Join us to share some of the fun and vitality of the Parade this afternoon, Saturday 30th April, despite the date on the photos! It was brilliant to be able to be here this year and to get caught up in the excitement and jollity
As well as the parade, there are streets full of beautiful art work for sale, scrumptious food and drink all accompanied by live music.
Both of these I would have loved to have bought but taking home would sadly be impossible. Tonight is Theatre Night…….
Let me take you on a brief walk in Inman Park, Atlanta, taking in the mini libraries, some flowers and a sculpture.
We passed a chattering tree and realised that we were too close to a pair of Mocking birds and their nest.
The mocking bird brought to mind the lullaby, Mama’s going to buy you a mocking bird, which is an old Southern US lullaby, appropriate given where we are right now.
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don’t sing,
Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring
And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass.
And if that looking glass is broke,
Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat,
And if that billy goat won’t pull,
Mama’s gonna buy you a cart and a bull.
And if that cart and bull turn over,
Mama’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover.
And if that dog named Rover won’t bark,
Mama’s gonna buy you a horse and a cart.
And if that horse and cart fall down,
Today’s poem is by Jenny Joseph, well known for her poem, ‘When I am an old woman’. I love the joy in this one and am lucky enough to feel like this about my man.
The sun has burst the sky Because I love you And the river its banks.
The sea laps the great rocks Because I love you And takes no heed of the moon dragging it away And saying coldly ‘Constancy is not for you’. The blackbird fills the air Because I love you With spring and lawns and shadows falling on lawns.
The people walk in the street and laugh I love you And far down the river ships sound their hooters Crazy with joy because I love you.
Today is Shakespeare’s birthday and, as it happens the 400th anniversary of his death. Some beautiful commemorative stamps have been issued in his honour and I just had to have a complete set of them.
Beautiful commemorative stamps
On Monday we start our journey to America for a family visit and then a road trip from Atlanta through the Appalachian Mountains along the Blue Ridge Parkway into the Shenandoah Valley and then on to Washington. Am I excited? Oh yes! You can travel along with us through my blog if you would like to though I doubt I will be posting every day. So, today we had to go to the sea as we won’t be seeing the sea for three weeks.
I used to tell my dubious teenagers that love at first sight, or love at first sonnet as here, is really possible. It happened to us across a crowded room in October 1966 and we have been together ever since. I love how Romeo and Juliet begin to intertwine their words as their first love engulfs them.
ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
My Sister-in-law sent me Shakespeare’s Obituary which was in The New York Times today. It is very entertaining. Thanks V.
This month, I am accompanying each post with a poem to acknowledge National Poetry Month. As this photo is of the sun, here I give you another favourite, this one being by John Donne – a love song,
The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys and sour ‘prentices, Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams, so reverend and strong Why shoulds’t thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long; If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and tomorrow late, tell me, Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me? Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, ‘All here in one bed lay.’
She’s all states, and all princes, I; Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus; Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here, to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.
My next post will be in honour of Shakespeare whose birthday it is today. It is also 400 years since his death, on the day that he became 52.
Catching up with a fellow blogger, Unexpectedincommonhours, I found this delightful video which sums up my philosophy too. As she says, it may be a children’s song, but it is a good way to live. Debs also had this quotation – perfect. Thank you.
I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition. (Martha Washington)
I love how dead Hydrangea flowers are so delicate and still so lovely. Appropriately I found this one in St Euny Churchyard in among the Bluebells. It is Earth Day today and here is a beautiful poem celebrating nature by Rudyard Kipling, “The Way Through The Woods”. What a lyrical evocation of the beauty to be found….
THEY shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a path through the woods Before they planted the trees: It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ring’d pools Where the otter whistles his mate (They fear not men in the woods Because they see so few), You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods … But there is no road through the woods.
As well as the parade, there are streets full of beautiful art work for sale, scrumptious food and drink all accompanied by live music. 
