with fine careless rapture

I'm not a regular football follower, but I do like large sporting events and am really looking forward to watching tonight's match ...

... and despite being resident in Edinburgh for nearly 30-years now, a lot of my earlier working life was spent in England (all of which I thoroughly enjoyed); add to that the fact that I am half-English by blood, and there's just no question who I'll be shouting for later this evening :-)

I do hope they win - but whatever the result, I hope the team play with the "fine careless rapture" of Robert Browning's wise thrush (poem taken from the pictured 1986 collection):


Home-Thoughts, from Abroad

Oh, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

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Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)

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