I spent a bit of time about a week ago, dissecting a passion fruit seed pod. Gilbert dissects a bird and finds eggs forming and food in its crop. I don’t think I could dissect a bird. I can remember one Rural Studies lesson at school where the teacher was going to dissect a rabbit. I had to leave the room. I hated the subject (RS). It was ironic that I got a grade 2 CSE in it; actually, my best exam result at school.
In letter 23 (XXIII), I wrote about observing clouds and butterflies. This week, I couldn’t help noticing the number of spider webs there are about. I can understand Gilbert waxing lyrical about the summer, but I was surprised to see his poem.
For some reason I can’t fathom, I shy away from poetry. But I feel obligated to properly read The Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk. I shall do so after finding out if the poem is in the public domain for reproduction here. Yes, it is fully in the PD.
Here it is;
By Gilbert White
The Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk
equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium. Virgil
WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo’s tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the dark’ning plain
Belated, to support her infant train;
To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring
Dash round the steeple, unsubdu’d of wing:
Amusive birds!- say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head?
Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride,
The God of Nature is your secret guide!
While deep’ning shades obscure the face of day,
To yonder bench leaf-shelter’d let us stray,
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the facing landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy beetle come brushing by
With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket cry;
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood;
To catch the distant falling of the flood;
While o’er the cliff th’awaken’d churn-owl hung
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;
While high in air, and pois’d upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft enamour’d woodlark sings:
These, Nature’s works, the curious mind employ,
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy:
As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain
Steals o’er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein!
Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine;
The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze,
Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees.
The chilling night-dews fall:–away, retire;
For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!
Thus, e’er night’s veil had half obscur’d the sky,
Th’impatient damsel hung her lamp on high:
True to the signal, by love’s meteor led,
Leander hasten’d to his Hero’s bed.
Totally unrelated to this is from the film The Monuments Men. In the film, Hugh Bonneville (who, in my eyes, will always be The Earl of Grantham) manages to get shot, and as he is dying, scribes a letter to his estranged father. To be honest, perhaps it was his voice as he was reading, but the letter really moved me. Sadly, I don’t think I can reproduce it here (it really does need Hugh’s voice) because of copyright. The poem was nice, but it didn’t move me in the same way.
I’m watching the passion fruits now, like a hawk watches for prey, looking for any state change up to and including the pods dropping. I’m going to keep a watch out next year, for when the fruits start budding. I missed that part of the process.
All the Best
Bill
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