Albion

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or nights;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to Hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

M.R. James, A Neighbour's Landmark

Born 1st August 1862

As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,

Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,

Soul-killing witches that deform the body,

Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,

And many such-like liberties of sin."

Sith my life from life is parted,

Death come take thy portion,

Who survives when life is murder'd

Lives by mere extortion:

All that live and not in God,

Couch their life in death's abode.

Seely stars must needs leave shining

When the sun is shadowed,

Borrow'd streams refrain their running

When head springs are hindered:

One that lives by other's breath,

Dieth also by his death.

O true life! sith Thou hast left me.

Mortal life is tedious;

Death it is to live without Thee,

Death of all most odious:

Turn again or take me to Thee,

Let me die or live Thou in me!

Where the truth once was and is not,

Shadows are but vanity;

Showing want that help they cannot,

Signs, not salves, of misery.

Painted meat no hunger feeds,

Dying life eche death exceeds.

With my love my life was nestled

In the sun of happiness;

From my love my life is wrested

To a world of heaviness:

Oh! let love my life remove,

Sith I live not where I love!

O my soul! that did unloose thee

From thy sweet captivity,

God, not I, did still possess thee,

His, not mine, thy liberty :

Oh ! too happy thrall thou wert.

When thy prison was his heart.

Spiteful spear that break'st this prison,

Seat of all felicity,

Working thus with double treason

Love's and life's delivery:

Though my life thou draw'st away,

Maugre thee my love shall stay.

22nd July, Feast Day of Mary Magdalen

detail from the Mancroft Resurrection Tapestry, 1573, woven by refugee Flemish weavers in the parish

St Peter Mancroft, Norwich.

In the image, Mary Magdalen kneels as the figure of Christ stands before her. Jesus is depicted as a gardener and is wearing a gardener's hat and carrying a spade.

This is a reference to John, Chapter 20

"Mary stood outside the tomb weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the tomb.

She turned round and saw Jesus but did not know who it was.

Jesus said to her, Women, why are you weeping who are you seeking?

My Bed, 1998

by Tracey Emin b. 1963

Installation

Saint Kenelm of Mercia, died c.821

Feast Day: 17th July

Illustration from the Brief Abridgement of the Chronicles of England by Matthew Paris

The Legend of St Kenelm

Kenelm was the son of King Cenwulf of Mercia, to whose throne he succeeded as a boy of seven years. His sister Cwenthryth (Quendreda) instigated his tutor Æscberht to kill him. While hunting with the child in a wood on 17 July, Æscberht beheaded and buried him at Clent in Worcestershire.

Meanwhile, the soul of the murdered Kenelm flew in the form of a white dove to the Pope in Rome, throwing a scroll onto the altar. The message in the scroll said that the young prince Kenelm of Mercia had been treacherously slain, and the site where his relics were hidden was indicated. The monks transported his relics to Winchcombe Abbey, where they were kept for several hundred years.

His sister, Cwenthryth, on hearing the commotion as the monks processed into Winchcombe, swore that if it be true that her brother had been found then may her eyes fall out of her head — and apparently they did, dropping onto the Bible she had been reading, while reciting a psalm backwards (presumably for magical purposes).

The cocks have now the morn foretold,

The sun again begins to peep,

The shepherd, whistling to his fold,

Unpens and frees the captive sheep.

O'er pathless plains at early hours

The sleepy rustic sloomy goes;

The dews, brushed off from grass and flowers,

Bemoistening sop his hardened shoes

While every leaf that forms a shade,

And every floweret's silken top,

And every shivering bent and blade,

Stoops, bowing with a diamond drop.

But soon shall fly those diamond drops,

The red round sun advances higher,

And, stretching o'er the mountain tops,

Is gilding sweet the village-spire.

'Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze,

Or list the gurgling of the brook;

Or, stretched beneath the shade of trees,

Peruse and pause on Nature's book,

When Nature every sweet prepares

To entertain our wished delay,

The images which morning wears,

The wakening charms of early day!

Now let me tread the meadow paths

While glittering dew the ground illumes,

As, sprinkled o'er the withering swaths,

Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes;

And hear the beetle sound his horn;

And hear the skylark whistling nigh,

Sprung from his bed of tufted corn,

A haling minstrel from the sky.

by John Clare, born 13th July, 1793

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) II, i, 1

Keith Thomas, Religion and The Decline of Magic

St Swithun, Benedictional of Æthelwold

British Library, London

Swithun (or Swithin) was Bishop of Winchester from his consecration on 30 October 852 until his death on 2 July 863

He is also known for the proverb:

St Swithun's day if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain

St Swithun's day if thou be fair

For forty days 'twill rain nae mare

St John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 1842

John Wykeham Archer

Watercolour

British Museum

From The Folklore And Witchcraft of Herefordshire by Ella Mary Leather,

English folklorist (1874-1928)