La Rondine

One of my favourite operatic arias - Kiri Te Kanawa in the famous aria from Puccini's La Rondine - Chi il bel sogno di Doretta. Click the heading to hear a rough recording made after lunch from Philip Wetton's DVD.

For comparison - and for a more professional video of the singer, see Angela Gheorghiu's version here

Love

Love, that is the first and last of all things made
The light that has the living world for shade
...
Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,
Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,
That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;
Love, that is root and fruit of terrene things;
Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,
The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;
Love, that what time his own hands guard his head
The whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead;
Love, that if once his own hands make his grave
The whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save;
Love, that for very life shall not be sold,
Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold;
So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell,
Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell;
So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,
Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven;
Love that is fire within thee and light above,
And lives by grace of nothing but of love;
Through many and lovely thoughts and much desire
Led these twain to the life of tears and fire;
Through many and lovely days and much delight
Led these twain to the lifeless life of night.

Swinburne - Tristram and Iseult

The Quiet Reaches of the Thames Below Henley

Favourite Places

A new one - St Emilion. No wonder it's a World Heritage Site




And every lovely spot needs a lovely hotel - and this has one of the best - the Hostellerie de Plaisance, at the base of the tower on top of St Emilion

Luxmoore's Garden

My half-brother, Fuff, has some interesting ancestors including the Eton housemaster HE Luxmoore who created a lovely garden on Tangier island in the Thames just beside the Chapel. It's accessible only to masters and senior boys and retains its mystery and seclusion

England's Floods

Let's hope this thing still works.....

Favourite Places

Another favourite place. Any ideas?

Favourite Places - Old Winchester Hill

Kei running up Old Winchester Hill with Stocks cottages behind her - harvest time 1993. Click here for another photo taken of the cottages (in 1998) from a similar viewpoint

Memorials

Litchfield Churchyard

And while we are about memorials, this inscription by Thomas Carew
on Lady Mary Wentworth's tomb has always seemed to me to be an
admirable way to be remembered

Good to the poor, to kindred dear
To servants kind, to friendship clear
To nothing but herself severe

But click the heading for a short biography of Mary Wentworth and
wonder if she quite merited this epitaph

War Memorials

The War Cloister at Winchester College

A beautiful war poem, inscribed on the War Cloisters at Winchester College:

Polliciti Meliora

As one who, gazing on a vista
Of beauty, sees the clouds close in,
And turns his back in sorrow, hearing
The thunderclouds begin,

So we, whose life was all before us,
Our hearts with sunlight filled,
Left in the hills our books and flowers,
Descended, and were killed.

Write on the stone no words of sadness -
Only the gladness due,
That we, who asked the most of living,
Knew how to give it too.

Frank Thompson (Coll, 1933-1938)*
Click the heading for more photos from the War Cloisters

On a war memorial in a British cemetery on the island of Vis in the Adriatic

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, and we were young.

AE Houseman

Then Abraham bound the lad with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son -
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

Thomas Hardy - At Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'

*Thompson volunteered although under age and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1940, subsequently serving in the GHQ Liaison Regiment in Libya, Persia, Iran and Sicily. Parachuted into Yugoslavia, he was ambushed in May 1944 with a group of Bulgarian partisans near Sofia. Although he was wearing uniform when captured, he was treated as a spy. 'Tried' at Litakovo, he defended himself in fluent Bulgarian condemning Fascism. He was shot on 10 June 1944. Thompson had a working knowledge of nine European languages. This poem compares with the best of the First World War. The title is Latin, and means 'having promised better things'.