22nd July – On This Day In History
Born:
1946 Danny Glover (actor)
Died:
2008 Estelle Getty (actress)
On This Day:
1775 George Washington takes command of US troops
Have a good Wednesday, 22nd July
Summer Nights
The factory siren tells workers time to go home
tells them the evening has begun.
When living with the tall man
whom I didn’t love, I would wander
the streets, dreaming of Italy.
Trekking the handful of avenues
with him, he would say look there
between pink cobblestones,
there’s manure like mortar.
The sweet smell of it Wednesday nights,
the night before auction,
when the misery of cows greets me
heading home through town.
Lake quiets, tired of my lies.
When will I tell truths again?
The siren. My love is home.
Nights, we stay in and X the days.
– Deborah Ager
http://www.aromaticcoffees.co.uk
21st July – On This Day In History
Born:
1899 Ernest Hemmingway (Nobel prize winning author)
Died:
1796 Robert Burns (Scottish poet)
On This Day:
1588 English fleet defeats the Spanish Armada
Have a good Tuesday, 21st July
A Summer Sunrise
The master-hand whose pencils trace
This wondrous landscape of the morn,
Is but the sun, whose glowing face
Reflects the rapture and the grace
Of inspiration Heaven-born.
And yet with vision-dazzled eyes,
I see the lotus-lands of old,
Where odorous breezes fall and rise,
And mountains, peering in the skies,
Stand ankle-deep in lakes of gold.
And, spangled with the shine and shade,
I see the rivers raveled out
In strands of silver, slowly fade
In threads of light along the glade
Where truant roses hide and pout.
The tamarind on gleaming sands
Droops drowsily beneath the heat;
And bowed as though aweary, stands
The stately palm, with lazy hands
That fold their shadows round his feet.
And mistily, as through a veil,
I catch the glances of a sea
Of sapphire, dimpled with a gale
Toward Colch’s blowing, where the sail
Of Jason’s Argo beckons me.
And gazing on and farther yet,
I see the isles enchanted, bright
With fretted spire and parapet,
And gilded mosque and minaret,
That glitter in the crimson light.
But as I gaze, the city’s walls
Are keenly smitten with a gleam
Of pallid splendor, that appalls
The fancy as the ruin falls
In ashen embers of a dream.
Yet over all the waking earth
The tears of night are brushed away,
And eyes are lit with love and mirth,
And benisons of richest worth
Go up to bless the new-born day.
– James Whitcomb Riley
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20th July – On This Day In History
Born:
1919 Sir Edmund Hilary (Everest mountaineer)
Died:
1937 Guglielmo Marconi (inventor, Nobel winner)
On This Day:
1969 First men on the moon (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin)
Have a good Monday, 20th July
Indian Summer
A soft veil dims the tender skies,
And half conceals from pensive eyes
The bronzing tokens of the fall;
A calmness broods upon the hills,
And summer’s parting dream distills
A charm of silence over all.
The stacks of corn, in brown array,
Stand waiting through the placid day,
Like tattered wigwams on the plain;
The tribes that find a shelter there
Are phantom peoples, forms of air,
And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.
At evening when the crimson crest
Of sunset passes down the West,
I hear the whispering host returning;
On far-off fields, by elm and oak,
I see the lights, I smell the smoke,–
The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.
– Henry Van Dyke
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19th July – On This Day In History
Born:
1947 Brian May (member of the band Queen)
Died:
2013 Mel Smith (comedian)
On This Day:
1553 Lady Jane Grey (aged 15) deposed from the English throne after only 9 days
Have a good Sunday, 19th June
A Summer Afternoon
A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
Break in crisp whispers at my feet.
My book, neglected of an idle mind,
Hides for a moment from the eyes of men;
Or lightly opened by a critic wind,
Affrightedly reviews itself again.
Off through the haze that dances in the shine
The warm sun showers in the open glade,
The forest lies, a silhouette design
Dimmed through and through with shade.
A dreamy day; and tranquilly I lie
At anchor from all storms of mental strain;
With absent vision, gazing at the sky,
“Like one that hears it rain.”
The Katydid, so boisterous last night,
Clinging, inverted, in uneasy poise,
Beneath a wheat-blade, has forgotten quite
If “Katy DID or DIDN’T” make a noise.
The twitter, sometimes, of a wayward bird
That checks the song abruptly at the sound,
And mildly, chiding echoes that have stirred,
Sink into silence, all the more profound.
And drowsily I hear the plaintive strain
Of some poor dove . . . Why, I can scarcely keep
My heavy eyelids–there it is again–
“Coo-coo!”–I mustn’t–“Coo-coo!”–fall asleep!
– James Whitcomb Riley
http://www.aromaticcoffees.co.uk
18th July – On This Day In History
Born:
1918 Nelson Mandela (South African leader)
Died:
1817 Jane Austin (English novelist)
On This Day:
64 Great Fire of Rome begins
Have a good Saturday, 18th July
Farm Boys After Summer
A seated statue of himself he seems.
A bronze slowness becomes him. Patently
The page he contemplates he doesn’t see.
The lesson, the long lesson, has been summer.
His mind holds summer, as his skin holds sun.
For once the homework, all of it, was done.
What were the crops, where were the fiery fields
Where for so many days so many hours
The sun assaulted him with glittering showers.
Expect a certain absence in his presence.
Expect all winter long a summer scholar,
For scarcely all its snows can cool that color.
– Robert Francis
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