Where the Spirit Shall Bask in the Summer of Heaven

'Tis the Last Day of Summer

'Tis the last day of Summer,
    Now fading away,
As behind yon blue mountain,
    The sun hides its ray;
And the low breeze is sighing,
    So chilly and drear,
That, methinks, the wood whispers,
    Stern Autumn is near!

'Tis the last day of Summer,
    And sad is the smile,
That now lights up the gloom,
    Where it lingers awhile;
Whilst the cloud that is wreathing,
    So gaily the west,
But reveals by its brightness,
    The tempest's dark crest.

'Tis the last day of Summer,
    And fleet as its ray,
Hath departed, so fleetly,
    Doth life speed away!
But beyond this drear gloom,
    Is a resting place given,
Where the spirit shall bask,
    In the summer of Heaven.

T.J.S., 1836
Frederick County, Aug. 31st, 1836.

First Day of Summer, Northern Hemisphere, 2024

  
The Woods in Summer

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amidst some sylvan scene,
Where the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen,
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves,
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

- Longfellow


It is only in heaven that Christians shall find metaphorically 
the abiding beauty of spring, 
the recurring enjoyment of summer,
the constant fruition of autumn. 
There, the redeemed shall have no winter at all. Because  they shall have the ever shining Sun of Righteousness, 
and invariably the river of nourishing Living Water.

May, In Green, the Colour of Our Hope

Waterway, Amsterdam, NL

  
Praise God to-day His choice hath been 
To clothe the lovely world in green, 
To-day when every grass-blade shows 
More finely than the opening rose: 

To-day when chestnut leaves half-spread 
Feed the starved soul with daily bread, 
When poplar-trees are emerald spears, 
And thorn-trees bring the happy tears. 

What other colours, rose or white, 
Should so support us, so delight? 
What blues or violets so brim o'er 
The cup of sweets to hold no more? 

Year after year when May comes in, 
To clothe the tender world in green, 
And set the fairy arches up 
In green, the colour of our hope, 

When every branch begins to blow 
Lightly as to an emerald snow, 
I praise God that He chose the green 
To wrap our lovely mother in. 

- Katharine Tynan Hinkson (1859-1931)

Then Came Hot July, Boiling Like to Fire

Moments ago, I took this picture of a freezer thermometer in the shaded garage. The thermometer reading maxed out at 90°F. It is hotter still outside of the house. It is 104°F at this writing. I am not quite naked as Spenser intoned (ha ha). Nevertheless, few verses of his came to mind on this first day of July.

"Then came hot July, boiling like to fire,
That all his garments he had cast away;
Upon a lion raging yet with ire
He boldly rode, and made him to obey."

Wherewithal the Seasonable Month Endows

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
      Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in the embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
      Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild;
      White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
                  And mid-May's wildest child,
      The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

—John Keat

Love Make Anew This Throbbing Heart

Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;
Love makes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers,
I see the summer glow,
And through the wild-piled snowdrift
The warm rosebuds below.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

What Matter Though the Sky Be Gray?

What matter if the sun be lost? 
What matter though the sky be gray? 
There's joy enough about the house, 
For Daffodil comes home to stay. 

- Bliss Carman, 1921

Autumn Shyly Shaking Hands with Spring

"Governesses used to tell us that the seasons of the year each consist of three months, and of these March, April, and May make the springtime. I should like to break the symmetry, and give February to spring, which would then include February, March, April, and May. It has been said that winter is but autumn “shyly shaking hands with spring.” We will, accordingly, make winter a short link of two months—an autumnal and a vernal hand—December and January."

— Sir Francis Darwin, 1920

Who Said November’s Face Was Grim?

Who said November's face was grim? 
Who said her voice was harsh and sad? 
I heard her sing in wood paths dim, 
I met her on the shore so glad, 
So smiling, I could kiss her feet! 
There never was a month so sweet. 

—Lucy Larcom

October

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown;
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

—Emily Dickinson

The Eventide of Summer

September

Go forth at eventide, 
The eventide of summer, when the trees 
Yield their frail honors to the passing breeze,
And woodland paths with autumn tints are dyed; 
When the mild sun his paling luster shrouds 
In gorgeous draperies of golden clouds, 
Then wander forth, mid beauty and decay, 
To meditate alone—alone to watch and pray. 

—Emma C. Embury (1806-1863).

Until the Angle of Its Saffron Beam

August
 - Yury Zhivago
Boris Paternak
"In the Interlude, Poems 1945-1960"
 
 This was its promise, held to faithfully:
 The early morning sun came in this way
 Until the angle of its saffron beam
 Between the curtains and the sofa lay,
 
 And with its ochre heat it spread across
 The village houses, and the nearby wood,
 Upon my bed and on my dampened pillow
 And to the corner where the bookcase stood.
 
 Then I recalled the reason why my pillow
 Had been so dampened by those tears that fell I'd
 dreamt I saw you coming one by one
 Across the wood to wish me your farewell.
 
 You came in ones and twos, a straggling crowd ;
 Then suddenly someone mentioned a word:
 It was the sixth of August, by Old Style,
 And the Transfiguration of Our Lord.
 
 For from Mount Tabor usually this day
 There comes a light without a flame to shine,
 And autumn draws all eyes upon itself
 As clear and unmistaken as a sign.
 
 But you came forward through the tiny, stripped,
 The pauperly and trembling alder grove,
 Into the graveyard's coppice, russet-red,
 Which, like stamped gingerbread, lay there and glowed.

First Day of Summer, 2022

Summer
by John Clare (1793-1864)

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast;
She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair,
And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair;
I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,
And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May,
The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day,
And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest
In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover's breast;
I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear

That I cannot get a wink o'sleep for thinking of my dear;
I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away
Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

There Lives a Glory in These Sweet June Days

June

There lives a glory in these sweet June days 
Such as I found not in the days gone by, 
A kindlier meaning in the unclouded sky, 
A tenderer whisper in the woodland ways; 
And I have understanding of the lays, 
The birds are singing, forasmuch as I 
Have learned how love avails to satisfy 
A man's whole heart, and fills his lips with praise. 

—Percy C. Ainsworth (1873-1909)

Till That May Morn

  
Such a starved bank of moss 
Till that May morn, 
Blue ran the flash across: 
Violets were born. 

—Robert Browning

April Charm

Le Jardins de Quatre-Vents, La Malbaie, Québec

When April scatters coins of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;

When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long—
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song;

When I can hear the woodland brook,that could
Not drown a babe, with all his threatening mood:
Upon whose banks the violets make their home,
And let a few small strawberry blossoms come;

When I go forth on such a pleasant day,
One breath outdoors takes all my care away;
It goes like heavy smoke, when flames take hold
Of wood that’s green and fill a grate with gold.

- William H. Davies, 1920

First Day of Spring, 2022: And So This Emblem Shall Forever Be

Lo, Spring comes forth with all her warmth and love,
She brings sweet justice from the realms above;
She breaks the chrysalis, she resurrects the dead;
Two butterflies ascend encircling her head.
And so this emblem shall forever be
A sign of immortality.

—Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905)

Then Came Old February

Then came old February, sitting
In an old wagon, for he could not ride,
Drawn of two fishes for the season fitting,
Which through the flood before did softly slide
And swim away; yet he had by his side
His plow and harness fit to till the ground,
And tools to prune the trees, before the pride
Of hasting prime did make them bourgeon wide.

—Edmund Spenser.

1 January 2022, Local Atmospheric Conditions

Lat: 37.7° N
0657 Hours PDT
Current Conditions: 37°F/2.8°C, Cloudy
Humidity: 47%
Dew Point: 30°F
Wind: 3.0 mph

Astronomy:

1 January, 2022            Rise:        Set:
Actual Time            7:20 AM PDT  4:57 PM PDT
Civil Twilight         6:51 AM PDT  5:26 PM PDT
Nautical Twilight      6:18 AM PDT  5:59 PM PDT
Astronomical Twilight  5:46 AM PDT  6:30 PM PDT
Moon                   6:21 AM PDT  3:51 PM PDT

Waning Crescent, 1% of the moon is illuminated

Length of Visible Light 10h 35m
Length of Day 9h 36m
Tomorrow will be 00m 39s longer

21 December, 2021 - The First Day of Winter

"Winter and summer, then, were two hostile lives, and bred two separate natures. Winter was always the effort to live; summer was tropical license. Whether the children rolled in the grass, or waded in the brook, or swam in the salt ocean, or sailed in the bay, or fished for smelts in the creeks, or netted minnows in the salt-marshes, or took to the pine-woods and the granite quarries, or chased muskrats and hunted snapping-turtles in the swamps, or mushrooms or nuts on the autumn hills, summer and country were always sensual living, while winter was always compulsory learning. Summer was the multiplicity of nature; winter was school."

- Henry Adams, 1905