Fitz Henry Lane -Fresh Water Cove from Dolliver's Neck, Gloucester, Henry Purcell - The duke of Glouster's Trumpet suite - the King's Consort, Rose Fyleman - I stood Against the Window,

Are you enjoying the paintings by Fitz Henry Lane? Today's painting is a lovely, serene water scene with sailboats.  This painting is divided roughly into thirds if you count the cloud mass with the land on the far side of the cove.  When laying out a painting you want to avoid placing your horizon in the center - it needs to be above or below the center - thirds is ideal.  

Fresh Water Cove from Dolliver's Neck, Gloucester

Today's music by Henry Purcell features trumpet -The Duke of Glouster's Trumpet Suite - the King's Consort.

Another fun fairy poem by Rose Fyleman this week:

I Stood Against The Window -

 I stood against the window

And looked between the bars,
And there were strings of fairies

Hanging from the stars;
Everywhere and everywhere

In shining, swinging chains;
The air was full of shimmering,

Like sunlight when it rains.

They kept on swinging, swinging,

They flung themselves so high
They caught upon the pointed moon

And hung across the sky.
And when I woke next morning,

There still were crowds and crowds
In beautiful bright bunches
All sleeping on the clouds. 


And our poem this week by John Keats is 

        Ode to Melancholy

1.
No, no! go not to Lethe*, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine*;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

2.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, 
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

3.
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran* shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung. 

* Lethe is the river that runs through Hades or the underworld and its goddess.  It was the stream of oblivion or the personification of forgetfulness.
* Proserpine - see Wikipedia article 
*Sovran -  alteration of sovereign