"Once, when the frost melted, Penn woke, the God residing on top of Mount Penna. Cruel summers followed ice and snow, back then, when the Liguri worked iron in the valleys and traded with the Etruscans.
So Apuana, Dama dโInverno, was given a task old as time"
www.tumblr.com/whatthecrowt...
"Thereโs a song in everything,
sleeping things that dream and dream.
Make the world strike up and sing!
Simply say the magic meme."
("Wรผnschelrute")
High Romantic homme de lettres Joseph von Eichendorff was born #otd 1788
๐จ Eduard Leonhardi โWaldeinsamkeitโ (1859)
โI affirm that the simple undisguised naked figure is innocent. "To the pure in heart all things are pure."
First significant British painter of nudes William Etty was born #otd 1787 in York.
๐จHero and Leanderย (1829)
Winter was long, winter can be cruel, but summer can, too, and on the slopes of Monte Penna in Liguria, a lone figure plays the flute each year, melancholic over the passing snows of yesteryear.
Meet Apuana, Dama dโInverno in our 10th #darkspringtide tale and read her story below
๐จ Cambellotti
A rather dashing looking Piper lounges in the grass, a baby otter at his cloven feet.
โThis is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,โ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. โHere, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!โ
โ โThe Wind in the Willowsโ by Kenneth Grahame, born #OTD in 1859.
๐จE.H. Shepherd, 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'
"Then, one evening, beneath a sky of storm-lit gold, Faronika the Fish rose from the dark waters. Her scales flashed like lightning, her voice rolled like distant thunder.
"Skuลกa! Iglica! Meฤarica! Haul you nets! Leave them, leave them be!"
www.tumblr.com/whatthecrowt...
Wyrdlings!
Itโs Douglas Adamsโ 74th birthday and we take you to all the nice ones, with:
โWyrd Travelogues and Going Places Wynderful"
as this weekโs #WyrdWednesday topic.
Donโt Panic!
Come, gather and tell us tales of journeys into the unknown, from myth, lore and lit!
Slovenia has a short but beautiful coastline, where the Adriatic whispers of Trieste's seafaring glories and maybe of sunken towns.
We stay in Europe's southeast for our 9th #DarkSpringtide tale and meet a rather peculiar and portentous local mermaid - read her story below!
๐จ Marjorie Cameron
Rachel Deeringโs book
โRachel Deering writes with scalpel-sharp precisionโ
@brionycollins.bsky.social on @racheldeering.bsky.social โs โIn the Shadow of Godsโ
www.blackboughpoetry.com/rachel-deering
Reposting this for March.
Photo of Qiu Jin.
โDonโt speak of how women canโt become heroes:
alone, I rode the winds eastward, for ten thousand leagues.
My poetic ponderings expanded, a sail between sky and seaโฆโ ~ Qiu Jin for #InternationalWomensDay
Photo of Gwendolyn Brooks in front of a typewriter and books behind her.
โOh open, apostolic height! And tell my humbug how to start Bird balance, bleach: make miniature
Valhalla of my heart.โ ~
Gwendolyn Brooks for #InternationalWomensDay
Photo of Lucille Clifton
โthese hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.โ ~ homage to my hips, Lucille Clifton for #InternationalWomensDay
Photo of statue of Leona Florentino.
โMy fate is dim, my stars so low
perhaps nothing to it can compare,
for truly I do not doubt
for presently I suffer so.โ ~ Leona Florentino for #InternationalWomensDay
Portrait of Sor Juana Inรฉs de la Cruz in nunโs habit with books behind her.
โLove opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.
Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thoughtโa thousand deathsโ ~ Sor Juana Inรฉs de la Cruz for #InternationalWomensDay
Fresco of Sappho holding writing equipment.
โGlittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,
I beg you, Zeusโs daughter, weaver of snares,
Donโt shatter my heart with fierce
Pain, goddessโ ~ Sappho for #InternationalWomensDay
Cover of the 1899 book 'How to swim' by Capt Davis Dalton, featuring a coloured line drawing of a man swimming in the sea
Een zwemmer is een ruiter Zwemmen is losbandig slapen in spartelend water, s liefhebben met elke nog bruikbare porie. is eindeloos vrij zijn en inwendig zegevieren. En zwemmen is de eenzaamheid betasten met vingers, is met armen en benen aloude geheimen vertellen aan het altijd allesbegrijpende water. Ik moet bekennen dat ik gek ben van het water. Want in het water adem ik water. in het water word ik een schepper die zijn schepping omhelst, en in het water kan men nooit geheel alleen zijn en toch nog eenzaam bliiven. Zwemmen is een beetje bijna heilig zijn. ยฉ2006, The heirs of Paul Snoek From: Gedichten Publisher: Lannoo/Atlas. Tielt/Amsterdam
A swimmer is a horseman Swimming is licentiously sleeping in sprawling water. is making love with each still operable pore is endlessly being free and inwardly triumphing. And swimming is touching solitude with fingers is with arms and legs telling ancient secrets to the always all-comprehending water. I have to admit that I'm crazy for water. For in water I breathe water. in water I am a creator who embraces his creation and in water you can never be wholly alone. and still remain lonesome. Swimming is being almost a little bit holy. Translation: 2000, Kendall Dunkelberg From: Hercules, Richelieu and Nostradamus Publisher: Green Integer, Los Angeles, 2000
Prompted by this book cover posted by @racheldeering.bsky.social, please enjoy this amazing poem about swimming by Paul Snoek
www.poetryinternational.com/nl/poets-poe...
Review: Lizzy ***** Verified Purchase Lovely Reviewed in the United States on 6 March 2026 Format: Paperback A wonderful and lovely book. Very thoughtfully written, clearly a byproduct of a great deal of love and reflection. A superb addition to anyone's personal poetry collection.
Just found a lovely new review for In the Shadow of Gods.
Painting of Mirabai in orange sari, blue background.
โDo not mention the name of love,
O my simple-minded companion.
Strange is the path
When you offer your loveโฆ
If you want to offer love
Be prepared to cut off your head
And sit on it.
Be like the moth,
Which circles the lamp and offers its body.โ ~ Mirabai for #InternationalWomensDay
Rat and Mole meet the god Pan as he plays his pipes in the forest. An illustration by Troy Howell for "The Wind in the Willows."
"Oh, Mole! The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! The call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us."
- Kenneth Grahame, "Wind in the Willows"
๐จTroy Howell
#BookologyThursday
'Spring Messengers'. Painting depicting the coming of spring as a classical bridal couple accompanied by birds flying across a green landscape.
'The year stood at its equinox
And bluff the North was blowing,
A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,
Green hardy things were growing'
~Christina Rossetti
๐จ Dominique Lang
#BookologyThursday
On the 6th of March, a composer returns to his home town. Without melodies, but a memory. Of the kind that haunts you.
Quite literally.
Our 6th #darkspringtide tale is a ghost story for #phantomsfriday.
Read it below.
๐จ Alphonse Inoue
Painting of a swamp
According to a Flemish folktale, a creek is haunted by a water devil who drowns people. There's also the ghost of an enchantress, and it was whispered that if she raised her hand above the water, all the animals in the area would die.
๐จGustav Klimt
#PhantomsFriday
Painting of a woman with red hair seated. She wears a green dress on which are red roses. Dark background with more roses and yellowish sky.
'The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony'
- Lord Tennyson
๐จThomas Edwin Mostyn
'Crocus' by Raymond C. Booth 1962 An oil painting in dark, muted tones. Purple crocuses growing up from the ground covered in dead leaves, with a bird skull resting among the young flowers.
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death,
We'd shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
โ A. Swinburne, 'A Match' 1866
#booksky #art #march #spring
"Walking,
still walking;
the spring wind."
(image: Koukei Kojima)
โNow pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To oโertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.โ
(โHamletโ 5.1)
#shakespearesunday
๐จSir John Gilbert โThe Burial of Opheliaโ (1868)
'Giuditta decapita Oloferne' (Judith Beheading Holofernes), cropped, by Artemisia Gentileschi c. 1620 A part of an oil painting depicting a scene from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith. Two women, Judith and Abra, pin down Holofernes, left out of the frame here. With one hand, Judith holds his head, and with the other, she slices his throat with a long sword.
I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free.
โ Emily Brontรซ, Wuthering Heights 1847
#InternationalWomensDay
Thaw
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.
Edward Thomas
Illustration by CF Tunnicliffe from What to Look for in Spring, Ladybird books.
โSpring beginsโ
the stork takes
a first step.โ
(Shรดha)ย
๐จ Katsushika Hokusai
