Introduction and Welcome

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Friday, April 5, 2013

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer - Windsor Castle in Modern Times, Franz Schubert - Quintet in A Major, William Wordsworth - The Two April Mornings

Sir Edwin Landseer was good friends with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  The biography I read portrayed him as spending a lot of time with them and he did many paintings for them of their children and animals.  
Windsor Castle in Modern Times - Sir Edwin Henry Landseer
You can read a short biographical sketch of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer's life here.

Franz SchubertQuintet in A Major
This piece is a little longer than some - almost a half hour but it's fun to watch the musicians play.  If your children tire of watching  you can give them something to do with their hands will they listen. 

This poem  by William Wordsworth is a bit sad but so beautifully written
  
THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS

WE walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,
"The will of God be done!"

A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as yon could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,
And by the steaming rills,
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

"Our work," said I, "was well begun,
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?"

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:

"Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

"And just above yon slope of corn
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.

"With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
And, to the church-yard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter's grave.

"Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;
And then she sang;--she would have been
A very nightingale.

"Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more,
For so it seemed, than till that day
I e'er had loved before.

"And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the church-yard yew,
A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

"A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!

"No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.

"There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!"

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,
Methinks, I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding in his hand.  
 


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