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To kiss her or not to kiss her
That was the question that governed
The days and shadows of the night
Kissin’ her would have changed it all

There would have been no turnin’ back
Never was a kiss more wanted
Never was a kiss more needed
Never was a kiss more deserved

Well, deserve is hard to figure
At last, a price had to be paid
For past lies told and the sold soul

For all of the lines that were blurred

For all of the lives tossed aside
There just would not have been a way
To protect her from the demons
Created by the choices made

Sure had this comin’ a long time
You know what is said ’bout payback
This is not about gettin’ mad
This is ’bout love gettin’ even

So I pay the price ever’ day
Serve my penance in solitude
Reapin’ and pickin’ what I sowed
For what is owed and what was done

All that is left, all I can do
Seekin’ solace in these letters

I write for you, and search my thoughts
For what is left of could have been

© copyright 2013 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “All That’s Left” by Wade Bowen.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

Today is the birthday of Théodore Chassériau (El Limón, Samaná, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) September 20, 1819 – October 8, 1856 Paris); Romantic painter noted for his portraits, historical and religious paintings, allegorical murals, and Orientalist images inspired by his travels to Algeria. Early in his career he painted in a Neoclassical style close to that of his teacher Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, but in his later works he was strongly influenced by the Romantic style of Eugène Delacroix. He was a prolific draftsman, and made a suite of prints to illustrate Shakespeare’s Othello. The portrait he painted at the age of 15 of Prosper Marilhat, makes Théodore Chassériau the youngest painter exhibited at the Louvre museum.

His work had a significant impact on the style of Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau, and—through those artists’ influence—reverberations in the work of Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.  There is in Paris a Society for the painter: Association des Amis de Théodore Chassériau.

Works of Chassériau are in the Musée du Louvre where a room is dedicated to him, in the Musée d’Orsay, and in the Musée de Versailles. Collections in the United States holding works by Théodore Chassériau include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, the National Gallery of Art of Washington, D.C., the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of the Art Rhode Island School of Design, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Gallery

Les Deux sœurs (1843, Paris, musée du Louvre

Esther se parant pour être présentée au roi Ahasuerus, dit La Toilette d’Esther (1841)

Andromède attachée au rocher par les Néréides » (1840)

Stevie Smith
in July 1966, by Jorge (‘J.S.’) Lewinski

And today is the birthday of Stevie Smith (Florence Margaret Smith; Kingston upon Hull; 20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971 Ashburton, Devon); poet and novelist.

Verse 

Not Waving but Drowning (1957)

• Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
  (Still the dead one lay moaning)
  I was much too far out all my life
  And not waving but drowning.
  • “Not Waving But Drowning”

Selected Poems (1962)

• I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
  Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
  To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
  With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
  All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
  There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
  Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.
  • “Thoughts about the Person from Porlock (continued)”

• No man has seen her, this pitiful ghost,
  And no woman either, but heard her at most,
  Sighing and tapping and sighing again,
  You have weaned me too soon, you must nurse me again.
  • “The Wanderer”
• The boat that took my love away
  He sent again to me
  To tell me that he would not sleep
  Alone beneath the sea.
  • “The Boat”

• The flower and fruit of love are mine
  The ant, the fieldmouse and the mole
  • “The Boat”

• Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
  She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.
  • “My Muse”

The Best Beast (1966)

• So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die,
  Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough,
  And Virtue also says:
  We are not yet friends enough.
  • “Exeat”

 

It was a house of female habitation,
Two ladies fair inhabited the house,
And they were brave. For although Fear knocked loud
Upon the door, and said he must come in,
They did not let him in

Mac Tag