PJfoto63
L1081915
Scarborough 2012-
The next day, in the pub, my friend Max showed me a poem that he told me he had written during the night, which he had entitled "Before the New Tide":
"The boy, alone
Left the ball to lay
Where it had come to rest,
Punctured and silent.
As the dusk drew on
The sea fell back,
The voices of the children
Thinned and frayed
In the wind.
Much further on
Before the new tide,
An old woman searches for a shell
in which listen to the whispered,
Distant roaring
Of the tide before."
He then read from the essay by William Hazlitt "Why Distant Objects Please" (1822):
"Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe them with indistinct and airy colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain tops that bound the horizon, the mind is as it were conscious of all the conceivable objects and interests that lie between; we imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim; strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or to "descry new lands, rivers, and mountains", stretching far beyond it: feelings carried out of themselves lose their grossness and their husk, rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten into beauty, turning to "Imperial mould, sky-tinctured". We drink the air before us, and borrow more refined existence from objects that hover on the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears..."
"Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamp sit with an image of itself. Passion is Lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines, and are moulded by its touch."
After which we sank into silence for a while.
L1081915
Scarborough 2012-
The next day, in the pub, my friend Max showed me a poem that he told me he had written during the night, which he had entitled "Before the New Tide":
"The boy, alone
Left the ball to lay
Where it had come to rest,
Punctured and silent.
As the dusk drew on
The sea fell back,
The voices of the children
Thinned and frayed
In the wind.
Much further on
Before the new tide,
An old woman searches for a shell
in which listen to the whispered,
Distant roaring
Of the tide before."
He then read from the essay by William Hazlitt "Why Distant Objects Please" (1822):
"Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe them with indistinct and airy colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain tops that bound the horizon, the mind is as it were conscious of all the conceivable objects and interests that lie between; we imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim; strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or to "descry new lands, rivers, and mountains", stretching far beyond it: feelings carried out of themselves lose their grossness and their husk, rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten into beauty, turning to "Imperial mould, sky-tinctured". We drink the air before us, and borrow more refined existence from objects that hover on the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears..."
"Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamp sit with an image of itself. Passion is Lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines, and are moulded by its touch."
After which we sank into silence for a while.