August 16, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
“For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”
Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic Explorer and Geologist.
August 3, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
The winter landscape hangs in balance now,
Sylvia Plath
Transfixed by glare of blue from gorgon’s eye;
The skaters freese within a stone tableau.
Air alters into glass and the whole sky
Grows brittle as a tilted china bowl;
Hill and valley stiffen row on row.
What coutermagic can undo the snare
Which has stopped the season in its tracks
And suspended all that might occur?
July 30, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
Robert Louis Stevenson
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding-cake.
July 21, 2019 Filed under Amused, Inspiration
“Bloody explorers. Ponce off to mumbo-jumbo land and arrive home with a tropical disease, a suntan, and a bag of brown lumpy things, and Bob’s your uncle and everyone’s got a picture of them in the lavatory. I mean, what about all the people who do all the work?”
Edmund Blackadder
July 18, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
Once as I told in glee
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendor.