The Lovers’ Chronicle 8 August – last light – art by Théodule Ribot – Flaubert’s Lover – verse by Sara Teasdale

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Never tire of hearin’ this story about Flaubert’s lover.  Agree?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

with this theme, a day for light
“Any excuse to talk about light”
the golden hour as called by some
interestin’, i watched Days of Heaven
today, most of which was filmed
durin’ dawn and dusk
“It makes everything look better”
and what about the light of the moon
“Oh we love the moonlight”
here is to many more days
of moon, first and last light
together

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

prefer to catch the first or last every day; to see the first, preparations need to be made; rise before the sun, make a pot of espresso, choose a cigar, get my tablet for writin’, my phone for photos, and take it all out to the balcony, there to sit and wait for the right moment, as a director with a keen eye, to say; action

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

this is a favorite topic,
either first or last
the only photos worth takin’
are durin’ dawn or twilight
i have pulled over on road trips
to watch the sun comin’ or goin’
but the way that light shines
on your hair, your face
there is nothin’ finer,
no higher beauty

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

when you called

cannot conceive
how this happened
just glad it did

the image remains for me
the one ventured to wish for

i have written often
how i have givin’,
and not carin’
about receivin’

no one ever gave
and i linger in that

imagine

to be each other’s only
to see if we can give

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“I thought it would be easier.”
to what
“To be with you. To cure you.”
i told you, you are mistaken

‘’That’s all you want?
To give.
And you won’t let anyone
give to you?”

that is how i will have it
i get all i need in givin’ to you
there is a method
and yes it might be madness

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

destined, yet what is to be done
cannot conceive how this happened

your image remains for me
suffused with last light of day

the one ventured to wish for,
to please

suppose hope lingers though,
imagine

to be each other’s only desire
to see if we can be satiated

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

in these memories
where i hide
in the last light,
speadin’ across the plains
what can be conceived
but thoughts of you

a shiverin’ wind comin’ on
dreams are born
what else matters

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Another day in history moment.  Another historical love letter.  Another example of what I wish I could write for you.

Today is the birthday of Théodule Ribot (Théodule-Augustin Ribot; Saint-Nicolas-d’Attez, France ; August 8, 1823 – September 11, 1891 Colombes, France); realist painter and printmaker. Ribot worked in at least three mediums, oil paint, pencil or crayon draughtsmanship and etching. Ribot painted domestic genre works, still-lifes, portraits, as well as religious scenes.

Gallery

On this day in 1846, Gustave Flaubert wrote a stunnin’ letter to his lover, poet Louise Colet.  The two writers met at a sculptor’s studio in Paris.  Colet was married when she and Flaubert began their wild love affair.  She had gotten married young, to a Parisian professor of music, in order to escape a life in the French countryside.  Once in Paris, she became a famous poet.  Durin’ the eight years of his affair with Colet, Flaubert wrote his masterpiece Madam Bovary (1856), about a woman who seeks out adulterous affairs in order to escape from provincial life.

On 7 August 1846, Flaubert wrote to Colet:

“Separated, destined to see one another but rarely, it is frightful … and yet what is to be done? I cannot conceive how I managed to leave you … your image will remain for me suffused with poetry and tenderness, as was last night’s sky in the milky vapours of its silvery mist. This month I will come to see you, I will be with you one big whole day […]

“You are certainly the only woman that I have loved. You are the only woman that I have ventured to wish to please. Thank you, thank you […]”

And on the next day, today’s date in 1846, Flaubert began another long intense letter to Colet.  In it, he wrote:
“I’ll arrive some evening about six. We’ll set the night ablaze! I’ll be your desire, you’ll be mine, and we’ll gorge ourselves on each other to see whether we can be satiated. Never! No, never! Your heart is an inexhaustible spring, you let me drink deep, it floods me, penetrates me, I drown. Oh! The beauty of your face, all pale and quivering under my kisses!”

The Song of the Day is Peter Cadle – “A Song for Madam Bovary” – we do not own the rights to this song. all rights reserved by rightful owner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qZy02K4Ly0

And today is the birthday of Sarah Teasdale (Sarah Trevor Teasdale; Saint Louis, Missouri; August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933 New York City); lyric poet. In 1918, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1917 poetry collection Love Songs.

From 1911 to 1914 Teasdale was courted by several men, including the poet Vachel Lindsay, who was truly in love with her but did not feel that he could provide enough money or stability to keep her satisfied. She chose to marry Ernst Filsinger, a longtime admirer of her poetry, on December 19, 1914.

Filsinger’s constant business travel caused Teasdale much loneliness. In 1929, she moved interstate for three months, thereby satisfying the criterion to gain a divorce. She did not wish to inform Filsinger, only doing so at her lawyers’ insistence as the divorce was going through. Filsinger was shocked. After the divorce she moved only two blocks from her old home on Central Park West. She rekindled her friendship with Lindsay, who was now married with children.

She died in her bathtub, overdosing on sleeping pills at the age of 48.  Lindsay had died by suicide two years earlier. She is interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

Verse

For tho’ I know he loves me,

To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

I Shall Not Care

WHEN I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

Rivers to the Sea (1915)

• Oh, is it not enough to be
  Here with this beauty over me?
  My throat should ache with praise, and I
  Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
  Oh, beauty are you not enough?
  • Spring Night
• Oh, beauty, are you not enough?
  Why am I crying after love?
  • Spring Night
• I am the pool of gold
  When sunset burns and dies,—
  You are my deepening skies,
  Give me your stars to hold.
  • Peace
• When I am dead and over me bright April
  Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
  Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
  I shall not care.I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
  When rain bends down the bough,
  And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
  Than you are now.
  • I Shall Not Care
• But oh, to him I loved
  Who loved me not at all,
  I owe the little open gate
  That led thru heaven’s wall.
  • Debt
• How should they know that Sappho lived and died
  Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover,
  Never transfused and lost in what she loved,
  Never so wholly loving nor at peace.
  • Sappho (Rivers to the Sea)
• I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.
  I will not be a reed to hold the sound
  Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,
  Turning my torment into music for them.
  They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,
  I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,
  Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel —
  Beauty in all things and in every hour.
  The gods have given life — I gave them song;
  The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
  • Sappho (Rivers to the Sea)

Love Songs (1917)

• Life has loveliness to sell,
  All beautiful and splendid things,
  Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
  Soaring fire that sways and sings,
  And children’s faces looking up
  Holding wonder like a cup.
  • Barter
• Spend all you have for loveliness,
  Buy it and never count the cost;
  For one white singing hour of peace
  Count many a year of strife well lost,
  And for a breath of ecstasy
  Give all you have been, or could be.
  • Barter
• But I will turn my eyes from you
  As women turn to put away
  The jewels they have worn at night
  And cannot wear in sober day.
  • Jewels
• If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
  If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
  Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
  A lamp in darkness.
  • The Lamp

Flame and Shadow (1920)

• I try to catch at many a tune
  Like petals of light fallen from the moon,
  Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,
• But they float away — for who can hold
  Youth, or perfume or the moon’s gold?
  • Old Tunes
• I should be glad of loneliness
  And hours that go on broken wings,
  A thirsty body, a tired heart
  And the unchanging ache of things,
  If I could make a single song
  As lovely and as full of light,
  As hushed and brief as a falling star
  On a winter night.
  • Compensation
• But you I never understood,
  Your spirit’s secret hides like gold
  Sunk in a Spanish galleon
  Ages ago in waters cold.
  • Understanding
• It will not hurt me when I am old,
  A running tide where moonlight burned
  Will not sting me like silver snakes;
  The years will make me sad and cold,
  It is the happy heart that breaks.
  • Moonlight
• O lovely chance, what can I do
  To give my gratefulness to you?
  You rise between myself and me
  With a wise persistency;
  I would have broken body and soul,
  But by your grace, still I am whole.
  • Lovely Chance

• Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
  If mankind perished utterly;
• And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
  Would scarcely know that we were gone.
  • There Will Come Soft Rains

• Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
  From the immense blue circle of the sea,
  And the soft thunder where long waves whiten —
  These were the same for Sappho as for me.
• Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,
  Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —
  But here on the beaches that time passes over
  The heart aches now as then.
  • The Unchanging
• Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
  I love you, I love you, — oh what have I
  That I can give you in return —
  Except my body after I die?
  • June Night
• The window-lights, myriads and myriads,
  Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.
  • Evening: New York

• I am alone, as though I stood
  On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
  About me only swirling snow,
  Above me, endless space unfurled;
• With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
  And only my own spirit’s pride
  To keep me from the peace of those
  Who are not lonely, having died.
  • Alone
• If I am peaceful, I shall see
  Beauty’s face continually;
  Feeding on her wine and bread
  I shall be wholly comforted,
  For she can make one day for me
  Rich as my lost eternity.
  • The Wind in the Hemlock

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

There’s something rich waiting, if one of us is brave enough and good enough to get there. – Norman Mailer

Love is itself unmoving, only the cause and end of movement. – T.S. Eliot