Recently when asked on BBC’s ‘Desert island Discs‘ which book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, would he take if stranded on that imaginary desert island, the writer Robert Macfarlane chose the writing and poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Though virtually unknown in his life-time, today Hopkins has many admirers.
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Early morning Spring mist veils the waking landscape with the uncluttered freshness and innocence of a new day. What could be better than to spend the day with John Clare walking beside my favourite local Arun river.
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In the March Garden the first few bars of the opening movement of Spring warm our winter-locked-up lives with promise. Earth is waking from winter rest – the thawing of frozen hopes bringing a foretaste of better things. Dreams have kept us going when times have been rough, now they are turning into reality.
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Did William Wordsworth ‘wander lonely as a cloud‘ through the Lakeland Fells? Was he the solitary poetic genius writing some of the greatest nature poetry in the English language? His sister Dorothy’s Grasmere Journal reveals a slightly different picture.
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