The Solitary Walker

Old Meg she was a Gipsy,        And liv'd upon the Moors: Her bed it was the brown heath turf,        And her house was out of do...

That quintessential romantic, John Keats, wrote a handful of the most exquisite poems to be found anywhere in the whole of English literat...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness . . .   JOHN KEATS Endymion Is ...

The first few lines of a poem are important ones. They have to arouse our interest and curiosity so that we want to read on. This introduct...

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark. ST JOHN OF THE CROSS The term ...

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand. PICA...

In his book, Walkers , Miles Jebb reminds us exactly why walking is medically good for us: It stimulates the muscles which assist the heart ...

In wilderness is the preservation of the world. HENRY THOREAU. Continuing my exploration of Richard Mabey's insightful book, Nature Cur...

He could no longer believe, but he cherished the memory of belief... From CLAIRE TOMALIN's biography Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man . ...

It is with some reluctance that I must finally close The Golden Treasury Of Poetry , the beacon-book of my childhood, and return it to the s...

I've been dipping again into The Golden Treasury Of Poetry . 3 poems leaped out at me. The 1st is by Robert Frost and is called The Runa...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us...

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line/Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it ...

After considering Keats yesterday, and his poem To Autumn , my mind now turns to his letters. In a famous letter dated Sunday 21 December 18...

Of course there's really no such thing as the end of one season and the beginning of the next. The seasons, like the stages of our lives...

Keats did it, Coleridge did it, Shelley did it and Hazlitt did it. Thomas De Quincey did it eating opium and Robert Louis Stevenson did it...