Today

Today was like spring. The weather was perfect, perfect to me, that is. And with the snow that we had melting, that made it seem very much like spring. And once, while I was out side, I could have been positive that I smelled crocuses. And I know for a fact that there aren't any right now. Only paper whites. But it really was very much like spring today. I guess if winter was a hurricane, we would be in the eye right now. That is the way it seems. It was lovely.

Have a wonderful day.

Abelard and his Pupil Heloise, by Edmund Blair Leighton

Have a wonderful day.

Girl Reading, by Charles E Perugini

She either had very good eyes, or she is not paying attention!

Have a wonderful day.

When Apples Were Golden

When Apples Were Golden, and Songs Were Sweet, But Summer Had Passed Away, by John Melhuish Strudwick

I love their dresses. The girls look very sad, and very lovely.

Have a wonderful day.

Beatrice

Beatrice, by Marie Spartali Stillman

I think the is simply lovely.

Have a wonderful day!

Reading

Reading, by Sir Edward John Poynter

Have a wonderful day.

Snow

Have a wonderful day.

Snow

We have had more snow! And it was by far the most we have had since we moved here. It was the loveliest, thickest, softest snow I've ever seen.

Amid the Falling Snow, by Roma Ryan

How I remember sleepless nights
When we would read by candlelight,
And on the windowpane outside
A new world made of snow;



A million feathers falling down,
A million stars that touch the ground,
So many secrets to be found
Amid the falling snow.


Maybe I am falling down.
Tell me should I touch the ground?
Maybe I won't make a sound
In the darkness all around.


The silence of a winter's night
Brings memories I hold inside;
Remembering a blue moonlight
Upon the fallen snow.


Maybe I am falling down.
Tell me should I touch the ground?
Maybe I won't make sound
In the darkness all around.



I close my window to the night.
I leave the sky her tears of white.
And all is lit by candlelight
Amid the falling snow






Have a wonderful day.

Stormy Weather

It is a fact: fair-weather friends are not friends.

When the going gets tough, you friends are the ones who stay with you and look after you.

Here is to my dear Kae who stayed with me, and dear aunt who nursed me back to health and took care of me when I was unwell.

Duchess of Nona

Molly, Duchess of Nona, by Frank Cowper

I think she is simply lovely.

Have a wonderful day.

Windy

It was very cold today, and windy. Extremely windy. The little birds that came to land on the deck to eat the seeds had to hang on very,very tight to the rails and anything else they could, lest they get blown away.

Boreas, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Stay warm.

Today

Today was cloudy and rainy. But I am fond of the weather that most people find "dreary."
It is warm and nice inside, and I can look out my window and see the bare trees and the clouds and rain.



I hope you had a wonderful day.

December 7...

By Castle and River is one year old, today. It was very pitiful in the beginning. But it was a start. This post is also the 100th post, so I am very excited. I am excited about how many posts I have done, but also and more so about how many posts I am going to do.

So, here is to By Castle and River's bright future.


Have a wonderful day.

Faded Laurals

Faded Laurals, by Edmund Blair Leighton

This is without a doubt my favorite painting, by Leighton or by anyone else.

Have a wonderful day.

The snow lasted only a little while. Some it still left, but snow gets very ugly when it is old. Now it is windy. Very windy, and cold. I don't like wind. I've never liked wind. Not since I was two. But mostly it is the cold. It seems to early to be this cold. But maybe that is because December came so fast I can hardly believe it is here.

"So knights are mythical!" Said the younger and less experienced dragons. "We always thought so."

From Farmer Giles of Ham, by J.R.R Tolkien. It is a delightful little book, very pointless, but lovable still the same.

A Question

Is it to early to be waiting for Spring?


Have a wonderful day.

A Few Paintings by Edmund Blair Leighton

Edmund Blair Leighton has to be one of my most favorite artists.


I am sure you can see why.

Have a wonderful day.

Who's Woods These Are...

...I think I know...


...They are mine...


..And there was snow.



Forgive the pathetic rhyming.

The woods are mine. And there was snow



Well, snow for where I live.



After that great, poetical post about how we never got snow...



...we got snow.


Funny how that works.


There was only a little, and it is disappearing fast. But It was nice to see.

I took all of these pictures in our woods.



Have a wonderful day!

The Favourite, by John William Godward

Who Knoweth...

'Who Knoweth the Spirit of Man...' By John Byam Liston Shaw

Have a wonderful day!

Black Flows the Forest River

I drew this picture some time ago. Kae scanned it and I put it on my blog to do a post of it and then I forgot about it. I just now saw it again and decided I should publish it.



It is called, Black Flows the Forest River. I know, I know: It a little stream, not a river. But when Rhett and Dante (The couple in the picture.) go down into the forest, and lean against the tree, Rhett sings to Dante a song called Black Flows the Forest River. See, while I was working on the picture I was inspired by it to write a poem.

I went to the forest

To see my maiden, lovely and fair

Her hair flows about her face

As sunbeams upon the air

And there I sang, I sang a song

Black flows the Forest River

The river ever long

Black flows the

Forest River

Golden flows my

Maiden's hair

Have a wonderful day!

Robin Hood

Robin Hood, yes, Robin Hood. That is where it really all began. "It" being all of these things that I like that you see on my blog: the swords, the bows, the green, the brown, the capes, the knights, the ladies, the castles and the rivers. Now days, I like these things for slightly different reasons, but the seed that grew was planted years ago by Robin Hood.

I still remember when I first found out about Robin and I am very ashamed to say that it was through the, ahem, animated "Robin Hood". We can't all be perfect. It was not long, though, before I learned about the real Robin Hood. I read every Robin Hood book I could get on. I was quite young in those days, still in that glorious stage of being able to play, so it was a favorite pastime of mine to play Robin Hood with Kae. Well, that is, if she was maybe, perhaps, willing to consent to stoup to the activity. I was Robin. She was every one else. And the beloved playhouse was the "Blue Boar Inn".

It always did, and still does, make me very sad that Robin always dies in the end. Why couldn't he just settle down and live a long happy life and no one ever know when exactly it was that he died peacefully of old age. But, alas, it could not be so. Or at least he could have died in battle, or something.

This old "robbing the rich to give to the poor," I don't really like that line so often associated with this great man. To me, and perhaps me alone, it doesn't seem right some how. He took from wealthy, gluttonous, slimebag aristocrats the money which they had wrongly obtained (generally by way over taxing) from the peasantry and he returned it to the starving innocent families. Therefore, I find the phrase "robbing the rich to give to the poor" totally inadequate and somewhat deceiving.

I have always loved Robin Hood, always gotten excited when I here him mentioned, always gotten mad when they make some new warpation of him (i.e. movie/TV show) and I always shall, I mean Cate Blanchit as Maid Marian? Old enough to be her mother. (All due respect.) Anyhow. All movies and TV shows aren't bad though: the Earl Flynn movie is good and the Richard Greene TV show (from the 50s) is very good.


I guess the really neat thing about Robin is that he always did what he knew was right no mater what would befall him because of it. In the absence of the King he and his men looked after the people the best they knew how and all the while there lives being risked, constantly being hunted by treachery claiming to be justice, they were sort of a Medieval A-Team. That's not what I meant to say but I guess it is true.


There have always been Robin Hoods and maybe there always will be. They seldom have the exact plots or even very similar plots, it is the caricature of the person. These people are often fictional, but I am sure there have been a few real life Robin Hoods.

Today..

Today was the first day of December. And it seemed like it. It was cold and windy. The sky was clear, but not like it is clear in the Summer, Spring, and Fall. In the Winter, the clear sky is Cruel and and bitter.

For some, Winter is sunny and a bit cooler than usual. Others, rainy. And for some, it is a glorious winter-wonderland of lush snow, dear falling flurries, skiing and ice-skating.


But not here.


Here, Winter is not a nice thing. Winter is trees, striped of glory. Winter is my mother depressed. Winter is ground that is ether frozen so hard it it hurts to walk on, or defrosted and mushy and muddy. Winter is pet water dishes with nothing in then but a solid chunk of ice. Winter is all lovely thing that grow, gone. They are not ''sleeping under a blanket of snow,'' they are cold and dead. Winter does not bring out my romantic side, as you can see. And today, to me, was the first day of Winter. It seemed as though everything that had been holding on to the last bit of Autumn it could salvage, gave up. Winter has come.



So I stayed inside.



Mariana, by Henrietta Rae

Lady Clare

This is one of my most favorite poems.

Lady Clare, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air.
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give his cousin, Lady Clare.

I trow they did not part in scorn:
Lovers long betrothed were they;
They two will wed the morrow morn;
God's blessing on the day!

"He does not love me for my birth
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well," said Lady Clare.

In there came old Alice the nurse,
Said, "Who was this that went from thee?"
"It was my cousin," said Lady Clare;
"To-morrow he weds with me."

"Oh, God be thanked!" said Alice the nurse,
"That all comes round so just and fair:
Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
And you are not the Lady Clare."

"Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,"
Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild?"
"As God's above," said Alice the nurse,
"I speak the truth: you are my child.

The old earl's daughter died at my breast;
I speak the truth, as I live by bread!
I buried her like my own sweet child,
And put my child in her stead."

"Falsely, falsely have ye done,
O mother," she said, "if this be true,
To keep the best man under the sun
So many years from his due."

"Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
"But keep the secret for your life,
And all you have will be Lord Ronald's,
When you are man and wife."

"If I'm a beggar born," she said
"I will speak out, for I dare not lie,
Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
And fling the diamond necklace by."

"Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
"But keep the secret all you can."
She said, "Not so; but I will know
If there be any faith in man."

"Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse,
"The man will cleave unto his right."
"And he shall have it," the lady replied,
"Though I should die to-night."

"Yet give one kiss to your mother, dear!
Alas, my child! I sinned for thee."
"O mother, mother, mother," she said,
"So strange it seems to me!

"Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,
My mother dear, if this be so,
And lay your hand upon my head,
And bless me, mother, ere I go."

She clad herself in a russen gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare:
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay.
Dropped her head in the maiden's hand.
And followed her all the way.

Down stepped Lord Ronald from his tower:
"O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
Why come you dressed like a village maid,
That are the flower of the earth?"

"If I come dressed like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are:
I am a begger born," she said,
"And not the Lady Clare."

"Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
"For I am yours in word and in deed;
Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
"Your riddle is hard to read."

Oh, and proudly stood she up!
Her heart within her did not fail:
She looked into Lord Ronald's eyes,
And told him all her nurse's tale.

He laughed a laugh of merry scorn:
He turned and kissed her where she stood;
"If you are not the heiress born,
And I," said he, "the next in blood--

"If you are not the heiress born,
And I," said he, "the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,
And you shall still be Lady Clare."

Finis


-THE END-

Lady Clare, by John William Waterhouse

Have a wonderful day.

Elaine...

Elaine, by Herbert Gustav Schmalz

I think this about the most lovely painting I have ever seen.


Have a wonderful day.

Happiness Is...

Happiness is walking into ones room and finding a little girl with the lightest blond hair asleep on the floor.






Have a lovely day.

Peaceful...

Girl With Rabbits, by Federick Stuart Church

Have a lovely restful day.

I am Thankful For...

I am thankful for being thankful. It may sound a bit odd, but it is true. First of all, can you imagine how horrible life would be if you and I were ungrateful? No mater how much we had, we would never be satisfied, always wanting more and never being appreciative. Secondly, I pride myself in not taking things for granted. I don't mean to be smug or boasting, but it is true. I am truly deeply grateful for my warm, clean bed, knowing how to read and to write, hot and cold running water, the food that I eat, the clean water that I have to drink, my sister's ability to go to collage (Anytime in the past and she wouldn't be able to, be it that we are poor or be it that she is female), heating and air, all of my limbs and all of my fingers and all of my toes (Really, everyone else says they never appreciate them until they are hurt or something.), living in a nice and safe place, and so much, so very much more.


Today always makes me sad. Sad because I am always surrounded by people and the last thing they look like they feel is, well, thankful. Be it the men and kids out to have a good time, hanging out or playing, or be it the women, out to be stressed and busy. Oh, for about five minutes every Thanksgiving we say something we are thankful for. But no one really cares about that, they are just thinking about the candy they get afterwords and how/if and when they get more. I don't mean to be cynical or depressing, I just want to make my observations known.

So, as I said, I am thankful for being thankful. And for so very much more.


Have an absolutely wonderful day.

Evening

I made the fillings for four pumpkin pies. Kae made the crust. Afterward Kae made a bit more pie crust and we with out two little cousins used special little leaf shaped cookie cutters and made leaves out of pie dough to decorate the pies with. I made lots of oakleaf shaped ones and put them all along the edge of one of the pies. It was henceforward called "Julie's Pie" even though I had made all of them!

It was getting dark when I finished and I went out to feed my pets and put away my mothers chickens. The air was the most lovely temperature and the sun was setting in the West, shining on the last of the red leaves. I looked up at the glowing-red treetops and wished my friend a happy birthday. Then I ran from place to place, the weather was so nice.

As I put the chickens away I remember a long time ago, that was only actually a few years ago, an evening much like this. It was when my aunt and her then fiancee were going to come. On that night I was thinking of them and I saw a shooting star. I was so lovely, so very lovely. I came in and it was warm and noisy. But not nearly as warm or as noisy as it soon will be. Seize the moment. When the present is this nice, live in it.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I am Thankful For..

I am thankful for music. It is about one of the uttermost wonderful things that there is.




Have a glorious day.

I am Thankful For...

I am thankful for family and friends.





Have a wonderful day.

I am Thankful For...

All of the wonderful blessings that have been bestowed upon me.




God deag

I am Thankful For...

I am thankful for water. The most perfect and wonderful element in all creation.



Photo : Bruno Monginoux / www.Landscape-Photo.net
(cc-by-nc-nd)


Have a wonderful day.

Auburn

Making Music, by Edward Robert Hughes

This post is for the dear ~A.K.~

Beauty in Profile , by Jean-Jacques Henner

She'll know why.

Portrait of an auburn beauty, by Jean-Jacques Henner

In the Grass, by Arthur Hughes

God Speed, by Edmund Blair Leighton

Have a wonderful day.