Jitterbug Swing-Catfish Keith

A Virgin, naked, on a Dragon sits.

In Response to comments...

Pulchritudo Foeminea-Henry Peacham (1546-1634)
From Minerva Britanna, 1612

A Virgin, naked on a dragon, sits.
One hand outstetch'd a cristall glasse doth show:
The other bears a dart, that deadly hits;
Upon her head a garland white as snow,
Of print and lilies beauty most desir'd,
Were I her painter, should be thus attir'd.

Her nakedness tells ,she needes no art:
Her glass, how we by sight are mov'd to love,
The wounde's unfelt that's given by the dart
At first(though deadly we it after prove)
The Dragon (de)notes love's poison: and the flowers, The frailtie (Ladies) of that pride of yours.


I'm not clever enough to upload it in clearer form...
Blogger lets me select small, medium, large as picture size. The original is much clearer.

Offices To Let

That Sinking Feeling

One of my work colleagues sold his house and went to live on a canal boat.
He was full of the benefits and joys of doing so, the reduction in his expenses, the joys of fishing from his living room, having swans as neighbours, there seemed to be no downside. Except perhaps the narrow rooms...I visited him a few weeks back......This was not his boat. The occupant was away.
The night before, kids had opened a lock gate further down the canal. As the boat-dwellers slept, the level went down.
Most of the boats just sat on the bottom. It's only about four feet deep.
This boat, however, snagged on a stone ledge. And tipped. Until the canal came in.
somehow I'm not tempted to sell up and join the floating folk any more.

Fantasy Shoe Day

I used to read a blog that was full of poetry that stretched my mind, and also made me smile.

The blogger is away, on hiatus, dealing with with bigger things than blogging, and her blogs are gone, and sorely missed.

She's going through troubled times, with not a lot of fun , I thought maybe a few of her blogworld friends might try to give her a smile by posting their own 'fantasy shoe day' items.

Here's a few I found.

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats, (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Embankment

(The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night)

Once in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me, and in comfort lie.

T.E.Hulme (1883-1917)

The Hiring Fair - Fairport Convention