Revelation

 Dear Reader,

You are old, Father William,' the young man said
'And your hair has become very white;
and yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

Lewis Carroll 1832 - 1898

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll.  He was an English author, poet, mathematician and photographer. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. He was noted for his facility with word play, logic and fantasy.  His poems Jabberwoky, and Hunting the Snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense.

As a very young child he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear.  At the age of 17 he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life.  In early childhood he acquired a stammer which he referred to as his "hesitation", it remained throughout his life.

Dodgson died of pneumonia following influenza on 14th January 1898.  He is commemorated at All Saints Church, Daresbury, in its stained glass windows depicting characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland erected in 1935.

 

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From D.H. Lawrence    February 9th  1919 in Derbyshire

'It is marvelous weather - brilliant sunshine on the snow, clear as a summer, slightly golden sun, distnace it up.  But it is immensely cold - everything frozen solid - milk, mustard, everything.  Yesterday I went out for a real walk- the bare top of the hills.  Wonderful it is to see the foot marks on the snow - beautiful ropes of rabbit prints, trailing away over the brows; heavy hare marks; a fox so sharp and dainty, going over the wall: birds with two feet that hop; very splendid straight advance of a pheasant; wood pigeons that are clumsy and move in flocks; splendid little leaping marks of weasels coming along like a necklace chain of berries; odd little filigree of the the field-mice; the trail of a mole - it is astonishing what a world of wild creatures one feels about one, on the hills in snow.' 

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Revelation

Why didn't they tell us
that
it was going to be like this

this difficult

that old age
lurks

thinking up something
to upset us

something to pain us
reduce us to tears

it comes in the night
creeps up on us
unawares

we didn't know that this was
our fate
until its arrival

                 much     too late

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With very best wishes, Patricia

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