A Parting

Farewell, old year; we walk no more together;
I catch the sweetness of thy latest sigh...
Here in the dim light of a grey December
We part in smiles, and yet we met in tears;
Watching thy chilly dawn, I well remember...

-Sarah Doudney (1841–1926)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
2016
2hrs 30min

The Snow

The snow, in bitter cold,
Fell all the night;
And we awoke to see
The garden white.

And still the silvery flakes
Go whirling by,
White feathers fluttering
From a grey sky.

Beyond the gate, soft feet
In silence go,
Beyond the frosted pane
White shines the snow.

-F. Ann Elliott

A Sledding Song

Sing a song of winter,
   Of frosty clouds in air!
Sing a song of snowflakes
   Falling everywhere.

Sing a song of winter!
   Sing a song of sleds!
Sing a song of tumbling
   Over heels and heads.

Up and down a hillside
   When the moon is bright,
Sledding is a tiptop
   Wintertime delight.

-Norman C. Schlichter

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
series 3
2015
448min
(Essie Davis, Nathan Page, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Ashleigh Cummings, Miriam Margolyes)
Based on the Phryne Fisher book series by Kerry Greenwood

The Affair
season three
2016-2017
566min
(Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Maura Tierney, Joshua Jackson, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Omar Metwally, Julia Goldani Telles, Jake Siciliano, Jadon Sand)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
series 2
based on the novels by Kerry Greenwood
2013
727min
(Essie Davis, Ashleigh Cummings, Nathan Page, Hugo Johnstone-Burt)

*  *  *  Merry Christmas  *  *  *

In the Wood

Cold winter's in the wood,
I saw him pass
Crinkling up fallen leaves
Along the grass.

Bleak winter's in the wood,
The birds have flown
Leaving the naked trees
Shivering alone.

King Winter's in the wood,
I saw him go
Crowned with a coronet
Of crystal snow.

-Eileen Mathias

https://g.co/doodle/bt5ca8

*  *  * Winter Solstice *  *  *

Winter Solstice

The cold is coming.
December's winter solstice.
Start of the season.

-Robert Pettit

Foyle's War
Set 2
2003
400min
(Michael Kitchen, Anthony Howell, Honeysuckle Weeks, Julian Ovenden, featuring Nicholas Farrell, Alan Howard, Corin Redgrave, Amanda Root)
(Fifty Ships, Among The Few, War Games, The Funk Hole)

Blue Lightning
author: Ann Cleeves
c. 2010
ISBN 978-0-312-38435-7
357pages

Hope
from The Century Magazine, January 1914

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December,
A magical thing,
And sweet to remember:
"We are nearer to spring
Than we were in September."

-Oliver Herford

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Based on the novels by Kerry Greenwood
Series 1 (13 episodes)
2011
706min
(Essie Davis, Nathan Page, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Ashleigh Cummings, Miriam Margolyes)

Sonnet XCVII

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen?
What old December's bareness every where!

-William Shakespeare

Broadchurch
Season 3
2017

Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.

-Pablo Neruda

On cold December fragrant chaplets blow,
And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

-Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
from The Dunciad

Dead Water
author: Ann Cleeves
c.2013
ISBN 978-1-250-03660-5
386pages

National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
1941

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pearl_Harbor_Remembrance_Day

Blessed is the season 
which engages the whole world 
in a conspiracy of love!

 -Hamilton Wright Mabie

the bridge|bron|broen
Series 2
2011

yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Ombre

color: anthracite

double crochet size I

Red Bones
author: Ann Cleeves
c.2009
ISBN 978-0-312-38434-0
392pages

The Mentalist
The Seventh and Final Season
2015
543min
(Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Rockmond Dunbar, Joe Adler, Josie Loren)

The Mentalist
The Complete Sixth Season
2014
930min
(Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti, Rockmond Dunbar, Emily Swallow)

Saint Clement's Day
November twenty-third

Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine!
A good red apple, a pint of wine,
Some of your mutton and some of your veal,
If it is good, pray give me a deal.
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry;
A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,
Clemany comes but once a year.
Off with the pot and on with the  pan;
A good red apple, and I'll be gone.

-Traditional: English

*  *  *  Happy Thanksgiving *  *  *

Riding In A Motor Boat

A putta putta putt--
The motor boat
Splashes
A spray behind it.

A putta putta putt--
I go for a ride
And watch
The beach slide by.

I see a man upside down on his head,
And a boy turning somersaults,
And umbrellas
That stand
Like high mushrooms
In the sand.

A putta putt putt--
I reach my hand
Over the side of the boat
Into the slipping water.

It feels
Tingly
And cold.

-Dorothy W. Baruch

Hurt No Living Thing

Hurt no living thing:
   Ladybird, no butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
   No cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
   Nor dancing gnat, no beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.

-Christina Rossetti

November Night

Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

-Adelaide Crapsey

The Bridge (Bron/Broen)
series 1
2011

On A Quiet Conscience

   Close thine eyes, and sleep secure;
   Thy soul is safe, thy body sure.
   He that guards thee, he that keeps,
   Never slumbers, never sleeps.
   A quiet conscience in the breast
   Has only peace, has only rest.
   The wisest and the mirth of kings
   Are out of tune unless she sings:
Then close thine eyes in peace and sleep secure,
No sleep so sweet as thine, no rest so sure.

-Charles I of England

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

-Vladimir Nabokov

How can a woman be expected 
to be happy 
with a man who insists on 
treating her 
as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

-Oscar Wilde

White Nights
author: Ann Cleeves
c.2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38433-3
392pages

Red Hear Super Saver Stripes

color: Fruity Stripe

stitch: double crochet

The Mentalist
The Complete Fifth Season
2013
932min
(Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti)

'O Mistress Mine...'
from: Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear- your true love's coming,
   That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers' meeting,
   Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
   What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty:
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty!
   Youth's a stuff will not endure.

-William Shakespeare

Everyday Food
Volume 1
fast, family-friendly ideas
2006
125min

Fare Well

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
          When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
          Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May those loved and loving faces
          Please other men!
May the rustling harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
          Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour.  Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
          Till to delight.
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
          In other days.

-Walter de la Mare

Janet King
Series 1: The Enemy Within
2013

That's how it goes, my friend.
The problem is not falling captive, it's how to avoid surrender.

-Nasim Hikmet

Any means of communication which can be unplugged cannot be independent.

-John Ralston Saul

To the sea?
To the sky? 
To the world?
Who knows?
The stars descend, as usual to the river, carried by the breezes... The nightingale meditates...
sorrow grows more lovely.  And high above sadness a smile bursts into bloom.

-Juan Ramon Jimenez

The Imitation Game
2014
114min
(Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance)

How long the sun and moon have been turning day and night, just to spend one night with You!

-Rumi

November

November is a spinner
Spinning in the mist,
Weaving such a lovely web
Of gold and amethyst.
In among the shadows
She spins till close of day,
Then quietly she folds her hands
And puts her work away.

-Margaret Rose

Go, go, go said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality.

-T.S. Eliot

Grantchester
The Complete Third Season
2017
(James Norton, Robson Green)
380minutes

 

yarn: Red Heart  Super Saver Jumbo 

color: Buff

stitch: double crochet chevron pattern

Raven Black
author: Ann Cleeves
c. 2006
ISBN-10: 0-312-35967-5
376 pages

The Bletchley Circle
Series 2
("Blood on Their Hands" "Uncustomed Goods")
2014
180min

When I was in India I met and conversed briefly with Shri Atmananda Guru of Trivandrum: and the question he gave me to consider was this: "Where are you between two thoughts?"

-Joseph Campbell

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.

-Rumi

Late October

I found ten kinds of wild flowers growing
On a steely day that looked like snowing;
Queen Anne's lace, and blue heal-all,
A buttercup, straggling, grown so tall,
A rusty aster, a chicory flower-
Ten I found in half an hour.
The air was blurred with dry leaves flying,
Gold and scarlet, gaily dying.
A squirrel ran off with a nut in his mouth,
And always, always, flying south,
Twittering, the birds went by
Flickering sharp against the sky,
Some in great bows, some in wedges,
Some in bands with wavering edges;
Flocks and flocks were flying over
With the north wind for their drover.
'Flowers," I said, 'You'd better go,
Surely it's coming on for snow!'-
They did not heed me, nor heed the birds,
Twittering thin, far-fallen words-
The others thought of tomorrow, but they
Only remembered yesterday.

-Sara Teasdale

Two parallel lines meet somewhere in infinity, and they believe it.
-G.C. Lichtenberg

One thinks one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Mentalist
The Complete Fourth Season
2012
1013min
(Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti)

The Americans
The Complete Fourth Season
2016
605min
(Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys)

The Bletchley Circle
series 1
2012
2hrs 15min

The stars sew with too fine a thread.

-Eugenio Montale

from: Autumn

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
   Pearling his coronet of golden corn.
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard,
The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain,
          And honey bees have stored
The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells;
The swallows all have winged across the main.
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
-Thomas Hood

A Book

There is no frigate like a book
   To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
   Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
   Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
   That bears a human soul!

-Emily Dickinson

Shetland
seasons one & two
based on the novels by Ann Cleeves
2015
454min
(Red Bones, Raven Black, Blue Lightning, Dead Water)
(Douglas Henshall, Alison O'Donnell, Steven Robertson, Mark Bonnar, Julie Graham, Erin Armstrong, Ann Kidd, Stewart Porter)

Sea Memories

Often I think of the beautiful town
   That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
   And my youth comes back to me.
      And a verse of a Lapland song
      Is haunting my memory still:
      "A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the shadowy lines of its tress,
   And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
   Of all my boyish dreams.
      And the burden of that old song,
      It murmurs and whispers still:
      "A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the ships,
   And the sea tides tossing free;
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
   And the magic of the sea.
      And the voice of that wayward song
      Is singing and saying still:
      "A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Father Brown
Season 4
2016

Questions At Night

Why
Is the sky?

What starts the thunder overhead?
Who makes the crashing noise?
Are the angels falling out of bed?
Are they breaking all their toys?

Why does the sun go down so soon?
Why do the night-clouds crawl
Hungrily up to the new-laid moon
And swallow it, shell and all?

If there's a Bear among the stars
As all the people say,
Won't he jump over those Pasture-bars
And drink up the Milky Way?

Does every star that happens to fall
Turn into a fire-fly?
Can't it ever get back to Heaven at all?
And why
Is the sky?

-Louis Untermeyer

Some People

Isn't it strange some people make
   You feel so tired inside,
Your thoughts begin to shrivel up
   Like leaves all brown and dried!

But when you're with some other ones,
   It's stranger still to find
Your thoughts as thick as fireflies
   All shiny in  your mind!

-Rachel Field

Be Like The Bird

Be like the bird, who
Halting in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him,
Yet sings
Knowing he hath wings.

-Victor Hugo

Song: The Owl

When cats run home and light is come,
   And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
   And the whirring sail goes round,
   And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,
   And rarely smells the new mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
   Twice or thrice his roundelay,
   Twice or thrice his roundelay;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

-Alfred Tennyson

The Tree Toad

The Tree Toad is a creature neat,
With tidy rubbers on his feet.
Embarrassment is all he knows-
His color comes, his color goes.

The Tree Toad is quite small, at least,
Unless his girth has just increased.
The truth is always hard to seek,
For things are changing every week.

-Monica Shannon

The Great Courses: Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography
Professor Sherwin B. Nuland (Yale School of Medicine)
Course No. 8128
c.2005

October

I love to wander through the woodlands hoary,
In the soft light of an autumnal day,
When summer gathers up her robes of glory,
And, like a dream of beauty, glides away.

-S.W. Whitman

The Bees

Bees over the gooseberry bushes,
Bees with golden thighs
Climbing out of pale flowers
(Bees singing to you for a long while,
You sitting quite still,
Holding the sun in your lap),
Bees, take care!
You may catch fire in the sun,
If you venture so high in the blue air.

-Lola Ridge

What Do We Plant?

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the ship which will cross the sea.
We plant the mast to carry the sails;
We plant the planks to withstand the gales-
The keel, the keelson, the beam, the knee;
We plant the ship when we plant the tree.

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the houses for you and me.
We plant the rafters, the shingles, the floors,
We plant the studding, the lath, the doors,
The beams and siding, all parts that be;
We plant the house when we plant the tree.

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
A thousand things that we daily see;
We plant the spire that out-towers the crag,
We plant the staff for our country's flag,
We plant the shade, from the hot sun free;
We plant all these when we plan the tree.

-Henry Abbey

The Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
   I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
   To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
   Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
   And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
   In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
   I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
   By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
   With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on forever.

I wind about and in and out,
   With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
   And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
   Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery water-break
   Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
   I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
   That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
   Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
   Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
   In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars,
   I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on forever.

-Alfred Tennyson

Ballers
Season 1
2015

The Great Courses: Meteorology: An Introduction to the Wonders of the Weather
course no. 1796
Professor Robert G. Fovell
c.2010

Bob's Burgers
The Complete 5th Season
2014
462min

Autumn

The morns are meeker than they were,
   The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
   The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
   The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
   I'll put a trinket on.

-Emily Dickinson

The Great Courses: Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre
course no.7175
Professor Richard Brettell
c.2006
360min

Elementary
Season 4
2015

Twice I have lived forever in a smile.

-e.e. cummings

yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Ombre

color: Spearmint

stitch: double crochet in chevron/wave pattern

He steps into the mirror, refusing to be anyone else.

-Frank O'Hara

awkward
author: Svetlana Chmakova
c.2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-38132-1
224 pages

The Mentalist
The Complete Third Season
2010
1022minutes
(Robin Tunney, Owain Yeoman, Simon Baker, Amanda Righetti, Tim Kang)

brave
author: Svetlana Chmakova
c.2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-36317-4
248pages

You're crying.
You say you've burned yourself.
But can you think of anyone who's not hazy with smoke?

-Rumi

Can you remember what remembering was like last Tuesday?

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Whenever we read a book or have a conversation, 
the experience causes physical changes in your brain.  
In a matter of seconds, 
new circuits are formed, 
memories that can change forever the way you think about the world.  
It's a little frightening to think that every time you walk away from an encounter, 
your brain has been altered, 
sometimes permanently.

-George Johnson

Masterpiece Classic: Small Island
2010
180min
(Naomie Harris, David Oyelowo, Ruth Wilson, Benedict Cumberbatch)

Hay Harvest

I met a man mowing
   A meadow of hay;
So smoothly and flowing
   His swathes fell away,
     At break of the day
     Up Hambledon way;
A yellow-eyed collie
   Was guarding his coat-
Loose-limbed and lob-lolly,
   But wise and remote;

The morning came leaping, -
   'Twas five o' the clock,
The world was still sleeping
   At Hambledon Lock, -
     As sound as a rock
     Slept village and Lock;
'Fine morning!' the man says,
   And I says, 'Fine day!'
Then I to my fancies
   And he to his hay!

And lovely and quiet,
   And lonely and chill,
Lay river and eyot,
   And meadow and mill; -
     I think of them still-
     Mead, river and mill;
For wasn't it jolly
   With only us three-
The yellow-eye collie,
   The mower and me?

-Patrick R. Chalmers

Tyrant
The Complete First Season
2014
475min

Moonlit Apples

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green.  There goes
   A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is not sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
   Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,
   And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep,
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
   On moon-washed apples of wonder.

-John Drinkwater

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II
author: Svetlana Alexievich
translators: Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
c. 1985/2017
ISBN 9780399588723
331 pages

blanket: double crochet

Red Heart Super Saver

color: Soft Navy

The Mentalist
The Complete Second Season
2009
985min
(Simon Baker,Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti)

Gathering Leaves

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 move
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

-Robert Frost

The Night Will Never Stay

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky,
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

-Eleanor Farjeon

The Last Word of a Bluebird

As I went out, a Crow
In a low vice said 'Oh,
I was looking for you
To tell Lesley (will you?)
That her little Bluebird
Wanted me to bring word
That the north wind last night,
That made the stars bright
And made ice on the trough,
Almost made him cough
His tail feathers off.
He just had to fly!
But he sent her Good-bye
And said to be good,
And wear her red hood,
And look for skunk tracks
In the snow with an axe-
And do everything!
And perhaps in the spring
He would come back and sing.'

-Robert Frost

https://parade.com/596882/ccopelan/one-mans-kindness-campaign-delivers-positive-messages-via-tiny-mailboxes/#addthis

Home Fires: The Story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War
author: Julie Summers
c. 2013, 2015
ISBN 978-0-14-310845-0
349pages

from: The Legend of Good Women

...of all the flowers in the mead,
Then love I most these flowers white and red
Such as men callen daisies in our town.
To them I have so great affection,
As I said first, when comen is the May,
That in my bed there dawneth me do day,
That I am (not) up, and walking in the mead,
To see this flower in the sunshine spread,
When it upriseth early in the morrow,
That blissful sight soft'neth all my sorrow.
     And when that it is eve, I blithely run,
As soon as ever the sun goeth west,
To see this flower, how it will go to rest,
For fear of night, so hateth she darkness!...

-Geoffrey Chaucer

Hill Pastures

High on the hill the curlews and the whimbrels
Go mating all day long with a sweet whistle;
With a sound of chiming bells and shaken timbrels,
And silver rings that fall in a crystal cup.
They laugh, as lovers laugh when the moon is up,
Over the cotton grass and the carline-thistle. 

Poised in his airy spiral the snipe is calling,
Summoning love with a music mournful and lonely
As a lost lamb in the night, rising, falling,
Stranger than any melody, wilder than song.
He cries of life that is short, and death that is long,
Telling his dusky love to one heart only.

Once in seven days a plaintive ringing
Sounds from the little chapel high in the heather,
Out with the sorrowful snipe and the whimbrel winging.
The wild hill ponies hear it there as they graze,
And whinny, and call to their foals, and stand at gaze,
Hearing a clear voice in the clear weather.

And out of pine-dark farms and windy places,
And quiet cottages low in the valley hiding,
Brown folk come with still and wistful faces.
Straying by twos and threes, like the peaceful sheep,
Into the small brown shippen of souls they creep,
Seeking a calm like the hills', but more abiding.

-Mary Webb

Song

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty are the rushes
And wild the clouded gleam.

The thistle now is older,
His stalk begins to moulder,
His head is white as snow;
The branches all are barer,
The linnet's song is rarer
The robin pipeth now.

-Richard Watson Dixon

Father Brown
Season 2
2014

Worlds

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks,
Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky,
Above me glimmer, infinitely high,
Toward my giant hand a beetle walks
In glistening emerald mail; and as I lie
Watching his progress through huge grassy blades
And over pebble boulders, my own world fades
And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.

Within that forest world of twilight green
Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day
I travel down the beetle-trail between
Huge glossy boles through green infinity...
Till flashes a glimpse of the blue sea through the bracken asway,
And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.

-W.W. Gibson

The Great Courses: The Everyday Gourmet: Making Healthy Food Taste Great
Chef Bill Briwa
Connie Guttersen, Nutrition Instructor
c.2013
ISBN: 978-1-4906-5438-6
Course No. 9292

The Lonely House

I know some lonely houses off the road
A robber'd like the look of,-
Wooden barred,
And windows hanging low,
Inviting to
A portico,
Where two could creep:
One hand the tools,
The other peep
To make sure all's asleep.
Old-fashioned eyes,
Not easy to surprise!

How orderly the kitchen'd look by night,
With just a clock,-
But they could gag the tick,
And mice won't bark.
And so the walls don't tell,
None will.

A pair of spectacles ajar just stir-
An almanac's aware.
Was it the mat winked,
Or a nervous star?
The moon slides down the stair
To see who's there.

There's plunder, - where?
Tankard, or spoon,
Earring, or stone,
A watch, some ancient brooch
To match the grandmamma,
Staid sleeping there.

Day rattles, too,
Stealth's slow;
The sun has got as far
As the third sycamore.
Screams chanticleer,
'Who's there?'
And echoes, trains away,
Sneer- 'Where?'
While the old couple, just astir,
Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!

-Emily Dickinson

The Great Courses: Nutrition Made Clear
Course No. 1950
Professor Roberta H. Anding
c.2009
ISBN: 978-1-4906-6651-8
36 lectures/30 minutes per lecture

Lost

Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.

-Carl Sandburg

'Be Not Afraid...'
Be not afraid because the sun goes down;
It brings the sunset and the plover's cry.
Before the colors of the evening drown,
The stars will make new colors in the sky.
Night is no enemy.  She passes by,
And shows us silence for our own heart's good;
For while we sleep, the roses multiply,
The little tree grows taller in the wood.

Fear not the night; the morning follows soon.
Each has his task to make the earth more fair.
It is by these, by midnight and by noon,
That she grows riper and her orchards bear.
Her fields would wither in a sun too bright;
They need the darkness too. Fear not the night.
-Robert Nathan

The Rainy Summer
There's much afoot in heaven and earth this year;
The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,
Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear
Height of a threatening noon.

No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds,
May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;
The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds,
And strains against the cloud.

No scents may pause within the garden-fold;
The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;
Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold
Wild honey to cold cells.
-Alice Meynell

At the hour when neither day or night
knows more than the other.
At the hour when day and night
do not know that there is a sharing.
-Louis Emie

Midsomer Murders: Schooled In Murder
2012
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 24)

Midsomer Murders: The Sicilian Defence
2012
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 24)

Midsomer Murders: Written In The Stars
2012
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 24)

The Mentalist
The Complete First Season
2008
998min
(Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti)

Look for a long time at what pleases you,
and longer still at what pains you.
-Colette

Midsomer Murders: Death and the Divas
2012
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 23)

Midsomer Murders: Murder of Innocence
2012
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 23)

Midsomer Murders: The Dark Rider
2012
92min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 23)

August

The wind sang to the cornfields
A happy little song,
And this is what he whispered,
"The harvest won't be long."

The wind sang to the windmill
A merry little tune.
The windmill answered gaily,
"The harvest's coming soon."

The whispering of the poppies
Through the cornfields steals along,
They are joining with the fairies
Singing harvest's merry song.

-Eunice Fallon

It is the night of the ocean,
the third solitude,
a quivering which opens doors and wings.
-Pablo Neruda

Midsomer Murders: A Rare Bird
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 22)

Midsomer Murders: A Sacred Trust
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 22)

Midsomer Murders: The Night Of The Stag
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 22)

Midsomer Murders: The Sleeper Under The Hill
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 22)

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
-Robert Frost

Pictures

I can see a picture.
Tell me what you see-
Blue-bells in a beech wood.
And green leaves on a tree.

I can see a picture.
Tell me what you see-
A fleet, a fleet of fishing boats
And sunshine on the sea.

I can see a picture.
Tell me what you see-
Apples on the bending bough,
As rosy as can be.

I can see a picture.
Tell me what you see-
A choire of children carolling
Around a Christmas Tree.

-F. Ann Elliott

Midsomer Murders: The Oblong Murders
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 21)

Midsomer Murders: Echoes Of The Dead
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 21)

Midsomer Murders: Dark Secrets
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 21)

Midsomer Murders: Death In The Slow Lane
2011
93min
(Neil Dudgeon, Jason Hughes)
(set 21)

Midsomer Murders: Fit For Murder
2010
89min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Neil Dudgeon, Jane Wymark)
(set 20)

Midsomer Murders: Not In My Back Yard
2010
89min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 20)

Midsomer Murders: The Noble Art
2010
89min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 20)

Midsomer Murders: Master Class
2010
93min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 20)

Elementary
Season 3
2015

Midsomer Murders: The Silent Land
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes)
(set 19)

Midsomer Murders: Blood on the Saddle
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes)
(set 19)

Midsomer Murders: The Sword of Guillaume
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Neil Dudgeon)
(set 19)

Midsomer Murders: The Made-to-Measure Murders
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes)
(set 19)

Jack Reacher
2012
130min
(Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike)

Midsomer Murders: The Great and the Good
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 18)

Midsomer Murders: The Creeper
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 18)

Midsomer Murders: Small Mercies
2009
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 18)

Midsomer Murders: The Glitch
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 17)

Midsomer Murders: Secrets and Spies
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 17)

Midsomer Murders: The Black Book
2008
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 17)

Midsomer Murders: The Dogleg Murders
2008
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 17)

All the fish needs is to get lost in water.

-Chuang Tzu

Land Girls
Series 3
MMXI
(Lou Broadbent, Becci Gemmell, Seline Hizli, Sophie Ward)

* * * Happy Independence Day! * * *

Land Girls
Series 2
MMXI
225min
(Jo Woodcock, Becci Gemmell, Seline Hizli)

Midsomer Murders: Talking to the Dead
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 16)

Midsomer Murders: Days of Misrule
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 16)

Midsomer Murders: The Magician's Nephew
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 16)

Midsomer Murders: Midsomer Life
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 16)

Midsomer Murders: Left For Dead
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 15)

Midsomer Murders: Shot At Dawn
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 15)

Midsomer Murders: Blood Wedding
2008
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)
(set 15)

Land Girls
Series 1
MMIX
223min
(Summer Strallen, Becci Gemmell, Christine Bottomley, Danny Webb, Jo Woodcock, Liam Boyle, Mark Benton, Sophie Ward, Nathaniel Parker)

Midsomer Murders: Death In A Chocolate Box
2007
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)

The Americans
The Complete Third Season
2015
450min
(Matthew Rhys, Keri Russell, Noah Emmerich)

Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there.

-Rumi

from: Choric Song
from : The Lotos-Eaters

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Tuft Of Flowers

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been- alone,

'As all must be,' I said within my heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more along;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

'Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'

-Robert Frost

Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,

.   .   .   .   .

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of the stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim- the rocks- the motion of the waves- the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

-Walt Whitman

The Seed Shop

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as a crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry-
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams,
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust;
It will drink deeply of a century's streams,
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shell a million roses leap;
Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

-Muriel Stuart

Midsomer Murders: They Seek Him Here
2007
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 14)

Midsummer Night

The sun goes down,
The stars peep out,
And long slim shadows
Flit about.

In velvet shoes
The quiet dark
Comes stepping soft
O'er wood and park.

And now the world
Is fast asleep;
And fays and elves
Their revels keep.

They fly on the backs of the grey-winged moths,
They skim on the dragon-flies green and gold.
On shimmering dew-wet grass they alight,
Tiny petal-skirts whirl, gauzy wings unfold.

The fairies are dancing beneath the moon.
Hush! See the shimmer of their twinkling shoon!

-Elizabeth Gould

Midsomer Murders: Picture of Innocence
2007
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark)
(set 14)

Midsomer Murders: Death and Dust
2007
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)
(set 14)

Midsomer Murders: The Axeman Cometh
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)
(set 13)

Midsomer Murders: King's Crystal
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)
(set 13)

Midsomer Murders: The Animal Within
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)
(set 13)

Midsomer Murders: Dance With The Dead
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream,
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor,
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering 
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

-William Butler Yeats

Flag Day 2017

'By The Moon...'
from: The Maydes' Metamorphosis

By the moon we sport and play,
With the night begins our day:
As we dance the dew doth fall,
Trip it little urchins all:
Lightly as the little Bee,
Two by two and three by three:
And about go we, and about go we.

I do come about the copse,
Leaping upon flower tops:
Then I get upon a fly,
She carries me above the sky:
And trip and go.

When a dew drop falleth down,
And doth light upon my crown,
Then I shake my head and skip,
And about I trip.
Two by two and three by three:
And about go we, and about go we.

-John Lyly

Overheard On A Saltmarsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
     Green glass, goblin.  Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.
          No.

Give them me.  Give them me.
                    No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I desire them.

                    No.

I will howl in a deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me.  Give them.

                    No.

-Harold Monro

The Americans
The Complete Second Season
2014
585min
(Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys)

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

The Americans
The Complete First Season
2013
572min
(Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys)

I have spread my dreams under your feet:
tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats

No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.

-John Cage

It matters immensely.
The slightest sound matters.
The most momentary rhythm matters.
You can do as you please, yet everything matters.
-Wallace Stevens

That is how one should read all books of poetry.  Along the border, a short way into the woods and then back into the summer sun.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Every second is a door to eternity. The door is opened by perception.

-Rumi

I think that if I recall something, for example, if today I look back on this morning, then I get an image of what I saw this morning.  But if tonight, I'm thinking back on this morning, then what I'm really recalling is not the first image, but the first image in memory.  So that every time I recall something, I'm not recalling it really, I'm recalling the last time I recalled it.  I'm recalling my last memory of it.  So that really, I have no memories whatever.  I have no images whatever, about my childhood, about my youth.

-Jorge Luis Borges

June

Month of leaves,
Month of roses;
Gardens full
Of dainty posies;
Skies of blue,
Hedgerows gay,
Meadows sweet
With the new-mown hay.

Flowery banks,
A-drone with bees,
Dreaming cattle
Under trees:
Song-birds pipe
A merry tune-
This is summer,
This is June.

-Irene F. Pawsey

Only the birds are able to throw off their shadow.  The shadow always stays behind on earth.  Our imagination flies.  We are its shadow on the earth.

-Vladimir Nabokov

“Jeff and His Forest Friends” by Jeff

The Librarian: Return To King Solomon's Mines
2006
92min
(Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart, Jane Curtin, Olympia Dukakis, Gabrielle Anwar)

'Through The House Give Glimmering Light'
from: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene 2

Through the house give glimmering light,
   By the dead and drowsy fire:
Every elf and fairy sprite
   Hop as light as bird from brier;
And this ditty, after me,
Sing, and dance it trippingly.

First, rehearse your song by rote,
To each word a warbling note:
Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place.

-William Shakespeare

Breakfast Time

The sun is always in the sky
Whenever I get out of bed,
And I often wonder why
It's never late. - My sister said

She didn't know who did the trick,
And that she didn't care a bit,
And I should eat my porridge quick,
...I think its mother wakens it.

-James Stephens

Home Fires
The Complete Second Season
2016
360minutes
(Francesca Annis, Daisy Badger, Mark Bazeley, Leanne Best, Samantha Bond, Clare Calbraith, Chris Coghill, Ruth Gemmell, Frances Grey, Leila Mimmack, Mike Noble, Claire Price, Claire Rushbrook, Daniel Ryan, Ed Stoppard, Mark Umbers, Alexandre Willaume, Fenella Woolgar)

'Violets, Daffodils'

Violets, daffodils,
Roses and thorn
Were all in the garden
Before you were born.

Daffodils, violets,
Green thorn and roses
Your grandchildren's children
Will hold to their noses.

-Elizabeth Coatsworth

Song

The primrose in the green forest,
          The violets they be gay;
The double daisies, and the rest
That trimly decks the way,
Doth move the spirits with brave delights,
         Who Beauty's darlings be:

With hey tricksy, trim-go-tricksy,
        Under the greenwood tree.

-Thomas Deloney

DCI Banks
Season 5
2016
265min
(To Burn In Every Drop of Blood, A Little Bit of Heart, Undertow)

Stars

Now in the West the slender moon lies low,
And now Orion glimmers through the trees,
Clearing the earth with even pace and slow,
And now the stately-moving Pleiades,
In that soft infinite darkness overhead
Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.

And all the lonelier stars that have their place,
Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,
And planet-dust upon the edge of space,
Look down upon the fretful world, and I
Look up to outer vastness unafraid
And see the stars which sang when earth was made.

-Marjorie Pickthall

'What Is Once Loved'

What is once loved
You will find
Is always yours
From that day.
Take it home
In your mind
And nothing ever
Can take it away.

-Elizabeth Coatsworth

To confront a person
with his shadow
is to show him
his own light.

-Carl Jung

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives 
are princesses who are only waiting 
to see us once beautiful and brave.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Frolic

The children were shouting together
And racing along the sands,
A glimmer of dancing shadows,
A dove-like flutter of hands.

The stars were shouting in heaven,
The sun was chasing the moon:
The game was the same as the children's,
They danced to the self-same tune.

The whole of the world was merry,
One joy from the vale to the height,
Where the blue woods of twilight encircled
The lovely lawns of the light.

-A.E. (George Russell)

A Soft Day

A soft day, thank God!
A wind from the south
With a honeyed mouth;
A scent of drenching leaves,
Briar and beech and lime,
White elder-flower and thyme,

And the soaking grass smells sweet,
Crushed by my two bare feet,
While the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the leaves.

A soft day, thank God!
The hills wear a shroud 
Of silver cloud;
The web the spider weaves
Is a glittering net;
The woodland path is wet,

And the soaking earth smells sweet,
Under my two bare feet,
And the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the leaves.

-Winifred M. Letts

Two Fat Ladies: Series 4
1997
2hrs 34min
(Potatoes Galore, On Safari, Timber!, A Day at the Races)
(Jennifer Paterson, Clarissa Dickson Wright)

The Rivals

I heard a bird at dawn
Singing sweetly on a tree,
That the dew was on the lawn,
And the wind was on the lea;
But I didn't listen to him,
For he didn't sing to me!

I didn't listen to him,
For he didn't sing to me
That the dew was on the lawn,
And the wind was on the lea!
I was singing at the time,
Just as prettily as he!

I was singing all the time,
Just as prettily as he,
About the dew upon the lawn,
And the wind upon the lea!
So I didn't listen to him,
As he sang upon a tree!

-James Stephens

On May Morning

Now the bright morning Star, Daye's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
     Hail, bounteous May! that dost inspire
     Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
     Woods and Groves are of they dressing;
     Hill and Dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

-John Milton

Home Fires
Season One
2015
360min
(Samantha Bond, Francesca Annis, Clare Calbraith, Ruth Gemmell, Claire Rushbrook, Ed Stoppard).

Everyone Sang
1917

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on- on- and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears, and horror
Drifted away...O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will
        never be done.

-Siegfried Sassoon

'The Crow Doth Sing...'
From: The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended, and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise and true perfection!

-William Shakespeare

Midsomer Murders: Death in Chorus
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)

Midsomer Murders: Last Year's Model
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)

Midsomer Murders: Country Matters
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)

Midsomer Murders: Four Funerals and a Wedding
2006
100min
(John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark, Laura Howard)

Two Fat Ladies: Series 3
1997
3hrs 22min
(Jennifer Paterson, Clarissa Dickson Wright)
(Benedictine Nuns, The Pony Club, The Cambridge Eight, Barristers, The Air Race, Lock Keepers, A Caribbean Christmas)

May

I feel a newer life in every gale;
The winds, that fan the flowers,
And with their welcome breathings fill the sail,
Tell of serener hours-
Of hours that glide unfelt away
Beneath the sky of May.

The spirit of the gentle south-wind calls
From his blue throne of air,
And where his whispering voice in music falls,
Beauty is budding there;
The bright ones of the valley break
Their slumbers, and awake.

The waving verdure rolls along the plain,
And the wide forest weaves,
To welcome back its playful mates again,
A canopy of leaves;
And from its darkening shadows floats
A gush of trembling notes.

Fairer and brighter spreads the reign of May;
The tresses of the woods
With the light dallying of the west-wind play;
And the full-brimming floods,
As gladly to their goal they run,
Hail the returning sun.

-J.G. Percival

Dancing

Wide sleeves sway.
Scents,
Sweet scents
Incessantly coming.

It is red lilies,
Lotus lilies,
Floating up,
And up,
Out of autumn mist.

Thin clouds
Puffed, 
Fluttered,
Blown on a rippling wind
Through a mountain pass.

Young willow shoots
Touching,
Brushing
The water
Of the garden pool

-Yang Kuei-Fei
([from China] translated by Florence Ayscough & Amy Lowell)

Spring's Arrival

All the birds have come again,
Hear the happy chorus!
Robin, bluebird, on the wing,
Thrush and wren this message bring.
Spring will soon come marching in,
Come with joyous singing.

-A Folk Poem (from Germany)

Red Heart Super Saver in Icelandic (single crochet, size M crochet hook)