{"id":3741,"date":"2017-08-13T06:54:47","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T06:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/banthewasp.com\/?p=3741"},"modified":"2017-08-13T06:54:47","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T06:54:47","slug":"adamantine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/?p=3741","title":{"rendered":"Adamantine"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a jolly nice scone with coffee at an Edinburgh garden centre, and a good blether with Rosemary and Susan,\u00a0 I was reminded of this lovely poem by D H Lawrence.<\/p>\n

Bavarian Gentians<\/p>\n

Not every man has gentians in his house
\nin Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.<\/p>\n

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
\ndarkening the daytime torch-like with the smoking blueness
\nof Pluto\u2019s\u00a0gloom,
\nribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread
\nblue
\ndown flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of
\nwhite day
\ntorch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto\u2019s dark-
\nblue daze,
\nblack lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
\ngiving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter\u2019s pale lamps
\ngive off\u00a0light,
\nlead me then, lead me the way.<\/p>\n

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
\nlet me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower
\ndown the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on
\nblueness,
\neven where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted
\nSeptember
\nto the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
\nand Persephone herself is but a voice
\nor a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
\nof the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense
\ngloom,
\namong the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding
\ndarkness on the lost bride and her groom.<\/p>\n

Mum grew alpines, including gentians, with a wee bit success; Sherry loved the gentians because they reminded her of so many trips to the Matterhorn and Rosemary liked the one Mum called a periwinkle.\u00a0 Indeed, she recently gave me a plant too.\u00a0 I have called it periwinkle for so long that I have to cudgel my brain to come up with the correct name which I think is Lithodora?\u00a0 Anyway, it means “stone gift” which would seem appropriate!<\/p>\n

Another work in stone below, a few weeks ago I was on a mission to obtain various articles via the legendary charity shops in Stockbridge when I passed by this edifice I have not noticed before.<\/p>\n

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Stockbridge St Stephen Place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
Three bridges I<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Above a shot of the bridges taken from the high up layby between Aberdour and Burntisland.\u00a0 At least one member of the family will be able to\u00a0 walk over the new Queensferry Crossing on the open weekend, before QEII arrives to sanction the moniker, and we look forward to seeing his pictures of that event.\u00a0 I hope that we manage to drive across on the first day.<\/p>\n

Lastly I thought of stone and blue together and arrived at diamond, from an old story in which a bloke went mining for those stones in Africa, hit a layer of impenetrable blue rock and gave up, but not before chopping out a slab to carry around with him to remind himself of his hubris.\u00a0 The sun weakened the stone slab over the years, and of course it cracked open to reveal a giant stone of many carats. \u00a0 The word diamond comes from\u00a0 Ancient Greek \u1f00\u03b4\u03ac\u03bc\u03b1\u03c2 \u2013 ad\u00e1mas<\/i> “unbreakable” hence adamant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a jolly nice scone with coffee at an Edinburgh garden centre, and a good blether with Rosemary and Susan,\u00a0 I was reminded of this lovely poem by D H Lawrence. Bavarian Gentians Not every man has gentians in his house in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-poetry","category-scones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}