Tea at Trianon: Ode to Autumn

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines...
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease....

~from "Ode to Autumn" by John Keats

Artwork by Ilya Ostroukov Share

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Thank you for the lovely poem and the beautiful painting--all fitting for my favorite season, my favorite month!

~Georgette; October 4, 2008 at 11:09:00 AM EDT
tubbs said...: thanks EM, much appriciated down here.

OCTOBER GAVE A PARTY
(but Florida wasn't invited); October 2, 2010 at 9:09:00 AM EDT
Julygirl said...: Lovely after a beastly hot summer!; October 2, 2010 at 8:09:00 PM EDT