Uffington Church, Cotswolds

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Cotswolds, Mist, octagonal tower, Oxfordshire, Uffington Church

Its octagonal tower in the mist yesterday

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Time Marches On

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Graves, Japanese poetry, memento mori

Photo of kanji by Jmettlen on Wikimedia Commons

 

Even our friends’ graves

will one day be ploughed over.

Grief diminishes

through time and we smile once more.

Calligraphy on

headstones will be eroded.

The deceased’s peers die;

his name is then forgotten.

The pines which are deemed to live

for a thousand years

are, in actual fact, chopped down –

disrespectfully,

or just pragmatically,

according to how life’s viewed.

St James the Great, South Leigh

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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

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Magdalen College, Oxford

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Bribing the Electorate in Pompeii

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Ashmolean, bribery and corruption, electorate, free lunch, Pompeii

No such thing as a free lunch!  Bread for all – in exchange for votes.

Photo by Candia from the Pompeii Exhibition @ The Ashmolean

Sacred Texts from The Weston Library

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Oxford exhibition, sacred texts, Weston Library

a recent exhibition at The Weston Library, Oxford.

St John the Baptist, Cirencester

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Anne Boleyn, Benjamin, Cirencester, communion chalice, Dissolution of Abbeys, fan vaulting, farthingale, Gethsemane, Henry VIII, Herod, Salome, St John the Baptist church, wool church, Woolsack

(Anne Boleyn’s Communion chalice, donated by Elizabeth I’s physician,

is displayed in a niche in the above.)

 

 

Had her head been brought in on a platter,

she might have seen a vaulted porch, with veins

like gills, or fine tracery of brocade;

or diagrams of a nervous system;

or skeletal frames of hooped farthingales.

That narrow windpipe staircase on the right,

constricted as her white, extended throat,

might have reminded her of a Tower

and the futility of counting steps.

 

This holy place was built on virgin wool.

It was a fold for sheep, who stood before

shearers and then were led to swift slaughter.

Here is a wine glass pulpit, slim as waists,

pre-gravid: a stem for those who could grasp.

 

A Lamb prayed such a cup would pass from Him,

but had to drink it to the bitter dregs

and she had her Gethsemane as well.

Benjamin, caught with a stolen vessel,

was offered clemency – but she had none.

Her gilt chalice, though charged with sacred blood,

conferred no immunity,  nor did it

prevent Dissolution of the Abbey.

 

Criticism of a current favourite

did John the Baptist no favours either.

But the dancer in Herod’s court was sly –

perhaps more so than this sloe-eyed woman,

who ultimately was beheaded too.

 

May, the traditional time for losing

one’s heart to one’s love, was a nuptial month,

but also a month of execution.

 

Cherry tree confetti in the graveyard,

proleptic of this afternoon’s wedding,

has already been bruised and downtrodden.

 

You may sit on a Woolsack, or a throne,

and gain the whole world, or lose your own head.

 

(The engraved acanthus decoration

evokes immortality; lineage.

Though its thorny leaves speak of sin and pain,

it was an apt gift to a physician,

from the grateful daughter of Anne Boleyn.)

 

 

 

Happy Hallowe’en from Pompeii

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Ashmolean, hallowe'en, mosaic, Pompeii, skeleton

@ The Ashmolean, Oxford

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Weepers

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Cotswold churches, Patience on a monument, Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, weepers

like Patience on a monument. (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Act 2)

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

After Rembrandt

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Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Rembrandt

photos inspired by a visit to Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow.

Have known this painting since I was a child.