Free Vintage Nature Poem: The Dial of a Summer's Day by C.E.C. Weigall

A Victorian poem entitled "The Dial of a Summer's Day" by C.E.C. Weigall, originally published c1890. Accompanying the poem is an illustration of a small farmhouse surrounded by a lush meadow at the height of summer. The poem goes as follows:

Just one o'clock:
In the meadow of hay,
The reapers are reaping and singing today,
Ant the swish of the scythe rings a glad roundelay.

Just two o'clock:
Hush! you babbling rill,
The world lies a-drowsing, the reapers are still,
And a shimmer of heat dances over the hill.

Just three o'clock:
Said the hare by the stile,
"The reapers are crafty -- the reapers of Lisle."
So he crept 'neath a dock-leaf and pondered awhile.

Just four o'clock:
In the wild rose and clover
The honey bee laughs, and dips over and over,
And "peewit, 'tis hot!" pipes the petulant plover.

Just five o'clock:
Twixt the moor and the sky,
Where the far distant purple of heather doth lie,
The arrowing curlews still hover and cry.

Just six o'clock:
From the ivied church tower,
The breeze carries upward in the chime of the hour,
Which the great bell is tolling with ponderous power.

Just seven o'clock:
Drones the humble bee red,
As he watches a cockchafer whizz over head,
And fussily follows a neighbour to bed.

Just eight o'clock:
As I watch and I wait
In the gathering twilight, beside the farm gate,
I know that the flowers say, "Mabel is late!"

Just nine o'clock:
As we wander and pass,
Hand in hand, lip to lip, over dew-spangled grass,
We can hear the white owl shrieking, "Lovers, alas!"

Just ten o'clock:
As we part 'neath a star,
The angels are smiling through heaven's bright bar,
And the new moon is rocking the clouds in her car.

Just eleven o'clock:
In her window the light
Flares redly and instant, then fades out of sight,
And I turn with a sigh, and walk into the night.

Just twelve o'clock:
On the motionless deep
The lights of the fishing-boats tremulous peep,
And the angels have hushed the world's sorrows to sleep.

You can download the poem along with the black and white illustration as a high-res 12" x 12" @ 300 ppi JPEG here. Lovely as a framed print but can also be used in a greeting card, junk journal or scrapbooking project.

Creative Commons Licence
Public domain poem is from my personal collection. All digitized poems by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.

Vintage Art Appreciation: Mixed Flowers by Margaret Rose Preston

Mixed Flowers by
Margaret Rose Preston (1875 - 1963)

Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
Andy Warhol

What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.
Deepak Chopra, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.
Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

Vintage Art Appreciation: Hydrangeas by Louis Icart

Hydrangeas, 1929
by Louis Icart (1888 - 1950)

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

Dare to Be
When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully.
When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light.
When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it.
When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway.
When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back.
When there seems to be no hope, dare to find some.
When you’re feeling tired, dare to keep going.
When times are tough, dare to be tougher.
When love hurts you, dare to love again.
When someone is hurting, dare to help them heal.
When another is lost, dare to help them find the way.
When a friend falls, dare to be the first to extend a hand.
When you cross paths with another, dare to make them smile.
When you feel great, dare to help someone else feel great too.
When the day has ended, dare to feel as you’ve done your best.
Dare to be the best you can –
At all times, Dare to be!
Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

Vintage Art Appreciation: Garden Scenes by Alfonse Van Besten

Ma femme (Mrs. A. Van Besten), 1913

Blossom and lady, ca. 1913

Young girl amidst marguerites, ca. 1912

Van Besten painting in his garden, 1909

A series of photographs from the early 20th century by Belgian artist Alfonse Van Besten (1865 - 1926). Van Besten was a painter and many of his autochromes were taken with a "painterly eye." You can find many more of his autochrome photographs on the Belgian Autochromists website here.

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A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in ― what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

What I've always found interesting in gardens is looking at what people choose to plant there. What they put in. What they leave out. One small choice and then another, and soon there is a mood, an atmosphere, a series of limitations, a world.
Helen Humphreys, The Lost Garden

She wandered around Sally's garden, sipping coffee, stopping to admire the grevillea and talk to the chickens. As the warmth of the sun unknotted the tension in her spine, Alice noticed a lush alley of potted tropical plants alongside the house: monstera, bird of paradise, agave, staghorns and ferns. Alice was filled with a sense of wonder; it was a garden within a garden, so meticulous and well-tended in contrast to the wild beauty surrounding it. The sumptuous blends of greens. The varying, glossy foliage.
Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart