Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting,
Which clad in damask mantles deck the arbours,
And then behold your lips, where sweet love harbours,
My eyes present me with a double doubting.
For, viewing both alike, hardly my mind supposes
Whether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses.
— John Wilbye (1575-1638)
A little Martin Luther King, Jr. Day appropriate West Wing. Aimee Mann sings a beautiful version of James Taylor’s Shed a Little Light.
Great love affairs start with Champagne.
Viviana Durante taking her curtain call at the end of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet. Photo © David Secombe 1994. (via The London Column)
Escape to Attenborough Nature Reserve this afternoon.
Heading to Zurich in February!
English Pronunciation
A quite fiendish poem by G. Nolst Trenité on the vagaries of English pronunciation.
After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.
The bells of St James’, Audlem, ringing in 2012.
Josh Ritter — Empty Hearts
Singing don’t let me into this year with an empty heart
With an empty heart
Don’t let me into this year with an empty heart
I may enter this year with an empty heart. I can only hope and pray that it I don’t leave it so.
