sonnet

MEDITATIONS part 5

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(Photo by cottonbro on P)
(or listen here)

Here you are, Peter!*

If you are looking for how we all ended up here with notable reader Peter, you may find parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 helpful – or not. You do you, boo.

Series to E.          5

I am myself a little one
Bewildered in this mystic land,
Feeling so helpless and alone
Because I do not understand.

Hold me, dear powers of Love and Good,
In the quiet arms of oblivion’s rest,
As a gentle loving mother would
Hold the infant on her breast!

***

Look! How the curtains of the night
By the pink fingers of the day are drawn!
The pensive moon her paling light
Merges with the fringe of dawn.

Sleep on, little One, till the grey is gone!
Dream, dream away the memory
That you have ever, ever known
A heart so weak as mine can be!

Go, lamp of the night – go to the West,
And take your joy, and your pain:
But the doubt and the hope that stir in my breast
Will linger, to struggle again.

          END

Our deeply sensitive David is feeling insecure, in love, worried, protective, and all of the things an expressive handsome man of 34 feels for an engaging 22-year-old beauty. I think he probably drank leftover after dinner champagne and coffee while fashionably smoking cigarettes throughout the night of sonnet writing. No Oscar Wilde-ism here though – rumored to have only consumed champagne, coffee and cigarettes in the last days of his life. Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends! No Fall Out Boy in 1936, of course. Our Em and Davey had opportunity for sweet luscious slow dances to Billie Holiday’s Summertime or Fred Astaire’s The Way You Look Tonight (Ginger Rogers is also the goat) or Pennies from Heaven (Bing is meltingly heavenly) or or or…

David clearly pines for, fervently loves, and adores Emily. But, what about our dear Emily B? As mentioned previously, the book appears to have hardly been opened, and the 5 page sonnet possibly never opened. I did not procure the book in North Carolina or North Carolina adjacent. What happened to our gallant hero and sonnet inspiring heroine?

This is the end of the DL to EB sonnet, but not the end of the tale just yet…

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

*Peter Reference: possibly my (paraphrased) favorite line from Hook which is a must for all of you Peter Pan fans. Earworm day for me as I will now sing to the Rubberband Man song, “you’re bound to lose control when the Peter Pan fans start to jam!” tra la la Brains are a blessing and an occasional flat-tuned curse *sings anyway* Peter is the name I bestow upon any reader from England when I say, “hello,” to my stats monitoring page. “Hello, Peter!”

Peter Pan was originally produced on stage in London on December 27, 1904. David was 2 years and 10 months old. A very merry toddler Christmas! Except that David was in North Carolina at the time, Pan-less (and pants-less if potty-training), I assume.

When David was 9 years old, Peter Pan and Wendy was published in illustrated book form for children. Maybe he received a copy of the earlier version from 1906 (meant for adults), Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, as a gift and it helped spark his creative imagination. Maybe he had his own bookshelf in the family lounge area with Peter Pan, The Red Fairy Book, The Wizard of Oz series, Alice in Wonderland, Old Mother West Wind, Just So Stories, The Dutch Twins, The Secret Garden, The Ransom of Red Chief, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, The Call of the Wild, The Wind in the Willows, and Five Children and It! Confession: I am a librarian by study and trade. To be more specific, a children’s librarian with a life-long obsession for popular and classic children’s books. 398’s and 811’s rule! And now you know.

MEDITATIONS part 4

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(Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Pexels.com)
(or listen here)

Welcome to this tiny moss piglet’s eyelash’s undetectable speck of dust quantum universe’s teensiest inhabitant’s space on the Internets! If you might find parts 1 (with backstory links), 2, and 3 of interest, please clickity clack on back and take a peek. Or rebound to do a your version of a dive-in here:

Series to E.      		4

Oh, weak and selfish I have been!
I who pronounced my conscience clear
But heaped my wrath on other men
Who held no girl’s affection dear!

But no! – no man can say of me
I ever played the cruel part
Of him who voluntarily
Would break a trustful maiden’s heart.

Yet I am guilty! – O strange, strange sin
Which being kind is cruel instead!
And I am the worst heartless of men
Following my heart where it led!

***

Relentless doubt obscures my eyes
And opens my heart with icy pain, - 
Till the sweet waters of hope arise
Warming and healing the wounds again.

O cruel doubt! O wavering hope! – 
Tossing my reason to and fro-
What can I do but blindly grope
And follow my heart where it would go?

O strange, strange life! – Dear Powers above,
Beyond the moon and the pale starlight,
Fold, Fold me in creation’s love,
And the soft curtain of the night!

End page 4

to be continued…

Oh sweet David Lee! You are one smitten kitten for sure. Or passionate pup? Either way, I am certain you were the bees knees and the goat at wooing beautiful Emily B. in the gorgeous rural countryside of Edgecombe County, North Carolina.

Prior to the 19th century, this area of North Carolina was home to the Tuscarora Native American tribe who began departing once English settlers appropriated lands for their private use. There are local records of: a John Stewart (Stuart/Steward) in 1674 bequeathing a frying pan and other items upon his death, a Richard Bond in 1728 bequeathing assets to Sarah Bond, and in 1752 a Joseph Anderson bequeathing 15£ to a number of people upon his death.

73 years prior to David penning love sonnets, Union General Edward E. Potter entered Edgecombe County, destroying supply chains for the Confederate militia (Potter’s Raid). Many local enslaved people left the area during the Civil War to fight with the Union Armies in all-black regiments. Two years after Potter’s Raid, in 1865, the first all black incorporated town of Princeville was established by former enslaved people in Edgecombe County. In 1936, at the time of David’s love sonnets, Edgecombe County was about 50% white and 50% black, with crops of cotton, tobacco, wheat, peanuts, and corn along with cattle and chickens with a booming population (up 26% from the 1930 census). One year after David’s sonnets, in 1937, the first new-deal electrical cooperative began generating in the area. Today’s Edgecombe County is about 60% African American and remains primarily rural.

We have one page remaining, y’all. Let’s just take a moment to savor that July 4th full moon booming economy optimistic deeply felt passionate pain of love from August 12, 1936. I bet they carefully carved their initials into some tree with a heart around it.

Love, Ms Herisme xoxo

Hello. How are you? Do you wish that your name was Felix Mittermeier or that you could have drinks with someone named Felix Mittermeier? Just me then? Alrighty… makes sense. But if Felix lives in a house with the number ’27’ in it, then we are all in (unless there is a leather sofa of dubious color or colour, like blue).

MEDITATIONS part 3

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For catching up, please take a hop, skip, graceful leap over to Meditations part 1, Meditations part 2, and associated links in those post toasties, as your needs must… my current need? Tea. Always tea. And a generous in-ground heated saltwater pool, cabana with composting toilet, and outdoor shower, natch. YES, even in the winterings. (please and thank you) Other stuff too – but, for now, onwards with the things.

Series to E.                  3

-Fears I have yielded to a force
My heart but not my reason guides;
and on the sea of life, my course
Is strown with rocks and counter-tides.

-Fears that my heart has grown too fond
Of one whose world is not my own:
Who could not to my soul respond,
Leaving me lonely and alone.

Fear too list when we come to part,
So fondly she has thought of me,
Pain like a sword might pierce her heart,
For what she might have hoped would be.

If I should break her heart, O God,
Let burning shame consume my breast!
Let grief become my chastening-rod – 
But give her own heart peace and rest.

O why, why did I ever come
To rest in this quiet country place?
Why not have wandered far from home
And never seen this maiden’s face?

‘Twas but a few short weeks ago
I went in peace where’er I would:
No thoughts like these disturbed me so,
Nor did I mean they ever should!

O God, I trust thee: good thou art,
And only merry thy design:
If there must be a broken heart,
The guilt, the blame, alone is mine.

O let the pain be all my own,
And all the loneliness she must bear!
Let her be happy when I am gone -
This is my hope, and this my prayer.

End page 3

Now we know that David met Emily a few weeks prior to the writing of this sonnet. Maybe they met at a 4th of July celebration! Maybe he wore breezy light linen pants, a short-sleeved white shirt with red, white and blue paisley patterned bow-tie, a seer-sucker jacket, pale blue socks, dusty brown shoes, and a straw bowler with plain blue ribbon. Maybe she wore a sleeveless pale red dress, with tiny blue ribbons on the pockets and scattered on the neckline, with a matching blue ribbon in her hair to hold it up and off of her neck because of the heat. I’m pretty sure she left her shoes somewhere and was barefoot on the porch swing, drinking lemonade she’d secretly slightly spiked for her own amusement. Their initial conversation might have been about the community’s annual 4th of July scavenger hunt, Carole Lombard, William Powell, and My Man Godfrey. Plus phases of the moon, which was an absolutely glorious full moon on Saturday, July 4, 1936. I’m sure that was what happened. Love at first sight by the light of a full moon and dreams of the treasures promised by Lombard and Powell.

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

"A scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you try to find something you want, and in a scavenger hunt you try to find something that nobody wants." 

"I wish I had a sense of humor, but I can never think of the right thing to say until everybody's gone home."

both quotes from Irene Bullock (portrayed by Carole Lombard), My Man Godfrey

"Godfrey:  May I be frank?
Molly: Is that your name?
Godfrey: No, my name is Godfrey.
Molly: All right, be Frank. "

Please, please, please watch My Man Godfrey. If you can, as you can. It’s delicious (well, the lovely bits are, but the times were different of course).

MEDITATIONS part 1

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(Photo by Jessica Lynn Lewis on Pexels.com)
(or listen here)

If you need a catch up – The EBB, The Flo, and Carolina Portuguese are linked here.

I feel the need to all cap MEDITATIONS, to honor a man of certain distinction: Mr. D.L. Stewart

Series to E.
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 1936, 1:00 A.M. - 
In the Country

MEDITATIONS

Rise, golden orb of the midnight skies,
And show me with your mellow beams
The window where a maiden lies
Dreaming sweetly - pleasant dreams.

'Tis one o'clock: your golden rim
Reflects its final-quarter glow
And lends a mystic radiance dim
To the tired sleeping world below.

Sleep, tired world, both beast and man!
The hands of yesterday need rest:
And sleep your tired bodies can,
But, not the struggle in my breast.

Thou silent orb - whence comes the power
Inherent in your mystic glow?
And why do you, in this dim hour,
Disturb my throbbing spirit so?

Is it because in former tide
Beneath your full-resplendent charm
She walked, so meekly, by my side
So soft her hand within my arm?

End page one, y’all. Sheesh to the woosh. Mr. DL gots the pinings of the heart loves something fierce for Miss EB. At 1 am.

to be continued… but first I must digest page one.

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

ps I KNOW that I just lost any librarian credibility by using a few (out of approximately bazillion) rocks from SonHerisme’s rock collection to gently hold the papers open. I know. I know. I know. I also know that most likely I will continue to make sketch decisions like this, so if this image burns your librarian curator conservationist historian sensitive eyeball brains (which I ADORE but blatantly disregarding consideration for atm), then now you know to avert your eyes on at least the next four MEDITATIONS posts. Fair warning and you’re welcome.