'Oddly, I remember little of what must have been read to us in the 'poetry' lessons. Apart from a fragment or two of strictly abbreviated nursery rhymes, there was the fact that Young Lochinvar came out of the west, and through all the wide Border his steed was the best. If anyone suggested just where in the west Young Lochinvar came out of, I don't recall it. As we were children in a Cornish school, I had a hazy notion that it might have been Penzance, or possibly Land's End. Then there were the lines of Tennyson:
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy ummits old in story.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Vitoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel V. Bracher
