When we lived in Philadelphia, it was always a treat to open the Inquirer around this time of year and see how cartoonist Tony Auth would capture the end of season. Always humorous, yet poignant, Auth knows how to convey that keen sense of sadness that comes with leaving the shore and returning to school, not merely because the fun is over but, more significantly, because life is urging us on at its own pace, not ours.
As C. S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters: "The humans live in time, and experience life successively. To experience much of it . . . they must experience change." Thus, Lewis explains, God has given us the seasons, which strike a balance between our need for change and our longing for permanence: "each season different yet every year the same. . . . always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."*
Here are a couple more end of summer Auth favorites that I have been saving in my scrapbook for many years. I appreciate Auth's implication that in addition to the inevitability of seasonal change, a bit of each season is always lying just beneath the surface of every other season as well (click on each cartoon here and above to enlarge for details):
on the First of September:
"September morn
when the woodbine twineth
and the whacky - doodle mourneth."
~ Thanks to Mark Bass for this explanatory link! ~
www.waywordradio.org/where-the-woodbine-twineth
~ This Google Doodle captures the spirit! ~
Around this time of year,
my brother Bruce always reminds me to listen to
*Mother Earth and Father Time
from the animated Charlotte's Web
~ sung by Debbie Reynolds ~
I think you'll find that it matches right up with
Tony Auth's drawings and the C. S. Lewis passage.
Friends from facebook have helped:
ReplyDeleteDonna Carriker says, "There's a 1898 song called "When the Woodbine Twineth", but September Morn is not mentioned, so it probably has nothing to do with it."
Bill LaMora says, 'Don't know the source but it is "and the wang-doodle mourneth for its first born' . . . hope that helps."
Herman P. Wilson writes: "The coming of fall has always been important to me . . . a new academic year is ready to begin . . . excitement, anticipation, and a welcome to former students and new students . . . and, even more so, a sense of renewal, that life will continue, bring hope. and a greater joy, both mental and emotional, to the ordinary aspects of living."
ReplyDeleteDonna Carriker adds, "William Cowper Brann (1855-1898) is the author who wrote about the wang-doodle mourneth, but I haven't found the piece -- just a page about the author.
ReplyDeleteand
Burnetta Hinterthuer (a botanist)wonders: "I love that, whacky doodle - wonder what plant it is?"
I hadn't thought of it that way, but woodbine is a plant, so why not whacky - doodle?
ReplyDeleteTony Brown asks: ~ Are you sure it's not a variation of Howlin' Wolf's blues classic "Wang-dang-doodle" as in " We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long ..."?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/doodles/first-day-of-autumn-2014
ReplyDeleteOctober's Bright Blue Weather
ReplyDeleteO suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When gentians roll their fingers tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.
O sun and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830 - 1885)
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/october-s-bright-blue-weather/
Mother Earth & Father Time
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqXJ6ssJxPc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_periclymenum
ReplyDeleteEuropean honeysuckle or woodbine, is a species of flowering plant in the family Caprifoliaceae native to much of Europe. Growing to 7 m (23 ft) or more in height, it is a vigorous evergreen twining climber. It is found as far north as southern Norway and Sweden. In the UK it is one of two native honeysuckles, the other being Lonicera xylosteum. It is often found in woodland or in hedgerows or scrubland. The tubular, two-lipped flowers[2] are creamy white or yellowish and very sweet smelling (especially during the night). The plant is usually pollinated by moths or long-tongued bees and develops bright red berries.
from Maud (Part I)
ReplyDeleteBY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
A Monodrama
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
In a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
I said to the lily, "There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.
I said to the rose, "The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine," so I sware to the rose,
"For ever and ever, mine."
And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash'd in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
Our wood, that is dearer than all;
From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.
The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead,
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
Rest in Peace Tony Auth (1942 - 2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Auth
ReplyDelete