'Another Blue Day'

One of my favourite books when I was young was Phyllis Garrard's 'Hilda New Zealand Schoolgirl' I bought the 1960s reprint with my own pocket money, it cost 5/- and it was really thick! The Hilda stories were written in the 1930s and I loved them and read them over and over again. When my parents moved house whilst I was at university, my Mother - not the most sensitive of people - thought she might as well get rid of my childhood books. So Hilda went. I spent years in second hand book shops looking for the familiar pale turquoise binding. Then about ten years ago I found her again. A kind bookshop in Sidney Australia sent her to me.

Re-reading the stories was truly weird. It is true that your brain contains every thing you have ever experienced, I found thankfully that I still loved Hilda, but more than that. I found she had entered my consiousness and never left. Some of the things I say and think are a direct 'lift' from her.

There is one chapter called 'Another Blue Day' - a quote from a Thomas Carlyle poem which became a popular hymn. We often sang it at school, I loved the words and I loved the music. I can give you the words at least.

Today

So here hath been dawning
Another blue day:
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away?

Out of Eternity
This new day is born:
In to Eternity
At night will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did:
So soon it forever
From all eyes is hid.

Here hath been dawning
Another blue day:
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away

Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881

It's very 'Scottish work ethic' just like Carlyle himself. But I never open the curtains on a beautiful morning like today without thinking of it.

Hare

From the stationary train, stopping for a moment
at points, I see a large hare
loping slowly over the iron rails of a frozen field.

Dropping on its haunches, it too pauses,
cleft lip and nose quivering delicately
picking up the faintest trace of musk.

Glancing this way and that, ears pivoting
it crosses the waves and furrows of glinting earth
until a second hare appears, smaller and paler than the first.

Is this an annual tryst I wonder
an old buck and his middle aged mate
this field, this date, this late February?

Together they head off
Leggy and ungainly
towards the cover of the hedge.

Spring quickens. Blood stirs.
Above the frost, the sky a perfect blue.
Below, the ground creaks with longing.

copyright Liz Woods 2010

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Robert Herrick 1591-1674

Narcissus 'Cheerfulness' (2) 13 April 2010

Narcissus 'Cheerfulness' (1) 13 April 2010

Fritillaria meleagris 13 April 2010

Erithronium grandiflorum 13 April 2010