Arthur O’Shaughnessy says:

We are the music makers
We are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams; —

World-losers and world-forsakers
On whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Source: Arthur O’Shaughnessy says:

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First Night Design | Carpe Diem: Let me die a youngman’s death by Roger McGough #Reost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 8th April 2013

The Liverpool poet Roger McGough never ceases to enthrall me. I was reminded of this marvellous poem by a friend who posted it on Facebook yesterday.  McGough makes you smile and always makes trenc…

Source: Carpe Diem: Let me die a youngman’s death by Roger McGough | First Night Design

First Night Design | The Sick Rose by William Blake #Repost

FROM THE ARCHIVE 23rd April 2013

I have used a rose from The Graphics Fairy and a background from Kerstin Frank to create an image for William Blake’s poem, The Sick Rose. Blake, of c…

Source: The Sick Rose by William Blake | First Night Design

your servants, lady !

Beautiful roses from Paul Militaru. I didn’t realise they were roses to start with!

Photo post by @PaulMilitaru.

Source: your servants, lady !

Keats on the Joy of Singledom and How Solitude Opens Our Creative Channels to Truth and Beauty – Brain Pickings

Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton

“The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my Children… I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“Nourish yourself with grand and austere ideas of beauty that feed the soul… Seek solitude,” the great French artist Eugène Delacroix counseled himself in 1824. Just a few years earlier, another timeless patron saint of the creative spirit extolled the rewards of solitude as a supreme conduit to truth and beauty.

Celebrated as one of the greatest poets humanity has ever produced, John Keats (October 31, 1795–February 23, 1821) married an extraordinary capacity for transcendence with an uncommon share of sorrow. His short life was suffused with loss from a young age — his father died after a horseback accident when Keats was eight and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was fourteen. And yet even amid his darkest despair, Keats…

Source: Keats on the Joy of Singledom and How Solitude Opens Our Creative Channels to Truth and Beauty – Brain Pickings

W. H. Auden Says It Best!

FROM THE ARCHIVE 15th January 2013

Portrait of W.H. Auden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was rather amused the other day to read this quote by the poet  W.H. Auden:

“We are here on earth to do good unto others.  What the others are here for, I have no idea.”

Auden’s poetry certainly does me good.  However, if I never hear Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks) again—the poem read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral—it will be too soon!  Read it, yes.  Hear it at funerals, no!  A friend of mine, an actor and Anglican priest (a rather marvellous combination and a rather marvellous friend), says there has been no lessening in the number of funerals using Funeral Blues or, for that matter,  Robbie Williams’ Angels.  No comment!

The Auden I love above all else is Night Mail.   Predictable of me?  Perhaps.  Give yourself a treat and…

Source: W. H. Auden Says It Best!

The Legend of Lady Godiva: Depictions in Art, Literature, and History | Mimi Matthews

Originally posted on Mimi Matthews.

The scandalous tale of Lady Godiva’s ride has been in circulation for nearly ten centuries.  In that time, it has provided inspiration for innumerable poets, painters, and sculptors.  Inevitably, Lady Godiva is depicted as naked on horseback, covered only by her long hair, as she rides through the town of Coventry.  But did such a ride ever take place?  According to some sources it did.The legend was first recorded in Roger of Wendover’s 13th century Flores Historiarum (Flowers of History).  Since then, it has been listed as fact in several other historical texts, including both Charles Knight’s A History of England and Chambers’ Encyclopaedia.Lady Godiva by William Holmes Sullivan, 1877. According to the legend, Lady Godiva was so distressed about the high taxes levied on the citizens of Coventry that she appealed to her…

via The Legend of Lady Godiva: Depictions in Art, Literature, and History | Mimi Matthews.

First Night Design | Happy Accidents or Tennyson’s Manor

First Night Design

A couple of mornings ago I woke up with a scene in my mind’s eye and knew it was something I wanted to create.  I saw desert, night sky and camels.  I set to work last night.

Kerstin Frank & The Graphics Fairy

But I did not discover Kerstin‘s textures above till this morning and was convinced I could do something with two I already had.

So what happened, Sarah?

A happy accident. I put together two textures from Kerstin Frank that I had previously downloaded and experimented with blending.  It needed more work to create even half the background I had envisaged but I decided to add the camel from The Graphics Fairy and take it from there.  Yet I could not find the camel.  I knew it was on my computer but it was already past midnight and I didn’t have the energy to search properly nor…

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First Night Design | To the Common Drunkard, Falsely Called a Good Fellow

Mellow Oak © Sarah Vernon

To the Common Drunkard, Falsely Called a Good Fellow by Thomas Washbourne [1606-1687]

Cannot friends meet but they must drink t’ excess?
Must all your mirth conclude in drunkenness?
Accurst be he brought it in fashion first;
Before ye were content to quench your thirst,
And not exceed three or four cups at most;
Now you carouse till all your reason’s lost,
And like to over-heated Dutch-men, yee
Drink till ye fight, and fall to snicker-snee.
He that invites his friend t’ a drunken feast,
Keeps out the man and entertains the beast:
A feast ’tis not, but a base Bacchanal,
Where the beast man, a. sacrifice doth fall.
Worse then a beaste he is, for no beast will
Be made to drink a drop more then his fill.
But man his belly makes a tun, his brain
A bog, and drinks till up he comes again.
Vile man, whom God next t’ angels did create.
Below a bruit thus to degenerate!
For shame give o’re this most unmanlike sin,
Which too long hath thy daily practise bin,
Redeem thine honour drown’d in ale and wine,
And thy soul settled on the lees, refine:
When thy debauched life thou shalt correct.
Thou happier dales in England maist expect.

via To the Common Drunkard, Falsely Called a Good Fellow by Thomas Washbourne | From Troubles of The World.

Take care and keep laughing!

Five Cockney Poets | HistoryLondon

Originally posted on HistoryLondon.

Was it something in the water? Wandering around the City of London’s Square Mile I have been surprised to learn that five of England’s greatest poets were born here, within a few hundred yards of each other, in a concentration of poetic genius I would hazard is not surpassed anywhere else in the world.

The lives of the five: John Milton, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, John Keats and Thomas Hood, occupied a key period of about 250 years of London’s history from 1600 to 1850. Their poetic styles were very different, and none of them, except perhaps Hood, is remembered particularly as a London writer, but I thought it would be interesting to find out what they had to say about their home city.

In 1608, John Milton was born an unquestioned Cockney, in Bread Street just three houses south of Cheapside and the…

via Five Cockney Poets | HistoryLondon.

Poetry and Politics

My niece flew back to London and university yesterday and I miss her beautiful and savvy countenance. Needless to say, I have a lot of catching up to do! In this reblog, Serena Trowbridge casts her eye upon our (UK) political leaders’ choice of ‘favourite’ poems. Interesting!

Culture and Anarchy

In yesterday’s Sunday Times, Andrew Motion, in his role as head of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, writes about party leaders’ reluctance to commit to protecting greenbelt land. He also asks them for their favourite poems about the countryside. (You can read more about Motion’s interviews with the party leaders here). Their responses were:

David Cameron: Gray’s ‘Elegy‘

Nigel Farage: George Meredith, ‘The Lark Ascending‘

Natalie Bennett: Aemilia Lanyer, ‘Ode to Cooke-ham‘

Ed Miliband: Blake’s ‘Jerusalem‘

Nick Clegg: Blake, ‘Eternity‘

Cameron’s choice of Gray’s poem is not remarkable; he commented that it is a ‘magical’ poem which was a leaving present from his school – not surprisingly, since both were Eton men. The poem was once voted the UK’s most popular poem, and was also Gordon Brown’s favourite poem, though he more perceptively commented that the poem…

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Cottleston Pie

method two madness

This is an assignment done for an Illustrator class many years ago that I found in a file when I was looking for something else.  Pooh’s song seems perfect for the end of a week in April when once again spring can’t seem to decide to stay.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don’t know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can’t whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

I’ll be away for a few days…enjoy the weekend, see you next week.

View original post

W. H. Auden Says It Best!

First Night Design

Portrait of W.H. Auden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was rather amused the other day to read this quote by the poet  W.H. Auden:

“We are here on earth to do good unto others.  What the others are here for, I have no idea.”

Auden’s poetry certainly does me good.  However, if I never hear Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks) again—the poem read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral—it will be too soon!  Read it, yes.  Hear it at funerals, no!  A friend of mine, an actor and Anglican priest (a rather marvellous combination and a rather marvellous friend), says there has been no lessening in the number of funerals using Funeral Blues or, for that matter,  Robbie Williams’ Angels.  No comment!

The Auden I love above all else is Night Mail.   Predictable of me?  Perhaps.  Give yourself a treat…

View original post 467 more words

First Night Design | Burnished Tigers | Save the Tiger

First Night Design

‘A hundred years ago there were 100,000 tigers in the wild. Today there are as few as 3,200.’

Burnished Tigers © First Night Design

Over wide streams and mountains great we went,
And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent,
Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,
With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads–with song and dance,
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians’ prance,
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers’ toil:
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
Nor care for wind and tide.
John Keats — Song of the Indian Maid from Endymion

Artwork comprising a vintage image from The Graphics Fairy:

Vintage Tigers Printable – The Graphics Fairy

One of my earlier designs:

Birds of the Jungle © First Night Design

And a texture from 2 Lil Owls:

2 Lil’ Owls Texture

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Christmas Ornaments by Wendy Cope

Don’t even think about asking for news of my computer! Enjoy, instead, this post from Christmas past.
Take care and keep laughing!
Sarah x

First Night Design

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas Throw Pillows

The mice attacked the Holy Family –
The one I bought in Prague, made out of straw.
By Christmas, Joseph was an amputee
And Mary and the baby were no more.
But I have other treasures to display –

Father Christmas Gift Wrap by FirstNightDesign

Two perching birds, a Santa Claus, a clown,
A rooster from the church in Santa Fe,
A little harp and drum, a shoe, a crown –

Thanksgiving Rooster Poker Deck by FirstNightDesign

Collected in the years I’ve lived with you,
The years of warmth and love and Christmas trees,

Scrapbook Fir Tree Spiral Notebook by FirstNightDesign

And someone to come home to, someone who
Can share what I bring back from overseas
And sometimes travel with me. Darling, look –
Our moon from Paris, glittering on its hook.

Home Sweet Home for Christmas Plaques by FirstNightDesign

Take care…

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