Fitz Henry Lane - Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine, Henry Purcell - No Stars Again Shall Hurt You, Rose Fyleman-The Spring, John Keats - Ode to Autumn

Our Fitz Henry Lane painting this week, "Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine, is a contrast of peaceful water and sky, with the busyness of the many little details that draw your eye in and around through the picture.  Again I am drawn to the wonderful pinks and peach pastel colors in sky and water!  If you've ever tried to paint a sunset while outside you realize the challenges as the sky is constantly changing as you work. Perhaps he saved the scene and colors in his mind like Charlotte Mason taught her students to do.  I've been challenging my children to save a "picture" in their minds of something they like while on our nature outings.  I've found myself very weak in being able to retain the details of a scene in my mind.  Probably this skill needs exercise to improve, which is also one of the wonderful benefits of picture study.

Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine

 Henry Purcell - No Stars Again Shall Hurt You
If you're new to this blog, or haven't studied these yet, I would recommend you go back to the beginning posts and find some of the fun children's music we enjoyed back then, Peter and the Wolf, The Carnival of the Animals, or search for "The Creation" by Franz Joseph Haydn.  I think children would be more naturally drawn to these than to Henry Purcell's music.  

Another Rose Fyleman poem from Favorite Poems Old and New,


       The Spring

A little mountain spring I found
That fell into a pool;
I made my hands into a cup
And caught the sparkling water up--
It tasted fresh and cool.

A solemn little frog I spied
Upon the rocky brim;
He looked so boldly in my face,
I'm certain that he thought the place
Belonged by rights to him.


Our John Keats poem is full of lovely descriptions of nature in the Fall of the year - 

        Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.