Poetry Friday 29

You may have heard that most of the UK is blanketed in thick fog and has been for most of the week, which means I'm still obsessing about the weather ! (Thank goodness I only had to take three trains and a bus to get to my parents for my week in Gloucestershire !) Therefore I offer you Oscar Wilde's

Impression du Matin

THE Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a harmony in grey;
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold

The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses' walls
Seemed changed to shadows, and St. Paul's
Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons; and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.


It has to be said that these days, the fog is white, not yellow, but it's still disorienting and peculiar to be out in and not be able to see more than a few paces in front of you ! Because it's almost Christmas, I'd like to leave you with the opening verse to a carol written by Chris­ti­na Ros­set­ti in 1872; she wrote these words in re­sponse to a re­quest from the mag­a­zine Scrib­ner’s Month­ly for a Christ­mas po­em:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

We don't have the snow, but it's certainly bleak with all this fog around !!

Happy Holidays !