Tag Archives: John Stewart Collis

Threads strung across everything.

nature, quotes, , ,

“Time marched on. Each day seemed long, each week short. It was already autumn. What is the salient characteristic of autumn? The spiders’ threads in the early morning frost. I am not thinking much of the circular networks, marvellous as these are, hung along the gate, but rather the threads that are strung across everything, so that if you bend down till your eye is level with the field you can see a white veil over the whole expanse. They are everywhere, on everything. ‘Do they drape the cannons in France?’ asked Mr Ralph Wightman, true poet, in a striking image, the other day. To look down at these things is like looking up at the stars — we are baffled by quantity.”

John Stewart Collis in The Worm Forgives the Plough

(photo credit)

 

Collis in Sicily

history, nature, quotes, trees,

Castagno_dei_cento_cavalli_-_Jean-Pierre_Houël c 1777It’s been a while since I shared a passage from The Worm Forgives the Plough, but I hadn’t yet run out of favorites. This one isn’t so poetic in itself, but it’s about a tree that other poets have sung about, and which I would enjoy visiting.

Once I saw Mount Etna in full volcanic eruption. It was a sight which held my attention. But at the bottom of the mountain there was another manifestation almost as fascinating — the Chestnut Tree of the Hundred Horses which is said to be the largest tree in the world. Thirty men holding hands do not quite succeed in surrounding it, while a hundred horsemen can find ample room beneath its foliage, as indeed was actually proved when Joan, Queen of Aragon, was caught in a storm nearby and took shelter there with her enormous retinue. And at the bottom of this tree a hold runs straight through, wide enough to admit two carriages abreast. It still yields a good crop of chestnuts.

— John Stewart Collis in The Worm Forgives the Plough  p.215

Collis marvels at a re-enactment.

nature, quotes, ,

The days were gleaming in a manner more often heard about than seen in June, and the surrounding fields and skies were shining with signs and answers and promises and prophecies and praise. The roller clattered, the dust rose, and the tractor gave  choking trouble at intervals, but I could not help being aware of that glitter and that gleam. And I marvelled at the thought of night coming soon, the mighty opposite, when all that radiance would go and all those colours pass. A common experience, night following day? Yet we may doubt if between the pram and the bath-chair we will ever see anything more fantastic than this change. Every dawn is the re-enactment of the world’s genesis, and the rising up of the light is the rising up of life.

— John Stewart Collis in The Worm Forgives the Plough

Collis takes the bluebell.

nature, quotes, wildflowers,

hyacinthoides-non-scripta“We call wild flowers common because of their quantity. But this is just where we strike the great difference between the productions of Nature and the productions of Man. When we produce many samples of the same thing they are of poor quality and we speak of them as mass-produced. The mass productions of Nature do not fail at all in terms of quality. Take the bluebell. There indeed is quantity. Yet every single year we are freshly struck by their quality. Only a flower-snob could fail to see that any one of these bells on the uplifted belfry is as delicate a construction as any tulip or any rose. I will not say more beautiful, or less, for in this realm of flowers we actually are in the presence of abundant examples of — perfection. I think that perfection is the key to the emotion that flowers cause in us. When a thing is perfect the problem of its existence is solved. Gazing at flowers in a wood an unexpected signal seems to go up; we feel a movement of happiness and hope about everything, there is a suggestion that all is really well, all is right with the world….”

–John Stewart Collis in The Worm Forgives the Plough