My Poem: Lines Written on a Country Weather Station

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Title: Lines Written on a Country Weather Station
Poetic Type: Parody of Thomas Gray's "Lines Written in a Country Churchyard." This uses the same end rhymes as that work.
Length: 933
Rating: Gen
Also: There is a ficlet that goes with it: The Country Weather Station: a 221b. Holmes/Watson. Sussex Retirement 'verse. Rating: Teen for innuendo.
Notes: Inclusion of phrases by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Isaac Watts, Shelley, Keats, Yeats, and Robert Burns.
Summary: Four seasons in Sussex.


The brass-and-glass arrived one fine spring day,
as Wordworth’s ‘dils danced spritely on the lea,
the toad still dreamt beneath the shingled way,
and garden, toil and joy, were left to me.

Upon the wall, it makes a handsome sight,
three instruments aligned in polished holds.
In skeps, the scouts prepare for maiden flight,
their dials allied to sensitive plant folds.

New leaf and vine, the climbers climb to tower
and overlook a space of flower. Complain
the hosts, in black-and-white-and-read-o’er bower,
the first cuckoo has yet to sound spring’s reign.



The needle shifts. Shy sun gives way to shade.
Tucked snugly ‘neath the dung-and-compost heap,
green tender seedlings, sprouts, in frames, are laid.
Rain drops like toady snores in toady sleep.

Condemned to cosy exile until morn,
we wake to siren song of hives and shed.
The paschal earth vibrates. Its drum and horn
make even toad resolve to quit his bed.

All day, I toil through blister, scratch, and burn,
attending roots to shoots with sober care,
engaging rabbits, thwarting slugs’ return,
ensuring brassica, courgettes to share.

The bees improve the shining hour and yield
to sweet abundance. Buzzing armies broke
in ceaseless labour, fly from hives afield,
above the lavender, their winged quick-stroke.

For symphony, the garden puts on trial
the concert hall; the blend of wild, obscure
concertos, drone-hum, birdsong makes me smile
at you, at our life, music-rich, noise-poor.

Rising mercury has us in its power.
Gone the lilac-scented breeze that once gave
succor. Long is the day, long is the hour.
Toad retreats to cool Neolithic grave.

Potted geraniums can find no fault
sunbathing on the paved walk; they raise
heads to greet dapper butterflies, which vault
o’er summer like a red, red, rose, with praise.

The honeyed fanfare: flight or fight or bust!
Restless, heated, thronged, unafraid of death,
bees swarm, cast, spill sap spun from dust,
war with wasps incensed by betony breath.

The herbs are gathered, hung to dry and laid
to spice our winter. Snapdragon’s fire
persists ‘til you and I are tempted, swayed
by briny beckoning of sea nymph’s lyre.

We play truant, reading from childhood’s page.
We scamper to the sea, waves roll, unroll.
We jump. We fly. We flee mad dog days’ rage
and crash into the cool balm of the soul.

Refreshed, we return to cottage serene.
The dirt so lovingly attended bears
its plenty, fruits and vegetables. Unseen
one lazy drone cuts through the still, thick air.

Then rain falls like sin on a martyr’s breast
Pelted, we seek the shed which has withstood
far worse. In one another’s arms, we wait
with wasps’ cyanide, roses’ meal of blood.

With lords distracted, toad assumes command,
emerging from hidden bog to despise
nine bean-rows, bee-loud glade, darling-bud land
‘til the bugful mud catches warty eyes.

The wise barometer is not alone
in its reading. Bold quicksilver confined
in glass abandons its aestival throne,
introducing autumn to humankind.

The last of the blackberries cannot hide.
We gobble them like children, without shame,
and savour fresh, the last of gardener’s pride,
tomatoes, pump, earth-scented, red as flame.

Now jars and flasks preserve summer strife
as mists and mellow fruitfulness have sway.
Chrysanthemums burst to petal life
while Michaelmas daises encroach the way.

Yet even some roots from damp rot to protect
and bulbs and onions, too, are lifted nigh
the harvest earth with hoary frost is decked.
You trade some comb for perry, and I sigh.

The weather station has become our Muse.
Her numbers, like an oracle, supply
our routine and its exceptions. She strews
crisp rambles with bare ruin’d choirs which sing, die.

To bonfire smoked nostalgia we are prey,
and sips of elderberry wine resign’d,
in sotto bosco picnic, we waste our day,
the falling leaves, our breadcrumbs left behind.

On Macintosh and wellies, work relies.
Keen care, good hive husbandry requires.
My pruning is cut short by Nature’s cries,
fierce, howling wind that tousles tongued hearth fires.

For we, conversant with the dying dead,
can to season’s fading beauty relate
while toad, a-shiver, is by bog blood led
to crawl underpath, overwinter fate.

What to do when the garden’s had its say?
Prepare the soil ere winter’s full grey dawn.
The digging wiles the last of light away
and leaves my beds a barren, broken lawn.

The beekeeper beneath the bare-boned beech
washes apiary from low to high,
removing stealth intruders, weighing each
hive, feeding the lean as short days pass by.

The cold begins to bite. We scringe and scorn
the world outside and go no more a-rove,
embracing all that we have left forlorn,
our writing, reading, thinking, loving trove.

One morn when snow is blanketing the hill,
we venture out past gate and apple tree.
We trod by winter heather, frozen rill.
By snowdrops, brought to weep, are you and me.

The cardinal in festive red array
is perched. Red fox on stockinged feet is borne
away. On path, on caroling lips, there lay
the ivy and the holly, leaf and thorn.

There sits our Delphi, of heavens and Earth,
its readings diminishing the unknown
but never thwarting wheel of death and birth,
it’s heart-and-mind to complement our own.

Large its station, and our regard sincere.
Walnut, well-rubbed and well-loved, we two send
each other into fits of wonder, tear
as to whether it’s truly foe or friend.

What is left to say, what’s left to disclose?
One season comes, and the next, not far behind, shall roam.
Regardless, I find genuine repose
in the bosom of my love, my garden, and my home.

Comments

[debriswoman]

Just lovely:-)

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you!

[lunabee34]

I remain impressed with your ability to rhyme well.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thanks but I can't take credit for any of these. I used all the end rhymes of "Lines Written on a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, which is a favourite of mine. The trick here was to take an elegy and a fixed end rhyme scheme and work it to my own purposes.

[lunabee34]

Well, yes, but you make the end rhymes work with all the *other* words in the line. That's the hard part. LOL

[smallhobbit]

This is lovely. I did like the appearances of the toad.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you very much! The toad is recurring motif, as they say, and an adorable one at that!

[scfrankles]

That's beautiful ^__^

I'll just try to pick out a few favourite lines:

The brass-and-glass arrived one fine spring day,

We play truant, reading from childhood’s page.

Bold quicksilver confined
in glass abandons its aestival throne,
introducing autumn to humankind.

The weather station has become our Muse.
Her numbers, like an oracle, supply
our routine and its exceptions.

Regardless, I find genuine repose
in the bosom of my love, my garden, and my home.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! Thomas Gray's poem is one of my all time favourites. I liked the idea of Watson and Holmes treating the instruments of the weather station like gods or oracles (sometimes playing tricks, requiring interpretation, but foretelling the future). And that fan art of Retirement Holmes and Watson going swimming (jumping in Victorian swimsuits) is such a lovely image.