Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Earth Day



This seems, to me, a suitable song for the day.

FERN HILL by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.









And here's a web album with pictures of Earthly Delights.





















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5 comments:

Auntie Knickers said...

Thank you, that was beautiful. I hadn't read it for a long time and just remembered the first line. Here's another one I like:

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
* ** *** ****
If I wake up from a bad dream with my heart pounding (or the dog has a bad dream and barks, with the same effect) I say this poem to myself and it has a calming effect.
Happy Earth Day! I remember the first one....

Vicki Lane said...

Ha, Auntie K.!-- I almost used Innisfree for my Earth Day poem - in fact, we almost called our farm Innisfree. Such a beautiful and calming piece.

I remember the first one too. I renounced paper napkins for daily use. We still use home sewn cloth napkins.

Robyn Kadis said...

Wow, Vicki, your photos are amazing. You are living my life... well the one I want to live anyway. My reality is so far from this and I yearn, long, to live in such a beautiful place. You are a blessed lady.
Earth day went by without so much as a whisper here in Egypt. All the good work done in the rest of world is negated by the daily trash of Egypt, I'm afraid. They have not cottoned on to the concept of going green yet.

phyllis w. said...

A couple of questions about your earthly delights... First of all, what is that purple flower in picture #12? I see it by the roadsides, and am always tempted to stop and dig some up.

Also, how do you tend your asparagus bed? I started one about three years ago, but it's not as productive as I'd like. Do you mulch heavily? Sadly the asparagus beetles found it after the first year, and I haven't had much success in controlling them.

Happy Earth Day! Did you have snow this morning?

Vicki Lane said...

Robyn -- I am, indeed, blessed. And happy to share my little corner of the world in this way.

I put the package in the mail today -- have no idea how long it'll take. The Arabic address raised a few eyebrows in our tiny rural PO, as you might imagine.

Phyllis, No snow, thank goodness. The flowers in number twelve are the blooms of lunaria, aka, money plant or honesty. It looks a lot like wild phlox. I'll gladly send you seed at the end of the summer.

Re asparagus. We (and by we I mean my husband) mulched last year with composted cow manure and the asparagus has done extra well. I always keep several inches of some kind of mulch on them. We've used littler from the chicken house too.

We too were plagued with those wretched beetles last year. Aside from trying to pick the asparagus early and often as well as crushing every beetle I could catch, I haven't got a solution.We had our chicken tractor on the bed for a while, till the spears began to emerge, in hope of the biddies eating the beetle eggs and larvae. We'll see if it did any good . . .