Swallows return...

The swallow, bonny birdie, comes sharp twittering o’er the sea,
And gladly is her carol heard for the sunny days to be;
She shares not with us wintry glooms, but yet, no faithless thing,
She hunts the summer o’er the earth with wearied little wing.

~ Thomas Aird  ~

A couple of days ago I saw the first swallow of the year, wheeling and darting across the sky above the orchard, and I felt thrilled at this happy portent of summer!  It reminded me that I made some pictures of swallows and their young at the end of last summer some of which are now in my area of the Getty Images library.  

I don't think I shared these pictures with you at the time, so here they are now....  more wildlife work than art but I just wanted to share them with you. 

Dusky Glow

Dusky Glow by Jo Bradford


Between the Dusk of a Summer Night

Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, When a hazard has made them one. Arc upon arc, from shade to shine, The World went thundering free; And what was his errand but hers and mine -- The lords of him, I and she? O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one. {William Ernest Henley}

Dusky Light

Dusky Light by Jo Bradford

...

Dreams in the dusk,

Only dreams closing the day

And with the day’s close going back

To the gray things, the dark things,

The far, deep things of dreamland.

Excerpt from Dreams in The Dusk by Carl Sandburg

...

To buy Dusky Light and visit my Green Island Studios Shop, come along to: www.greenislandstudios.etsy.com

Paradise In A Dream

...Sometimes members of the public at large commit random acts of kindness that really make this artists day... for example, these lines were some of the snippets of classic poetry that were left under some of my art in my Dawanda Gallery today, by a lady called Gerdi, who is a crafter, art buyer and poetry lover from Münich, Germany. I thought I would pass it on.......

***

"If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream,

and have a flower presented to him

as a pledge that his soul had really been there,

and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake -

Aye, what then?"

*

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge~

***

p.s. Gerdi has a Dawanda shop called HoneyfromThe Hive where she sells lovely little lavender posie pockets and handmade bags.

The Evening Beam that Smiles the Clouds Away

Evening Beam by Jo Bradford

...

“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life.

The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,

and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”

~ Lord Byron ~

...

I guess that you may be starting to know me well enough by now, that you will know that I am an incurable romantic and arduous fan of Byrons words.

Auguries of Innocence

Heaven in a Wildflower ~ by Jo Bradford

...

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour. "

...

Poetry taken from "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake

A night of dark intent

Nature has many ways of reminding us how small we are in the grand scheme of things. It has been a stormy week here, with tremendous thunderstorms, high winds, rain, hail and big seas.

...

...

The shattered water made a misty din.

Great waves looked over others coming in,

And thought of doing something to the shore

That water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,

Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if

The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,

The cliff in being backed by continent;

It looked as if a night of dark intent

Was coming, and not only a night, an age.

Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more than ocean-water broken

Before God's last 'Put out the Light' was spoken.

...

~ Once By The Pacific by Robert Frost

Darkness

Darkness by Jo Bradford

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air

Taken from "Darkness" - a poem by Lord Byron

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Silent, and soft, and slow....

"Race You Home!!" by Jo Bradford

Out of the bosom of the air,
Out of the cloudfolds of her garment shaken,
Over the woodlands, brown and bare
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

~~By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.~~

© All contributed content, all rights reserved

A crystal veil

Crystalline by Jo Bradford

...

The Snow

It sifts from leaden sieves,

It powders all the wood,

It fills with alabaster wool

The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face

Of mountain and of plain,-

-Unbroken forehead from the east

Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,

It wraps it, rail by rail,

Till it is lost in fleeces;

It flings a crystal veil.

On stump and stack and stem,-

-The summer's empty room,

Acres of seams where harvests were,

Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrist of posts,

As ankles of a queen,-

- Then still its artisans like ghosts,

Denying they have been.

~~By Emily Dickinson~~