Poem for a Winters day : The Light of Other Days, by Tom Moore
The Light of Other Days
by Tom Moore
Oft, in the still of night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the still of night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all
The friends, so linked together,
I’ve seen around me fall
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the still of night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me.
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
Seven day Black and white Photo challenge : The Word is light and Light is the Word !
James Hoban
Callan Kilkenny
black and white
Photo Challenge
Nigel Borrington
James Hoban Born 1755 – Died December 8, 1831, was an Irish architect, best known for designing the White House in Washington, D.C. Some years back a team of architecture students from American both designed and built the Hoben monument featured here in this post. From the moment it became clear how this monument would look, I have been fascinated by its design and construction, it stands out locally for just how unique it feels surrounded by farm land and remote country lanes.
The Feature I love most about it is the way that at sunrise and sunset the light passes through the glass, the words written in the glass cast both shadows and reflections on the stone work and grass all around them, even to simple look through the glass panels and into the sun is a great experience, it has for myself succeeded to be a great example of modern public art and architecture.
This was the last post for the Seven day – one week, black and white Challenge, Thank you to Sharon Walters Knight for tagging me on Facebook to take part, I have really enjoyed the hunt for black and white subjects, its taken me back to the basics of what photography is all about 🙂
Seven day black and white photo challenge : Oh my Lord !!!!
My Sweet Lord
Black and white Photo challenge Nigel Borrington
Day Six of the Black and white photo challenge and today , I went to the top of a local Hill, Carrigmaclea in county Tipperary. The light was amazing and perfect for black and white images. At the top of the hill as you can see there is a cross that was erected by people from a local church back in 1958 which was apparently a holly year.
“My Sweet Lord”
My sweet lord
Hm, my lord
Hm, my lord
I really want to see you
Really want to be with you
Really want to see you lord
But it takes so long, my lord
My sweet lord
Hm, my lord
Hm, my lord
George Harrison
Seven day Black and white photo challenge : Moon light over the river
Moon light over the river
River Suir
County Waterford
Nigel Borrington
Seven day Photo Challenge : Time in the rivers flow
The flow of the river and time
Nigel Borrington
Black and white landscapes
Seven day Black and white photo challenge : The Water wheel – faster and faster
Mullins mill water wheel
Black and white photo challenge
Nigel Borrington
Capturing the old water wheel at Mullins Mill, Kells, county Kilkenny , using different shutter speeds ……
Seven day Black and white photo challenge, Dunhill Castle, county Waterford
Dunhill Castle
County Waterford
Nigel Borrington
Black and white Landscapes
I own a big thank you to great friend and fellow photo blogger Sharon Walters Knight for tagging me last week on my facebook page, to take part in a Seven day Black and White photo challenge, I am really enjoying taking this on as its making me truly explore subject just for black and white images once again 🙂
This image of Dunhill castle, county Waterford, was taken during the last hour of bright sun light, this time of year the sun is very low in the sky so there is some great light to be captured, even more so later in the afternoon. Here I just loved the way the sun reflected on the old stone work of this great old building just moment before it set some distance away over the coast to the south.
Seven day Black and white photo challenge! : Secrets of the world around you …..
The whole world around you
Nigel borrington
The above board located at the Anne Valley Walk, county Waterford reads as follows :
Watch with glittering eyes
The whole world around you
because the greatest secrets
are hidden in the most unlikely places
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it !!!
Finding Nature ……
Seven day Black and white photo challenge! : Forestry
Seven day Black and white photo challenge!
Day 1
Yesterday on my facebook page I was tagged by a great photo blogger and friend Sharon Walters Knight to take part in a seven day black and white photo challenge !
Day 1: Is this image from one of our local forests. Forest floor matting , When the forest workers finish clearing and area of woodland they save a lot of branches for matting, this matting is used to lay down tracks for their heavy machines to drive over , these roads of sticks save the environment along with many insects and plant life including seeds.
While not a stunning image as such, I felt it just captured a part of the processes involved in forestry
3 Times and You Lose , Lyrics by Travis
Callan county Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington
3 Times and You Lose
I had a nightmare
I lived in a little town
Where little dreams were broken
And words were seldom spoken
I tried to reach you
But all the lines were down
And so the rain began to fall
On this little town
… On this little town
The little people
Had very little left to say
Their words had all been shortened
It didn’t really seem important
And I had a feeling
That you were very far away
But then a little voice inside me said
“you’ll never get away from here”
And it’s 1, 2,
3 Times and you lose
Of course it doesn’t matter how you say it
I’m all out of luck
So there’s nothing really more to say
I’m throwing it all away
Well we had opinions
But now we all think the same
We never look at one another
Only when the other suffers
And I thought I saw you
But it…
Here I Am Still Breathing ! A Poem For The Brokenhearted by : Andrew Voigt
Top Withens
Also known as Top Withins is a ruined farmhouse near Haworth, West Yorkshire,
This farmhouse is associated with “Wuthering Heights”, the Earnshaw home in Emily Brontë’s novel
Nigel Borrington
I felt this poem by Andrew Voigt matched this great location on the yorkshire moors very well !
Here I Am Still Breathing
A Poem For The Brokenhearted
The night is dark and I’m alone
Searching for a place called home
Silence rings within my ears
Fear and pain flood my tears
Hope feels far, isolation nears
What if God isn’t really there?
Well, maybe I simply fail at dreams
A hollow chord with broken strings
Stars go black, night turns grey
Light is gone, far from day
Will the sun rise once again?
A distant dream, a long-lost friend?
Maybe I simply can’t understand
A single word of this master plan
It hurts like hell, my spirit screams
Life in the land of broken dreams
I sit back down to concentrate
Reminded of the things I hate
Depression, fear, regrets of time
Desiring just to press rewind
Yet, here I am still breathing
This heartbeat song unending
This life is still worth living
This life is still worth living
I pick myself up off the floor
Remnants of the mask I’ve worn
Face the mirror while it stares back
Accepting all the things I lack
Reflections often mirror shame
Yet, tonight they simply aren’t the same
Within the tears upon my face
A light reflects in a darkened space
Could it be the day awakes?
The winter gone, new hopes to chase?
Well, maybe I’m just seeing things
Like a blind man lost in the midnight sea
But what if hope still remains?
And what if love is not in vain?
Could there be a God of love?
Who walked this earth and gave his blood?
My head is spinning within these thoughts
Could God really care for souls so lost?
We turned our backs and swore His name
Yet, still He loves us in our shame
Yes, here I am still breathing
This heartbeat song unending
This life is still worth living
This life is still worth living
Andrew Voigt
Andrew Voigt is a writer and blogger discussing thoughts on God, dreams, and brokenness. He has served as a contributing writer for publications such as Patheos, Fathom Magazine, and Kingdom Spark. Andrew holds a B.S. in Communication Studies from Liberty University and lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife and orange cat named Pumpkin.
Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats Image Nigel Borrington
Sailing to Byzantium
by William Butler Yeats
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Autumn Within, By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Autumn Within
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is autumn; not without
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.
Birds are darting through the air,
Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
Save within my lonely breast.
There is silence: the dead leaves
Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves,
Comes no murmur from the mill.
Autumn Within
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Friday poetry : Ghost House Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
Culzean Castle
Nigel Borrington
Ghost House
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had
Independent Heart, a poem by : Jodie Moore
Independent Heart
Soft words you spoken
From the heart that is broken
I know deep inside
You have a level of independence
With a mystery of suspense
You are recovering
Waiting for someone
To catch on to the discovering
Of the real you
With a heart so true
Giving of your best
Expecting nothing less
While hurt is making amends
Leaning on loving friends
Accounted for in time you spend
With words you write
Not giving into a broken hearts flight
Staying strong
Carrying others like me along
Music is my life , By: Alon Calinao Dy
Music is my life
By: Alon Calinao Dy
Music ignites my soul with fire.
When I’m in sorrow and in pain,
It makes me fall in love again.
Music is my life after all these years.
Through ups and downs,
Somehow I manage to survive in life.
Though life is a rough road,
Music makes me dance and sing aloud
Through hardships in life.
Author: Alon Calinao Dy
Four Poems about Autumn (Katherine Towers,Emily Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Frost)
Whim Wood
Katherine Towers
into the coppery halls
of beech and intricate oak
to be close to the trees
as they whisper together
let fall their leaves,
and we die for the winter
From Katherine Towers’ The Remedies
Emily Brontë
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
Autumn Fires
Robert Louis Stevenson
In the other gardens
And all up in the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over,
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
The Bay that never was, A Poem by : James K. Baxter (1926-1972)
The Bay
James K. Baxter (1926-1972)
SlieveLeague
Donegal
Ireland’s Most Beautiful Places
Nigel Borrington
On the road to the bay was a lake of rushes
Where we bathed at times and changed in the bamboos.
Now it is rather to stand and say
How many roads we take that lead to Nowhere,
The alley overgrown, no meaning now but loss:
Not that veritable garden where everything comes easy.
And by the bay itself were cliffs with carved names
And a hut on the shore by the open fires.
We raced boats from the banks of the river
Or swam in those autumnal shallows.
Growing cold in amber water, riding the logs
Upstream, and waiting for the Sea Monsters.
So now I remember the bay and the little spiders
On driftwood, so poisonous and quick.
The carved cliffs and the great out crying surf
With currents round the rocks and the birds rising.
A thousand times an hour is torn across
And burned for the sake of going on living.
But I remember the bay that never was
And stand like stone and cannot turn away.
The day after Hurricane Ophelia: the slow return to normality
Hurricane Ophelia
Just hours before it hit ireland
Monday 16th 2017
The day after Hurricane Ophelia
The below images taken during on a walk up in the Grange hills between south county Kilkenny and Tipperary are from lunch time today, looking at them its hard to believe that only yesterday, Ireland for the first time ever in its history was hit by a full Hurricane force storm. Yesterday between the hours of 9am for county’s Kerry and Cork and then around 2pm for ourselves locally we had storm force winds of between 150kph and 130kph.
In the Morning the Irish met office via the media had informed everyone to stay inside and had issued a RED weather alert for the complete country, again for the first time in Irish history. In a very impressive way, almost everyone pulled a chair close to the fire and waited for Ophelia to arrive. When she finally did get to county Kilkenny, she did not come calling slowly or with any manners, she just came at us with full force gusts and left some three hours later. We have had two such storms locally since 2014 with storm Darwin back in February 2014, which I posted on back then, Darwin being however just a very strong Atlantic storm. During both these storms you can do little but sit and wait, however listening and looking out of the window is just shocking and basically very hard to do.
In 2014 when Darwin left she left with many of our local forests lying on the floor, as such I think Ophelia had little left to get her teeth into, as its only just over two years in the forests themselves since, the areas Darwin cleared are still empty of trees.
Yesterday evening we had many roads blocked with roadside trees, along with trees down on the river banks and in public parks .
The main effects this time nationally has been the loss of power with some 360,000 homes left without any electric supply, Ireland’s water systems also works mainly from electric water pumps so this supply for many has also been cut off.
This morning the weather had returned to normal , in fact it was a great and clear and sunny day, walking around at lunchtime for me the most noticeable thing is that the trees have all been stripped of any leaves, they have gone from the start of autumn colors to winter nakedness in only 3 hours, it’s really noticeable that instead of yellow and brown leaves sitting by the road sides, having naturally fallen, we have roadsides covered in green.
So Goodbye Ophelia and welcome to a peaceful sunny Tuesday in the Irish landscape, even if we are still in shock and only just starting to recover ……
Gallery from 17th Oct 2017 – the day after Ophelia
One hour sketch (Pencil on paper), Killamery church yard, county KIlkenny
One hour sketch Killamery church yard county kilkenny
Nigel Borrrington
The old church yard at Killamery county Kilkenny is most famous for its highcross pictured here at the bottom of the post. The old church and grave yard however are just as interesting, the history of the area includes it being the location of a very large monastic site covering what would have been many large building now completely lost in time.
My sketch here I hope helps capture a sense of this wonderful place located on the boarder between county kilkenny and county Tipperary.
Killamery High cross Nov 2014
Kilkenny landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
One hour sketch (Pencil on paper), The chapel doorway, Tullaroan, county Kilkenny
The old chapel doorway Tullaroan county kilkenny
ireland Nigel Borrington
Nigel Borrington 
A colourfull world , Finding Colour in the Irish landscape
There is so much colour in the World
Nigel Borrington
I truly loved do the black and white photography challenge of the last week or so, however I am now looking forward to getting back to posting lots of images that show just how much colour there is in our world.
For my next photography project I want to find as much colour as I can in a Irish winter landscape, its not as easy find as in the summer months but its going to be great to look as hard as I can 🙂
Finding Colour in the Landscape:
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November 12, 2017 | Categories: Comment, Gallery, Landscape, Nature and Wildlife | Tags: Colour in the landscape, Colour photography, Landscape Photography, Nigel Borrington | 3 Comments