It's sprung!

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Locksley Hall.

Yes, today marks that long-awaited moment: the Vernal Equinox, known in some parts as "The First Day of Spring"!

Everything's on the up from now on, dear reader...

The world's wrong!

Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
Wail, for the world's wrong!

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

British Summer Time is officially over. Sigh.

No light evenings from now until March...

Roll on Spring!

The dark time of the year

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.
- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Montol, Brumalia, Lohri, Yalda, Koliada, Dongzhi, Mid-winter's Day, whatever you call it, the Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

Sun refulgent

A Summer Invocation
By Walt Whitman

Thou orb aloft full dazzling,
Flooding with sheeny light the grey beach sand;
Thou sibilant near sea, with vistas far, and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades, and spreading blue;
Before I sing the rest, O sun refulgent,
My special word to thee.

Hear me, illustrious!
Thy lover me - for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe - then happy boy alone by some wood edge - thy
touching distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old - as now to thee I launch my invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive.
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields.
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice - and thou,
O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic,
I understand them - I know those flames, those perturbations well.)

Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O'er myriad forms - o'er lands and waters, North and South,
O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kanada's woods,
O'er all the globe, that turns its face to thee, shining in space,
Thou that impartially enfoldest all - not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me - mellow these lines.
Fuse thyself here - with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions,

Strike through this chant.
Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for this;
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself - prepare my lengthening shadows.
Prepare my starry nights.

It's the Mid-summer Solstice, the longest day, Festa Junina, Sommersonnenwende, Uttarayana, Saint John's Eve, Majstång, Litha...

...whatever you call it, the nights start drawing in from here on, folks!

The seed grows, the meadow blows

"Summer Breeze" by Erte - click to enlarge

The Cuckoo Song
(Traditional 13th century)

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Sumer is i-cumin in—
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!

OR (in a loose translation/interpretation by American poet Michael R. Burch):

Sing now cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo!
Sing, cuckoo! Sing now cuckoo!

Summer is a-comin'!
Sing loud, cuckoo!
The seed grows,
The meadow blows,
The woods spring up anew.
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe bleats for her lamb;
The cows contentedly moo;
The bullock roots;
The billy-goat poots ...
Sing merrily, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing so well, cuckoo!
Never stop, until you're through!

The Vernal Equinox was last weekend. Last night our clocks went forward - British Summer Time has arrived!

Long, light, languid evenings are beckoning, dear reader...

Faded the warmth

From The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! by John Keats [whose birthday is celebrated on 31st October]:

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise –
Vanish’d unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday – or holinight
Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight

British Summer Time is ended.

Sob.

Light squibs

The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.
- John Donne

Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

Clust’ring Summer?

The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.
– William Blake

It's the Summer Solstice, dears! Midsummer's Day.

All downhill from here on, I'm afraid...

This weekend I am mostly dressing casual...

...like Miss Lilyan Tashman, in her dress designed by Erté to look like a perfume bottle!

And why not?

The morns are meeker than they were

The morns are meeker than they were
The nuts are getting brown
The berry's cheek is plumper
The Rose is out of town.

The Maple wears a gayer scarf
The field a scarlet gown
Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on!
- Emily Dickinson


Erté - "Manhattan"

British Summer Time is over. Time to get the sparkles out.

I hear leaves drinking rain

I hear leaves drinking rain;
I hear rich leaves on top
Giving the poor beneath
Drop after drop;
'Tis a sweet noise to hear
These green leaves drinking near.

And when the Sun comes out,
After this Rain shall stop,
A wondrous Light will fill
Each dark, round drop;
I hope the Sun shines bright;
'Twill be a lovely sight.
- "The Rain"



WH Davies, author of this paean to the weather - famous for his Autobiography of a Super Tramp, and for his most renowned poem Leisure - was born and brought up in the same street as my maternal grandmother in Newport, South Wales.

He described his childhood home (to Osbert Sitwell, of all people - how fortuitous was his journey from tramp to society poet) thus: "an imbecile brother, a sister, a maidservant, a dog, a cat, a parrot, a dove and a canary bird." I don't think my Nan had any of those (except sisters) - but then again, nor did she go "adventuring" across Britain and America, sleeping rough and losing a leg, until being "discovered" and lauded as a poet by such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and D.H. Lawrence...

Both she and "WH" would no doubt have been more than used to the unseasonably "Welsh weather" we are experiencing here in London at the moment, however.

William Henry Davies (3rd July 1871 – 26th September 1940)

Bless the balmy air

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
- Henry James

Say, then say, what is this day,
That it lingers thus with half-closed eyes,
When the sunset is quenched and the orient ray
Of the roseate moon doth rise,
Like a midnight sun o'er the skies!
'Tis the longest, the longest of all the glad year,
The longest in life and the fairest in hue,
When day and night, in bridal light,
Mingle their beings beneath the sweet blue,
And bless the balmy air!
- George Meredith

It is Midsummer's Day, the Longest Day, the Summer Solstice.

Enjoy the daylight - it's the best we are going to get!

Winter is dead?

“She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
"Winter is dead.”
- A.A. Milne, Daffodowndilly

“A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.”
- Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

British Summer Time starts today. It is, of course, raining.

Sweet though in sadness

From Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

British Summer Time has ended.

Triumph to the world

Erté - Spring Opening

The Spring
by Thomas Carew (1640)

Now that the winter’s gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes; and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream:

But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.

Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring,
In triumph to the world, the youthful spring:
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long’d-for May.

Now all things smile: only my love doth lower,
Nor hath the scalding noon-day sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal’d, and makes her pity cold.

The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fire-side, but in the cooler shade

Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season: only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Today is the Vernal Equinox

The wintry sun a-bed

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
[from Winter-Time by Robert Louis Stevenson]

It's Mid-Winter's Day. The Winter Solstice. The Shortest Day.

It's all uphill from here...

Blustery

Oh the wind is lashing lustily
And the trees are thrashing thrustily
And the leaves are rustling gustily
So it's rather safe to say
That it seems that it may turn out to be
It feels that it will undoubtedly
It looks like a rather blustery day, today
It sounds that it may turn out to be
Feels that it will undoubtedly
Looks like a rather blustery day today.

[Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day]

It is the duty of every human being to make himself as attractive as possible

Symphony in Black


The Nile


Contesse de Hoffmann


Freedom and Captivity


Her Secret Admirers


Loge de Theatre


The North Sea


Queen of the Night


Top Hats, for Harpers Bazaar


Wings of Victory


Costume for Gaby Deslys


L'Ocean

In 1926, when Erté made an electrifying appearance at the Paris Opera costume ball, he was dressed in a toreador outfit of varying shades of gold lame. "That night," he recalls, "the huge cape I designed was completely lined with fresh red roses which I tossed, one by one, at my audience as I descended the grand staircase."







In his 1975 biography Things I Remember, Erte wrote: "it is the duty of every human being to make himself as attractive as possible".



“Not only do I do what I want to do, but I do my work in my own way and never have been influenced by another artist.”



Romaine de Tirtoff, known as Erté, the “Father of Art Deco” (23rd November 1892 – 21st April 1990)

Read my previous blog about Erté

More Erté designs

Erté on Wikipedia