Jane Tomlinson painted this this week, she is always colourful but as you can see, drink the tea and ride the storm is her message. Yes we have to ride storms, and Keep Calm is a bit old hat now. And yes I can display it for she was quite happy to make it public. A few years hence and all the troubles we are experiencing now will be gone. Good things, bad things we can make no difference!
But the tidbits of news still filter through like this mosaic from Chedworth Villa in Gloucestershire. Note it is a mosaic after the Romans left Britain in 410 AD, and Britain succumbed to the Dark Ages. When Roman villas fell into disrepair and history seems to have plummeted down a dark deep hole. Actually I think someone just fell in love with the words 'Dark Ages' and we have used ever since without exploring the actuality of the time.
There is an Anglo-Saxon poem called 'The Ruin' thought to refer to Aqua Sulis - Roman Bath, because of the mention of the 'hot steam'. You can still see parts of the medieval walls that once surrounded the centre of Bath. Wander round the museum and see the fallen Roman gods and the head of Minerva, struck from her body.
The Dark Ages were indeed a turbulent time as people fought, different foreigners came in and colonised. Almost like a metaphor for what we are going through at the moment!
The Ruin
These wall-stones are wondrous —
calamities crumpled them, these city-sites crashed, the work of giants
corrupted. The roofs have rushed to earth, towers in ruins.
Ice at the joints has unroofed the barred-gates, sheared
the scarred storm-walls have disappeared—
the years have gnawed them from beneath. A grave-grip holds
the master-crafters, decrepit and departed, in the ground’s harsh
grasp, until one hundred generations of human-nations have
trod past. Subsequently this wall, lichen-grey and rust-stained,
often experiencing one kingdom after another,
standing still under storms, high and wide—
it failed—
Thank you for sharing that evocative poem. We need be reminded of how important perspective is. Take care, Kris
ReplyDeleteAnd the same to you Kris. x
DeleteIt was a ruin even then.
ReplyDeleteThe human race doesn't have a good record on peaceful living!
DeleteI had read of the discovery of a home excavated after the volcanic ash had covered all. It is a beautiful calamity of mosaics.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a story Tabor. Up the road from Bath there was the village of Box, and the people who lived in the large Georgian house had the remains of a Roman villa in their garden. So inside the house the walls were painted in Roman colours.
DeleteA thoughtful poem. I can remember finding just half a brick which was all that remained - bar a flat grassy platform - of a cottage in use until the 1950s. The ash trees flanking it still stood in its memory, and a rash of Snowdrops like confetti grew from where a handful had been planted. Memories focused into just half a brick . . .
ReplyDeleteI always remember reading about an archaeological dig of a Roman building, of the shucked oyster shells in the corner that pointed to later use. As you say there is the bitter-sweet moment of something falling down through history like the snow drops.
DeleteWhat a fascinating poem! I didn't know it. A very old poem with a window on the way people then viewed the past. Much food for thought. I often think of how it's easy to view historical characters as 'historical characters' instead of as people living lives in what was for them the present with their own views on possible futures and (in this case) the past.
ReplyDeleteThe Seafarer is also very good, the despair of the tragedies of life are universal and stretch down through history.
ReplyDelete