Horner's Corner

You naked trees, whose shady leaves are lost,
Wherein the byrds were wont to build their bowre:
And now are clothd with mosse and hoary frost,
Instede of bloosmes, wherwith your buds did flowre:
I see your teares, that from your boughes doe raine,
Whose drops in drery ysicles remaine

(Edmund Spenser)

January is the pit, the nadir, the dead zone, the Monday of the year. It seems endless, and in these climes is close to the centre of true winter. And many of us are broke, too, which adds to the general low spirits. The only good thing is that the days are starting to get longer – the shortest day behind us, we’ve spring a (longish way) ahead.

Having said that, it’s not always wise to be wishing for a future state – we wish our lives away when we dream of happier futures  and forget that our only true possession is today. God, how sententious: I sound like Polonius. I’ll try to avoid that in future.

WB Yeats comments on the ultimate goal of this tendency (dreaming of the future that is, not coming out with platitudes) in this poem.

Roll on Spring.

Fast Tube by Casper">September

September

The garden is in mourning.
Cool falls the rain upon the
flowers.
Summer shudders, quietly
to its end.

Leaf after golden leaf drops
down from the high acacia tree.
Summer smiles, surprised and weary
upon the dying dream of this garden.

Yet still it lingers by the roses,
longing for rest.
Then slowly closes its great
weary eyes.

(Hesse)

Fast Tube by Casper">September Song – Walter Huston

The Horner Theory of the Months – Revisited

This is the month that in some ways makes me most uneasy. It’s the ‘bridge’ month between Summer and Autumn – it has a dying fall – the equivalent of the month of March, which takes us out of winter into Spring.

Not Summer anymore, dying into the colder weather and longer nights, without Summer’s luxury or Autumn’s beauty. Ah well – at least we’re not shepherding sheep on a windy hillside. Avoid all work that involves heavy lifting or being outside in all weathers.

Westerne wind bloweth sore,

That nowe is in his chiefe souereigntee,

Beating the withered leafe from the tree.

Sitte we downe here under the hill:

Tho may we talke, and tellen our fill,

And make a mocke at the blustring blast.

Now say on Diggon, what euer thou hast.

It’s time to reflect on my theory.

Here it is: there are two key transitional months, which stand as opposites to each other. One is September: it begins in Summer  and ends in Autumn. It has a dying fall.

The other is March, which starts in late Winter and ends in early Spring. The clocks go forwards; the days get longer. Just as January was the Monday of the year, mercifully short February flashed by in Winter’s final throes, March is the threshold to the really good days..SPRING April…May..SUMMER..

Not really a theory is it.

It’s not all that original either, but it cheers me up, anyway.

[..........] thou warnest well:
For Winters wrath beginnes to quell,
And pleasant spring appeareth.
The grasse now ginnes to be refresht,
The Swallow peepes out of her nest,
And clowdie Welkin cleareth.

(from The Shepherd’s Calendar)