John Constable - The Young Waltonians, Felix Mendelssohn - Spring Song, Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnet 14

John Constable manages to get a lot of action into his paintings - everything from the sky to the many varied characters he places in them, as well as the cluttered foregrounds so typical of his paintings. This looks like a fun bit of river to kayak or canoe on or maybe just fish or wade. 

The Young Waltonians

I think the title the Young Waltonians refers to English writer, Izaak Walton's book, The Compleat Angler which is "a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse".

Here is a link where this painting can be enlarged and studied in detail.

This week we'll listen to Felix Mendelssohn's Spring Song.  Here in Northern Minnesota we have a while to wait yet, but I'm ready for a little Spring, how about you? 

Elizabeth Barrett wrote love poems for Robert Browning and after they married he convinced her to publish them. She published them under the name of Sonnets from the Portuguese as if she had translated them, but they were really her own.  Here is sonnet 14 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

If thou must love me, let it be for nought   
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,   
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way   
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought   
That falls in well with mine, and Certes brought 
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—   
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may   
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,   
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for   
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: 
A creature might forget to weep, who bore   
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!   
But love me for love's sake, that evermore   
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.