DUE TO important family events, including a college graduation and a wedding anniversary, activity at this site has been slower than usual this past week.

                                                                    — Comments —

PDV writes:

This picture makes me almost sick. Even the stones of the building, unlike modern amenities, speak of duration and the generations that passed through its portals, that peered barely above the ledges of its windows, and danced and played in its courtyard. Sick because of the crime of modern life. Even the best seems poor in comparison. There are very few pictures today of innocence that will soften stones. I’m not an Anglophile, but I think of Blake, then of the others, the long line that goes back to Chaucer and further, ballads and songs, and the sweetness and piety of Middle English lyrics, and of stone and countryside and fields, and become an Anglophile for a while. The Victorian Era paintings in a different way are also wrenching, not only for the dress and scenes, but the faces and postures. What was it? These were small worlds. Delight was in what was at hand; even the future was small and at hand, its worth rarely doubted. They seem full of bravery in the picture, though there is nothing particular to be brave about. But brave also means fine and wonderful, as in Miranda speech in The Tempest, which probably sums up much of what I’ve been thinking: 

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!

Please follow and like us: