Pick up!

Tags

anti-social behaviour, dog walkers, environmental care, fouling, poo bags

Seen on one of my walks last week. Take note, poo-ligans!

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Teach Me To Number My Days

Tags

insight, Isolation, meditation, pandemic, questioning, self-analysis

Image: Abacus HB Wikipedia

Weirdly I wrote this in 2019, before the pandemic. It seems appropriate now…

TEACH

Life has many lessons: what have I learned?

Maybe I should not have stayed in teaching.

Who was doing the teaching anyway?

And can one really teach old dogs new tricks?

 

ME

Too much of my life has been about me.

You might be a much better focus now.

Yesterday’s me is different from today’s.

You are a different companion too.

 

TO NUMBER

 

I decided to try and work it out.

Crusoe should have had a calculator!

They say that age is only a number.

Twenty four thousand days I have wasted.

 

MY DAYS

 

I seek forgiveness for those I have spent

in self-serving; not in others’ service.

Often I did not stand up; be counted,

but I reach out to you through poetry.

 

TEACH ME TO NUMBER MY DAYS

 

Numbering can be about gratitude –

that we are here, albeit so briefly.

Rossetti enumerated her love.

Noah counted pairs solicitously.

 

 

We count the minutes on The Doomsday Clock:

to reach midnight, we only count to two.

Teach me to number all the days I’ve left,

thus I will eke out all my time with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Friday by John Donne

Tags

crucifixion, Good Friday, John Donne, Metaphysical poets, salvation, St Paul’s Cathedral, the cross

John Donne’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral ( in his shroud)

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

 

By John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other Spheares, by being growne

Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:

Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit

For their first mover, and are whirld by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.

There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,

And by that setting endlesse day beget;

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,

Sinne had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for mee.

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;

What a death were it then to see God dye?

It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,

It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,

And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?

Could I behold that endlesse height which is

Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,

Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne

By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

If on these things I durst not looke, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus

Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They’are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turne my backe to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,

Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

 

Exhortation

Tags

exhortation, love thy neighbour, Scottish Makar, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Scottish poet, Ten Commandments, William Dunbar

William Dunbar 15th century Scottish poet. 

Photo by Stephen C Dickson (Wikimedia)

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

 

To God be humble,

to thy friend be kind

and with thy neighbour, gladly lend and borrow;

his chance tonight,

it may be thine tomorrow.

Social Distancing (Alpaca style)

Tags

alpacas, coronavirus, social distancing

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

You Want Rembrandt – You Got Rembrandt!

Tags

Ashmolean, portraits, Rembrandt, Young Rembrandt

From the recent Young Rembrandt Exhibition.  Photos by Candia.

The Young Rembrandt, Ashmolean

Tags

Ashmolean, influences, Oxford, portraits, Rembrandt

                        Managed to see this before self-isolation.  So, will post all my

                       photos in groups of 6 or so, in order that you can all see the

                      delights that may not be available now for some time.

Cirencester’s Banksy

Tags

Banksy, Cirencester, health advice, street art

St James the Great, South Leigh

Tags

Doom, John Wesley, Mary, Oxfordshire, rosary, South Leigh, St James the Great church, wall paintings

Oxfordshire.  Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart.

These were whitewashed and when John Wesley preached here in

his early days, he would not have been able to see them.

Poem to follow- next post.

Magdalen College, Oxford

Tags

Magdalen College, Oxford

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart