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Exploring the Beauty of Autumn with the Poetry of John Keats and Robert Louis Stevenson
Autumn is a great time to settle down in a comfortable chair and read some of your favorite poetry. Below are some classics you might enjoy. You might also want to check out Tapestry by Solitaire, which has been compared to the style of Edgar Allen Poe, having a classic medieval tone.
TO AUTUMN
John Keats (1795-1821)
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 that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.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!
Solitaire
HORROR Books to Keep You up at Night!
One of our oldest and strongest emotions as human beings is fear. Strangely, the mind seems to look for things that are scary; we build haunted houses, spend our hard-earned money on Horror Movies, and read Horror Novels. It does seem a bit macabre that we as humans tend to frequent this genre. Life is filled with fearful moments – we fear death, being alone, a lack of money, losing a job, losing a family member, and the list goes on and on. Yet there is that adrenaline rush that the darkness and the unknown can produce which is like no other to make us feel alive. So why does horror mystify and almost entrap us? Maybe it is our unending curiosity or we are attempting to test our courage in an increasingly unpredictable world. Whatever the reason, it attracts millions of people, especially around this time of year at Halloween. So here are a list of some of the authors of classic Horror books that evoke the emotions of fear, surprise, and terror to keep you up at night!
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Stephen King – The Shining, Pet Sematary, Carrie, Salem’s Lot, Cujo, Misery (to name a few)
Edgar Allen Poe – The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, Murders in the Rue Morgue,
The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death
Clive Barker – The Hellbound Heart, The Damnation Game, Coldheart Canyon, Cabal,
Demons and Deviants
Dean Koontz – Odd Thomas, Phantoms, The Bad Place, The Taking, Dark Fall, Watchers,
The Demon Seed
Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire, The Witching Hour, The Queen of the Damned
Jack Ketchum – The Girl Next Door, Off Season, The Woman, Hide and Seek, Offspring
H.P. Lovecraft – Dreams of Terror and Death, The Road to Madness, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos,
Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre
Peter Straub – The Floating Dragon, A Dark Matter, Ghost Story, Koko
Ray Bradbury – Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dark Carnival, A Memory of Murder
Ramsey Campbell – The Face That Must Die, The Darkest Part of the Woods, Ancient Images
There are, of course, many more authors in this genre that you can check out at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and many other online stores.
Also available on my website is a horror/thriller – “VENGEANCE OF THE WOLF”
Have a Horror-ific Holiday!
Solitaire
Solitaire Parke - Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books 