TeaWithTater.com

Often on the mountain, I sit
At sunset, randomly walkin’
My gaze over the plain below,

The changin’ tableau at my feet

Over there the flowin’ river
Windin’ its way into the distance
Where we wove ourselves together
Where dreams wound round reality

At the top of this mountain, crowned
With twilight, stars throw a last light,

And the wispy char of the Queen of shadows
Rises, and the edges of the vision are visible

Dartin’ from the dark depths,
A delicate sound spreads in the air,
The Traveler stops, and the words form
A whisper catches a ride on the wind

Listen, tryin’ to understand
What could it be all about
Somethin’ that was once known
Then forgotten and left behind

Hill in hill in vain within sight,
West from dawn to sunset,
Search all points of the immense
And say… nowhere do answers await

In this valley, this place, this ranch,
River, grass, dear solitudes
The presence, or the lack thereof,
Awaits, insists the answer is here

But there is no beginnin’ or end
Only an indifferent view from here
In a dark sky, what is the difference
Expectin’ nothin’ of the days

When I followed the Revelator,
My eyes could see across the void
But of what was illuminated,
I had not the strength to believe

Yet perhaps, beyond this terminal fear,
In a place where other skies shine,
If only temporary, for awhile
Would appear what I have dreamed

There, I envision the source of aspiration
There, I find myself and redemption,
And this ideal truth that every soul desires
That has no name in the land of exile

What can I, focused on the dream of you
Wave on wave of wishes, wash me up,
In the land of exile why still I
With the will, can the way be found

Weary now, the sun sets on the prairie
The night wind rises in the valley
My dreams, similar to the fallin’ snow
Carried away by the stormy north wind

And the whispered words as well,
Carried away but not before
Finally, their meaning, clear now
As I stare over the craggy cliff

That which was once known long ago,
Like a half remembered dream
The heart of the matter: Forgiveness…
If only the will can be summoned

© Copyright 2013 Mac Tag/Cowboy Coleridge All rights reserved.

The Song of the Day is “The Heart of the Matter” by Don Henley.  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 Charles Cotton (Alstonefield, Staffordshire, England; 28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687); poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from the French.

In 1656 he married his cousin Isabella Hutchinson. She died in 1670. At the request of his wife’s sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson, he undertook the translation of Pierre Corneille’s Horace in 1671. In 1675, he married the dowager Countess of Ardglass; she had a jointure of £1500 a year, but he did not have the power to spend it.

Here is an interesting epitaph that Cotton wrote for “M.H.”, a prostitute (spacing, spelling and capitalisation as originally printed):

Epitaph upon M.H

In  this cold Monument  lies one,
That I know who has lain upon,
The happier He : her Sight would charm,
And Touch have kept King David warm.
Lovely, as is the dawning East ,
Was this Marble’s frozen Guest ;
As soft, and Snowy, as that Down
Adorns the Blow-balls  frizled Crown;
As straight and slender as the Crest,
Or Antlet  of the one beam’d Beast;
Pleasant as th’ odorous Month  of May :
As glorious, and as light as Day .

Whom I admir’d, as soon as knew,
And now her Memory pursue
With such a superstitious Lust,
That I could fumble with her Dust.

She all Perfections had, and more,
Tempting, as if design’d a Whore ,
For so she was; and since there are
Such, I could wish them all as fair.

Pretty she was, and young, and wise,
And in her Calling so precise,
That Industry had made her prove
The sucking School-Mistress  of Love :
And Death , ambitious to become
Her Pupil , left his Ghastly home,
And, seeing how we us’d her here,
The raw-bon’d Rascal  ravisht her.

Who, pretty Soul, resign’d her Breath,
To seek new Letchery in Death.

Today is the birthday of José Vital Branco Malhoa, known simply as José Malhoa (Caldas da Rainha, Portugal; 28 April 1855 – Figueiró dos Vinhos, Portugal; 26 October 1933); painter.

Malhoa was, with Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, the leading name in Portuguese naturalist painting, in the second half of the 19th century. He painted often popular scenes and subjects, like his two most famous paintings, The Drunks (1907) and Fado (1910). He always remained faithful to the naturalist style, but in some of his works, there are impressionist influences, like in his Autumn (1918), that can be considered as an “impressionist exercise”.

He saw at the end of his life, the inauguration of the José Malhoa Museum, in Caldas da Rainha.

Malhoa’s House, also known as the Dr. Anastácio-Gonçalves House-Museum, in Lisbon, was originally built in 1905 as a residence and studio for the artist. It was bought by Dr. Anastácio-Gonçalves, an art collector, a year before the painter’s death, and it became a museum in 1980, showcasing several items from his collection, namely works from Portuguese painters of the 19th and 20th century.

Gallery

Senhora entre os Vidros,

“Ilhas dos Amores” (1908)
Museu Militar de Lisboa

Camponesa 1903

O Fado, 1910.

Portrait of Laura Sauvinet (a pupil of the artist), Museum José Malhos, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

Today is the birthday of Harper Lee (Nelle Harper Lee, Monroeville, Alabama, April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016 Monroeville); novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960.  It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature.

“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”