12 | July | 2015 | mybeautfulthings

Daily Archives: July 12, 2015

Summer Rain, Rainy Garden and Dissenters’ Burial Ground

I follow a blog called A Poem a Day which gives me great pleasure. Now I share one of Siobahn’s choices which seems most appropriate today as warm summer rain falls all day here.

The Self-playing Instrument of Water – Alice Oswald

It is the story of the falling rain
To turn into a leaf and fall again

It is the secret of a summer shower
To steal the light and hide it in a flower

And every flower a tiny tributary
That from the ground flows green and momentary

Is one of water’s wishes and this tale
Hangs in a seed head smaller than my thumbnail

If only I a passerby could pass
As clear as water through a plume of grass

To find the sunlight hidden at the tip
Turning to seed a kind of lifting raindrip

Then I might know like water how to balance
The weight of hope against the light of patience

Water which is so raw so earthy-strong
And lurks in cast iron tanks and leaks along

Drawn under gravity towards my tongue
To cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

Which is the story of the falling rain
That rises to the light and falls again.

2 Here is the view through our back window of the rain in the back garden, helping to keep everything lush.

Rain drenched garden

3 We dressed up in proper rain gear this afternoon as we wanted to visit The Dissenters’ Burial Ground in Falmouth which only opens three times a year. It was utterly fascinating and is maintained by two young men, Robert Nunn and Tom Weller, who discovered it, cleared it of its 5′ weeds, researched the history and who now share it with anyone interested. Please visit their website to find out so much more. Click on any photo in the gallery for a caption or more detail. We will have to go back to discover more. It was lovely to meet two people so passionate about their project.

A brief history

The Friends’ Group

Site plan

View through the grounds

Steps from the original entrance

Another view

In memory of Henry Jolly who died in Rio de Janeiro

One of the stones in the adjoining Jewish Cemetery.

Stone to Walter Gowenlock and ‘relict of the above’

William Lee. Next to him is his brother, Thomas, who ‘died suddenly in 1842 of a broken heart’

Rev Richard Cope and his wife who died of ‘old age’. She was 92, a great age now never mind in 1866

Rev Richard Cope

The smaller stone is to William Patterson banks who was an MD and a Naval Surgeon and his very young daughter, Mary Henrietta, who was 4 years old and ‘died suddenly’