Montijo

Smile

Plymouth

EXETER

Tintagel

The name of Tintagel immediately conjures images of King Arthur and the legends associated with him. The blackened ruins of Tintagel Castle brood over the coast, but no-one can say for sure whether this was really the place where Uther Pendragon seduced the Queen of Cornwall. The ruined Norman castle is much more recent than the times of the legend, although there are signs of much earlier settlements.

On the day we celebrate the poetry...

The state I'm in is so unsteady
I burn with ardor yet shriver with cold,
I laugh while crying, without a reason,
I embrace the whole world and hold nothing.

All that I feel is in confusion;
my soul spews fire, my eyes a river;
I hope one moment, the next I waver;
now I'm lucid, now delirious.

Though bound to earth, I fly up to Heaven;
in a day I find a thousand years
but not in thousand years, one day.

Shoul someone ask why I act this way,
I'll say I don't know, though I suspect
it's only because I saw you, Lady.

poem by Luis de Camões, translated by Richard Zenith

The Peace Of Wild Things

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free

by Wendell Berry