01 November 2010
15 October 2010
16 January 2010
10 October 2009
22 September 2009
Nightingales
Staying with friends in Suffolk last weekend I heard the rare, mellifluous tones of a Nightingale at around 1am. It was wonderfully evocative of a romantic, unsullied rural old England that probably existed only in the imaginations of poets and idealistic landscape artists. But for me at least, that fleeting vision of a timeless Arcadia was real enough. Then again, I was seven sheets to the wind. Sceptics will scoff and assume that all I heard was a blackbird or songthrush confused by a bright streelight. Some birds it is true, sing throughout the night (a clear breach of the avian worktime directive if you ask me) but our friends' house is in deepest, darkest countryside where there are no streetlights. So there. It was a Nightingale. You can hear a brief snippet of its song and find out more about this shy, retiring, unremarkable-looking bird by clicking here.
And for your general edification here's Keats' famous Ode written in May 1819:
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in 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 cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?
Poetry Collection: 'Greenwich Reach'
The collections: 'Shorelines' by Robert Cole; 'Generations' by Sean Coughlan; and 'Timesliced' by Matthew Wall, explore themes of love, loss, family, memory and nature, with wit, warmth and pathos.
Quote from Alan Bennett about 'Greenwich Reach': "Thank you for sending me your poems which I enjoyed and (high praise this) understood. I particularly liked 'Timesliced' and 'The Outing' - my sort of subject too I suppose..."
Known loosely as 'The Ashburnham Group' - principally, if bathetically, because they often meet in The Ashburnham Arms in Greenwich, South East London - Cole, Coughlan and Wall share much in common. They are all in their 40s, all family men, all journalists & writers, and all slightly overweight.
To order your copy of 'Greenwich Reach' (£10 plus £2 post and packaging, 64 pages, 42 poems) you can buy online now using PayPal. Just click on the button above and follow the instructions.
For more information about the Ashburnham Group please email greenwichreach@o2.co.uk.
Why 'Greenwich Reach'?
The authors live in the Deptford/Greenwich area of South East London and are great admirers of T.S. Eliot. In his famous poem, The Wasteland, this extract appears:
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
(from The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot)
'Greenwich Reach' seemed an apt title for their collection.
02 July 2009
18 April 2007
09 October 2006
Knole House Deer Park
Admiring the large, skittish herds of Fallow deer roaming the grounds of Knole House in Kent, I was surprised not to see a stag or two around the place. Leaving the paths and tramping through the bracken we entered a dark wood. There, lying peacefully and almost invisibly in the centre - far from the madding crowd - was the stag. Unfortunately the light was too dim to take sharp photos without flash. I kept creeping closer until he eventually stirred himself and walked away in disgust. I also came across some huge mushrooms/toadstools, bracket fungus and wonderful tree bark textures in the grounds. Click here to have a look.
13 September 2006
Music by 'Rude Lucy'
Please feel free to download this album 'Enchanted' by Rude Lucy, one of my earlier musical collaborations. All the tracks are downloadable at 128kbps quality (roughly 3MB to 5MB per track), so a broadband connection is advisable.
Just click on the link to play the track or right-click and choose 'save target as' to save to another location.
All tracks written by Matt Wall, except 'Be My Lover', by Alison Jeremy.
Download 03_so_easy_for_you.mp3
