A new bookcase companion…

A little poem from half a lifetime ago…

‘Month of mingled gloom and glory
Sun and shadow, fog and rain…
Welcome, welcome grey December
With your message of good cheer
Light your lamp at Winter’s gate
And crown with joy the passing year.’

Ralph Goddard - from Gloom and Glory

‘Singing through the rising dark
Singing of the world to come…
Singing of a glimpse of good
Singing as the river flows
Singing with the hope that grows
Singing of the world to come!’

Robert Macfarlane & Johnny Flynn - from The World to Come

(Illustration by Emily Sutton)

‘Resume, and reimburse the silent wood,
Elaborate its saps,
Bid the bare trees blurt into bloom, and fill
With leaf the hungry gaps,
And in its head set the heart’s singing birds.’

W.R. Rodgers - from Nativity (read by Michael Longley)

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

‘Advent approaches and we are to bestir ourselves, shake off our torpor. Let there be no more suspension of what we are capable… Our readiness would be vague and incoherent were it not for the hymn-poets…’

Ronald Blythe - Word from Wormingford

(illustration by John Nash)

The circling year… Seasonal transitions in Glenarm’s Walled Garden. Quickening change.

‘… and all the accidents and purposes of history’.

Ronald Blythe - from Word from Wormingford