Tag Archives: William Morris

Great Coxwell’s Barn

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Architecture, Bible, Community, History, Nostalgia, Poetry, Religion, Social Comment, Writing

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(Photo: Ballista: Wikipaedia)

 

Great Coxwell’s Barn

 

Off Hollow Way stands this vast, vacant barn:

huge receptacle for Cistercian tithes,

garnered from tenant farmers – a dry store,

where the granger checked accounts; did not trust

his hired servants.  Here Cotswold riches

were protected from thieves and from decay.

 

Christ had warned disciples about decay

and storing up of surplus in a barn.

Christians were always meant to share riches

and not to extract profit from fat tithes.

The parable’s ‘fool’ was he whose whole trust

was in possessions.  He had wrath in store.

 

Henry VIII would plunder a marked store

and most abbeys were subject to decay.

Monastic wealth was held in deep distrust.

Though Morris praised this cathedral-like barn,

Pre-Raphaelites would not restore tithes;

they venerated aesthetic riches.

 

We coveted colonial riches

and viewed the whole world as potential store,

compelling other countries to pay tithes;

forgetting moth and rust would cause decay.

What were the treasures we stored in our barn?

We’ll reap what we sowed: we abused faith, trust.

 

Joseph, in whom Pharoah had put his trust,

managed underground silos of riches

and, when his brothers came – not to a barn-

but to the pits where corn was kept in store,

did they recall they’d left him to decay

in such a space?  (He who asked no tithes.)

 

 

This massive hulk, once packed with peasant tithes,

now supported by The National Trust,

mouldered with neglect; died of decay,

until ‘heritage’ was seen as riches.

What are the values we would like to store?

Should we maintain the past?  Convert the barn?

 

Some build barns with their family riches,

but tithes benefited community,

as long as mutual trust did not decay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News From Nowhere

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in art, Arts, Literature, mythology, Nostalgia, Photography, Poetry, Psychology, Relationships, Romance, Writing

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The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinever...

(The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere

by Julia Margaret Cameron)

 

Since I live in the vicinity of Kelmscott now, here is an

old poem, re-blogged…

 

William:

I raised a latch of a door in the wall

and immediately knew this was home.

The garden’s rosy superabundance

was a mille-fleurs embroidery stitching

raucous cawing of rooks from those high elms, the

swifts wheeling, doves’ cooing and blackbird song.

A mulberry tree was central. Pastel

hollyhocks nodded their welcome and men

scythed reeds and floated them down the river

under the willow trees’ gray-green flickers.

Lead waterspouts were limply supported

from the mellow masonry and woodworm

pricked the panelling. I felt not sadness,

but a beauty born of melancholy.

Leaving my charcoal overcoat downstairs,

I inspected the quaint garrets where once

tillers and herdsmen slept under the eaves.

The sloping floorboards creaked under my feet.

I realised she had never loved me.

How could she? Women are all shape-changers.

This house is an E with its tongue cut out,

so it will never prattle its scandal.

Betrayal’s woven in its tapestries:

Samson with his eyes gouged out for his love.

Please, dear Janey, be happy…I cannot

paint you, but I love you – and now leave you.

Janey:

Some called it amitie amoureuse.

They dubbed me Guenevere, La Belle Iseult.

Once in this lost riverland, out of depth,

we drowned in our adulterous passion.

I heard carriages arriving at night,

so the cob’s harsh hooves had to be silenced

by leather shoes. I had no energy

when William was here, but took long walks

with Gabriel, who said our leaky punt

was not a poetic locomotion.

I keep my thoughts locked in my casket

in my bedroom. It was kind of Topsy

to bring me back that fine Icelandic smock.

Gabriel said it served his purposes well.

When they had Mouse the babes were not tiresome,

but Jenny’s impairment grows every day.

Tomorrow someone must trim the dragon.

In the studio I hear faint crying

over a stillborn child. He took chloral,

alcohol and would stay awake till five.

What was I to do with his exhumed verse?

Sir Lancelot had welded us as one.

I suppose I never loved him at all.

Tonight I left a pansy in Blunt’s room.

I am past sobbing that he does not come.