To the Well-Beloved
~ Renée Vivien

You are my palace, my evening and my autumn,
And my sail of silk and my garden of lilies,
My censer of gold and my white column,
My parkland, and my pool, with its reeds and its iris.

You are my perfumes of amber and honey, my palm,
My leafy boughs, the cicadas’ song on the breeze,
My snow that is dying of hauteur and calm,
And my sea-wrack and my vistas of the seas.

And you are my bell that sobs with unvarying tone,
My airy island and my saving oasis…
You are my palace, my evening and my autumn,
And my sail of silk and my garden of lilies.

Rain Light
—W.S. Merwin

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

The Norsk Institutt for Kulturminneforskning (Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research) has created a website based on its work to reconstruct the city of Oslo in the year 1324. Along with information in text, the site contains a two-minute video of a walk though the city and some of its structures at the time, complete with muddy streets, plank pathways, and dimly-lit rooms inside the buildings.

Image credit: NIKU

[Image description: A screenshot from the video, showing a few buildings on a muddy street with some plank walkways laid across it.]

Image credit: NIKU

[Image description: A screenshot from the video, showing an interior room dimly lit by a few candles, with two narrow, deep windows. The walls are stone, and the floor and ceiling are made of wooden beams. Two long benches form an L-shape against the far walls. An arched doorway leads to another room.]

While the fourteenth century is well after the end of the era known as “The Viking Age”, the site is well worth exploring if you are interested in the history of Norway, or simply appreciate the amazing work done by the people involved.

NIKU has done over 1,000 digs since 1994, which you can read about on their main website. One of the finds in the Tonsberg dig was an Arabic-style chess piece made of antler, probably from the late Viking era.

Both sites are in Norwegian, but with the help of a web-based translator, I was able to review most of the information in English.

A fascinating way to spend a few hours!

Douce Souvenance
—Jessie Redmon Fauset
(“Douce Souvenance” translates as “Sweet Memory”)

Again, as always, when the shadows fall,
In that sweet space between the dark and day,
I leave the present and its fretful claims
And seek the dim past where my memories stay.
I dream an old, forgotten, far-off dream,
And think old thoughts and live old scenes anew,
Till suddenly I reach the heart of Spring—
The spring that brought me you!
I see again a little woody lane,
The moonlight rifting golden through the trees;
I hear the plaintive chirp of drowsy bird
Lulled dreamward by a tender, vagrant breeze;
I hold your hand, I look into your eyes,
I touch your lips,—oh, peerless, matchless dower!
Oh, Memory thwarting Time and Space and Death!
Oh, Little Perfect Hour!