Tuesday, December 20, 2011

John Byam Liston Shaw - Silent Noon, 1894

3 comments:

WoofWoof said...

What a beautiful painting - absolutely enchanting. I think this is illustrating the lovely poem of D.G. Rossetti's "Silent Noon" (also set to music beautifully by Vaughan Williams):

Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, --
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: --
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

Medieval Muse said...

A beautiful painting!!!

Hermes said...

Thank you both - it is such a lovely painting and the verse sounds just right.