Monday, January 25, 2016

Peacocks are blue, dilly-dilly, peacocks are green

One green peacock may be beautiful:



But two blue peacocks are downright gorgeous:



These are Mrs. RWP's fifth and sixth creations since she began enjoying her new hobby of using artist's pencils to complete adult-difficulty coloring books. She chooses her own combinations.

Thanks to Sue in Australia who blogs as Elephant's Child, I was introduced today to an Australian poet, Dorothea Mackellar, who was born in 1885 and died in 1968. In my next post I will share with you her best-known poem, but today I want to share her poem "Colour" because it gives me, a non-artist, insight into how Mrs. RWP must experience things:

Colour

The lovely things that I have watched unthinking,
Unknowing, day by day,
That their soft dyes have steeped my soul in colour
That will not pass away -

Great saffron sunset clouds, and larkspur mountains,
And fenceless miles of plain,
And hillsides golden-green in that unearthly
Clear shining after rain;

And nights of blue and pearl, and long smooth beaches,
Yellow as sunburnt wheat,
Edged with a line of foam that creams and hisses,
Enticing weary feet.

And emeralds, and sunset-hearted opals,
And Asian marble, veined
With scarlet flame, and cool green jade, and moonstones
Misty and azure-stained;

And almond trees in bloom, and oleanders,
Or a wide purple sea,
Of plain-land gorgeous with a lovely poison,
The evil Darling pea.

If I am tired I call on these to help me
To dream -and dawn-lit skies,
Lemon and pink, or faintest, coolest lilac,
Float on my soothed eyes.

There is no night so black but you shine through it,
There is no morn so drear,
O Colour of the World, but I can find you,
Most tender, pure and clear.

Thanks be to God, Who gave this gift of colour,
Which who shall seek shall find;
Thanks be to God, Who gives me strength to hold it,
Though I were stricken blind.

--Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968)

P.S. - Peacocks can also be white:


3 comments:

  1. Your footnote that peacocks can also be white was enlightening. Did you know that polar bears and doves can also be white? In fact most animal species very occasionally produce albino offspring that may struggle to survive in the wild. Glad to be of service.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yorkshire Pudding, you know what they say about assumptions. A little research would have revealed that white peacocks are not albino because their eyes are blue, not pink.

    ReplyDelete

<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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