Path
“The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
The infinite sphere
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) wrote: “Nature is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere”. We encounter nature daily; we can hardly avoid it, even if it is only in the form of a humble fly who crawls through our open window or the scent of distant park flowers on the breeze.
Taking time to notice nature enriches my day beyond measure. The more I look, the more I see. Have you ever taken the time to watch a honey bee? I mean for several minutes or more. Watch how the light glistens in its wings as it hovers before its chosen blossom, forelegs outstretched for a gentle landing.
Notice how the evening light catches the soft hairs on its back, and its eager tongue, already prepared as if it cannot wait to savour the sweet nectar.
Or how about the bustling bumble bee? It announces its approach with an bombastic buzz before blundering onto its pollen-heavy landing pad.
It has become a cliche to speak of mindfulness, or living in the moment. I don’t know if our lives are busier now than they were a generation ago, or a century ago but, for me, a full life must still contain moments when all its demands are put to one side. Photography has opened my eyes to daily treasures. And the digital age has added the joy of sharing them.
Sometimes, however, it is also good to put the camera down and simply look, listen, smell, taste, touch. That’s all; I am going outside now.
“If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.” Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849)
Focused Moments 