Torrent of light and river of the air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!
The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen
Of his celestial armor, on serene
And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
Of Phaeton’s wild course, that scorched the skies
Where’er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;
But the white drift of worlds o’er chasms of sable,
The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies
From the invisible chariot-wheels of God
Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remember’d not.
Heigh-ho! sing, etc.
From Act II, Scene 7, As You Like It by William Shakespeare.
Well, there you have it. England’s cricketers finally won the final Test of the Ashes series in Sydney by an innings and 83 runs, to win the series outright. It has been a wonderful performance by the England team down under which has warmed the cold English (and Welsh) winter.
Commiserations to Australian cricket fans. Their team just wasn’t as good as England, with bat or ball. They have a lot of rebuilding to do, but you can be sure they’ll be back challenging for the Ashes again before long.
I thought I’d put up a poem to celebrate. This one is called The Game and was written by John Groves. It represents an idyllic view of what many English crickets fans surely regard as the match of any season – the Lord’s Test – which we can now look forward to with relish in the summer. However, I chose this poem for this occasion primarily because of the final couplet which takes us far beyond the boundaries of St John’s Wood.
A painter’s sky over Lord’s. A gentle zephyr, blowing without brace,
The crowd engaged in all that joy affords
And England batting with admired grace.
The sun ablaze, an unforgiving pitch,
A bowler with a patriotic itch,
A ticking scoreboard and a close-run thing,
A resolute gull, high on a drowsy wing.
Though one team triumph, victory’s all the same:
The winner is the beauty of the game.
I should really have posted this before the snow vanished, but I forgot about it..
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands–
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness–to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
I couldn’t resist a short post to mark the success of England’s cricketers down under in successfully retaining The Ashes. After getting themselves comprehensively thrashed in the Third Test of the Ashes series in Perth, to tie the level the series 1-1 (with one match drawn), the pressure was on when the Fourth Test started on Boxing Day in Melbourne. However, it all seemed to get to the Australians more than the English: Australia were dismissed for a paltry 98 after being put into bat by England captain Andrew Strauss who won the toss. England finished the day on 157 without loss, with defeat for Australia already probable at stumps on the opening day. England batted all the second day and a bit of the third, amassing 513 all out, and then had Australia 169 for 6 at the end of Day Three. Although the last few Australian batsmen showed a bit of spirit on Day Four, they were eventually all out for 258, leaving England the victors by an innings and 157 runs, their second innings victory of the series.
Now they are 2-1 up in the series with one Test to play (at Sydney), which means they can’t lose the series and therefore keep the Ashes, which they won in England last year (2009). I hope England keep their focus and go on to win at Sydney too. I’d like to see them win the series outright. Incidentally, if I’ve done my sums right, Australia have now won 123 Ashes tests since the first in 1882, to England’s 99, so if England can win in Sydney it will be their 100th.
My Australian friends and colleagues will be wincing at this outcome, but although England have proved worthy winners this time I’m sure Australia will be back to winning ways before too long. As an English cricket fan, I’ve endured enough disappointments to make this victory especially sweet. I dare say when the Australians do reclaim the Ashes at some point in the future their supporters will feel the same. As it is in life, so it is in cricket – the good times make the bad times worth enduring.
I thought I’d mark this very special occasion with a poem called Brahma by Andrew Lang. It’s a clever parody of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the reference to Hinduism seems to fit with the theme of a cyclic universe of sporting success and failure.
If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he’s bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They too shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.
Back from the Frozen North, after a very enjoyable but over-indulgent Christmas, I just thought I’d pop on line to say hello to the blogosphere again.
I flew up to Newcastle in the late afternoon on Christmas Eve from Cardiff airport via an airline called Eastern Airways which operates the only direct flight on that route. I booked the flight some time ago, as I was a bit nervous it might fill up given the annual chaos on the railways over the holiday. As it turned out, the outbound flight on Christmas Eve had only five passengers on it; the return, yesterday, just six. Obviously they’re not making a lot of money on this route!
The plane was a small propeller-driven affair which can seat a maximum of 29 passengers. I thought I’d get a nice picture of the sunset at Cardiff as we took off, but unfortunately the vibration of the engines made that quite difficult, as you can see from the blurry effort shown above. Despite the inclement weather and the snow and ice at both airports, outward and return flights kept immaculately to schedule.
Newcastle was cold and snowbound so me and my folks stayed in, ate and drank a lot, lounged around watching a bit of telly here and there, warmed by news of the cricket from Melbourne (of which more, hopefully, tomorrow!) and were otherwise entertained by their cats Tilly, Daisy and Lucy. It was very pleasant but the combination of eating and drinking too much and not taking much exercise has no doubt left me quite a few pounds heavier. I haven’t plucked up courage to weigh myself yet.
Anyway, I got back safely yesterday evening and said hello to Columbo (who, incidentally, is doing fine). Pretty much as soon as I got into the house it started raining, which it did most of the night. The thaw is definitely in full swing, and soon quite a few of my neighbours will no doubt be out doing repairs. Several lengths of guttering have fallen off various houses on my street, pulled down by the weight of accumulated snow and ice. There’s now also much less danger of me falling over on the slippery pavements like I did just before Christmas. Why can’t that happen when there’s nobody watching? It’s so embarrassing…
I’m not so foolish as to think that the melting of this lot of snow means that winter is over, but the thaw did remind me of this nice little poem by Edward Thomas, yet another Welsh poet and yet another killed during the First World War, in his case in 1917 at the Battle of Arras.
OVER the land half freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed, And saw from elm-tops, delicate as a flower of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass.
I hope you don’t mind me digging into my poetry collection for today’s post. It’s the last week of term and the days are so manic with so much to do I’m struggling to find time to post anything original. This poem, Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson, comes from the file marked “uplifting”. Like many great poems it works on several levels. It’s a scholarly treatment, with references to Virgil, Homer, and even Shakespeare. It carries a universal message not to surrender meekly to the advancing years. Above all, though, it’s a dramatic monologue, its forceful use of language, for my money, the match for anything in Shakespeare. If any poem needs to be read out loud to be enjoyed, this is it…
It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers; Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breath were life. Life piled on life Were all to little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the scepter and the isle Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old; Old age had yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in the old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are, One equal-temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
And I couldn’t resist putting this little clip of the late John Gielgud‘s majestic reading of the last few measures. Forget the fact that it’s from a commercial for a bank and, in my opinion, is nearly ruined by completely unnecessary and intrusive musical accompaniment, just listen to the words and how Gielgud (near the end of his own life) gets perfectly inside their meaning. There’s none of Dylan Thomas’ “rage against the dying of the light” here, just a dignified refusal to surrender. Listen to the way he speaks “..until I die”, and you’ll understand what I mean.
They enter as animals from the outer
Space of holly where spikes
Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,
But greenness, darkness so pure
They freeze and are.
O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.
Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.
What I love is
The piston in motion —-
My soul dies before it.
And the hooves of the horses,
Their merciless churn.
And you, great Stasis —-
What is so great in that!
Is it a tiger this year, this roar at the door?
It is a Christus,
The awful
God-bit in him
Dying to fly and be done with it?
The blood berries are themselves, they are very still.
The hooves will not have it,
In blue distance the pistons hiss.
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In the Dark 