19th january 2007
spitting the pips

This from geegaw:

In this morning's news, the story of an old woman "toppled by winds." I woke up feeling unexpectedly hopeless, then looked out the window to see a light fall of snow in the branches: a present from the world's whimsy. It made me feel so good that I mis-remembered Housman:

A-riding I will go
To see the cherry crowned with snow.

And I thought:

Now the lilacs are in bloom
All before my little room

Well, it was the rhythm that brought that one on, but the Housman is about new flowers too; then I thought of Macneice's Snow and Roses, very different rhythm but plants and snow; and then on to Nabokov's

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass

from Canto One of Pale Fire, all about snow too; with a rhythm a step along from the Housman. And that was just the first ten seconds. Not that I went on much.

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