Littlebell (Ipomoea triloba, 三裂叶薯).
For the past three weeks, littlebells have been flowering in the wilder parts around the river. With rare exceptions their petals show little variety, and are predominately the same whitish pink. As a morning glory, the time it see then is before the mid-afternoon; later in the day the flowers are curled into shrivelled cones.
THE LIBRARY
Such a blessed library is your life's sole devotion,
Where you see so many wise and ancient faces speaking.
Notes:
Benedetto Giovio (1471-1545), Disticha, ad Franciscum Iulium Calvum (Basel: apud Io. Frobenium, 1518), p. 50. Benedetto was the brother of the more famous historian and biographer Paolo Giovio. This poem is from a collection of distichs which was printed along with Ludovico Pittorio's Sacra et satyrica epigrammata. My translation.
'ducitur aetas', cf. 'cui florida ducitur aetas, / Tu quoque pone animos vere monente graves'. Desiderius Erasmus, Poems, trans. by Clarence H. Miller, ed. by Harry Vredeveld, 2 vols (Toronto; London: University of Toronto Press, 1993), I, p. 270 [Poem 106.103-104].
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| Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), The Library (Musée départemental Maurice Denis "The Priory", Wikicommons) |
Ivy-like Merremia (Merremia hederacea, 篱栏网).
Near the river, there are often a few unostentatious pink, yellow or white flowers from various bindweeds. But in one great Michaelmas show, the velvety green vines of ivy-like merremia flowered in abundance, and with it life has changed: bluebottle butterflies, asian honey-bees and hosts of other insects have come for the pollen, multifarious spiders have come to ensnare pollinators, and songbirds have come to feast off the spiders. Out of nowhere these small buttery flowers are everywhere.
'Faire is the Heaven'
Music Composed by Sir William Henry Harris (1925).
Faire is the heauen, where happy soules haue place,Notes:
In full enioyment of felicitie,
Whence they doe still behold the glorious face
Of the diuine eternall Maiestie;
Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins,
Which all with golden wings are ouerdight,
And those eternall burning Seraphins,
Which from their faces dart out fierie light;
Yet fairer then they both, and much more bright
Be th’Angels and Archangels, which attend
On Gods owne person, without rest or end.
These thus in faire each other farre excelling,
As to the Highest they approch more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling,
Fairer then all the rest which there appeare,
Though all their beauties ioynd together were:
How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse,
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?
This egret was stalking the lily-ponds of Xianjia Lake (咸嘉湖), which hosts a small egret and heron sanctuary. They are one of the most common fishers in Changsha, and are easily identified by their yellow feet.
Hope Mirrlees, ‘Bedside Books’ in Collected Poems (Manchester: Fyfield Books, 2011; 1928), pp. 102-10 (p. 102):
Above all, they must not be dull, Dullness (pace Pope) is not a soporific. If it were, it would have its uses, and serious modern novels might live as lullabies. But dullness per se has never yet put anyone to sleep, and when we nod in church, the poppies tangled in garnered piety are the cause and not the parson’s homily, and if Jeremy Taylor himself were preaching on Christmas Day, and his text was Nevertheless the Dimness, we should not be a wink less drowsy. Even a detective story is more soothing than a dull book. Suave mari – a detective story may sometimes be read in bed. To extract the last drop of sweetness from this delightful hour, we must be conscious of our bed as well as of our book, and a detective story emphasises the conceit that our bed is a hare’s form, a warm secret refuge from hunters and hounds – while outside our sanctuary there is terror and flight and the surging enemy, mute and terrible.
Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis,
E terra magnum spectare laborem.
Paper Mulberry (broussonetia papyrifera, 构树).
The fruit is sweet and edible (otherwise it would hardly matter that is sweet) but bruises easily so that it is best to devour it straight after picking. The young leaves are eatable too, when cooked, though it would be better to wait until next spring to try them. As a book-lover, one must respect this tree's long and ancient part in the production of paper.
All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass.
George MacDonald, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1858), p.114.
Skunk vine (paederia foetida, 雞屎藤).
There are not many ostentatious mid-summer flowers in Changsha, but there is skunk vine, which flowers sporadically throughout the summer and then in abundance before the beginning of autumn. A few weeks ago its flowers were everywhere I walked along the river, already now it is uncommon to find a single bloom. The English and Latin names are a little unfair: although it is true that the bruised plant does release a mildly sulphurous smell it is neither noxious nor harmful, especially if left unbothered.
legendi etiam poetae, cognoscendae historiae, omnium bonarum artium doctores atque scriptores eligendi et pervolutandi et exercitationis causa laudandi, interpretandi, corrigendi, vituperandi, refellendiCicero, De oratore, I.34,158. My translation.
also we must also read poetry, master history, and select instructors and writers from all the noble arts to mull over thoroughly and, for the sake of practice, we must praise, explain, correct, criticise and refute them.
John Florio, His firste fruites (London: by Thomas Dawson, 1578), fol.52r-52v:
By readyng, many things are learned, who wyl haue good counsel, let him reade, who wil see, and heare strange things, let him readeGilbert K. Chesterton, Heretics (London: The Bodley Head, 1909), p.60:
Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.
Peacock Pansy (Junonia almana, 美眼蛺蝶).
Some of these ochraceous beauties were around early last spring, when it was unseasonably warm. I have been seeing them again these past few weeks. Their English name is odd, while the Chinese 'beautiful eye butterfly' is more descriptive, something like 'tiger's eye' would have been more evocative.
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) on reading old poetry:
There are more good poems already existing than are sufficient to employ that portion of life which any mere reader and recipient of poetical impressions should devote to them, and these having been produced in poetical times, are far superior in all the characteristics of poetry to the artificial reconstructions of a few morbid ascetics in unpoetical times. To read the promiscuous rubbish of the present time to the exclusion of the select treasures of the past, is to substitute the worse for the better variety of the same mode of enjoyment.
Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904):
Whenever you hear of a new book being published, read an old one.
Notes:
‘Shelley’s Defence of Poetry’ Peacock’s Four ages of poetry; Shelley’s Defence of poetry; Browning’s Essay on Shelley, ed. by H.F.B. Brett-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1923), pp. 1-19 (p. 17).
‘On Reading’, in Talks to Writers (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), pp. 185-214 (p. 214).