What soft incense hangs upon the boughs ...

Normally at this time every year we are away in the Lake District and revelling in the English spring countryside – tumbling becks edged with gnarled hawthorn trees, fields dotted with new-born lambs, woods carpeted with bluebells and wild garlic, and sublime birdsong all around. We’ve been unable to make it to the Lakes this year, sadly, but we are grateful that we have so many wonderful memories of holidays past up there.

This morning I was reading today’s poem in my book "Poem for the Day" edited by Nicholas Albery, which just happened to be some verses from one of my favourite poems, "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats. The rest of the day has been spent indoors, making cards, doing lots of family tree work and also some scanning of the old photo album which belonged to my grandfather. So my photo for today’s blip was taken when I went out into the garden for a short break, and shows a small area in the corner of our back garden in which we’ve sown wild flowers, beside which is a hawthorn tree. As I stood there with my camera and listened to the birds I felt so happy. No wonder Keats was moved to write such beautiful words when he heard the nightingale sing. 



"I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet 
Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; 
And mid-May's eldest child, 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."

Excerpt from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats