A Bee

Aggrade. 
There's a word we're all familiar with, I'm sure... No? Me neither.
It means to build up or raise the level of a land surface by depositing sediment, and I mention it because it was the word that knocked my 11-year-old grandson out of the Canadian national spelling bee junior finals last night. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we were able to watch this event live as it went out, and Ethan (for it is he) sailed into the final five, tackling words such as 'dystopian' and 'spelunking', before 'aggrade' came up and shattered his young dreams – well, actually he wasn't too bothered, and was pleased enough with his performance. But 'aggrade'... really. It was the only word in the competition I didn't know, though I might have had some difficulty as a result of the question master's wayward pronunciation (worst example, 'plaited' pronounced 'plated') and bizarre habit of announcing 'there are two different pronunciations for this word', then saying it exactly the same way twice. 
   I had never seen a spelling bee before – we don't have them over here (perhaps because so few people can spell) – and I was struck by how joylessly the contest was conducted, though my daughter assures me there was plenty of joy in the room (as well as a few tears). I guess you had to be there. 
  The picture below is Norman Rockwell's 'Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus' – a word that happily didn't come up last night (and cousin Reginald could hardly be less like our Ethan).

Tea

 Yesterday was World Bee Day (not to be confused with World Bidet) – and, by chance, I had in my change a £1 coin I'd never seen before, with the face of our King on one side and on the other an attractive design featuring... two bees. Today – how they keep on coming – is International Tea Day. And why not? Tea, if properly made with good leaves and no milk, is a fine drink.
The poets have not had much to say about tea: there's Cowper's much-misquoted 'The cups that cheer but not inebriate', and this from Basho –
 
A monk sips morning tea.
It is quiet.
The chrysanthemum is flowering.

And then there's Wallace Stevens's 'Tea at the Palaz of Hoon', from his astonishing first collection, Harmonium. This is not, it must be admitted, a poem about tea. It has a Wikipedia entry to itself, which I have battled my way through, emerging unenlightened and drained of all pleasure in life. So I return to the poem, which is a thing of beauty...

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.


    Finally, and with apologies for lowering the tone, here is a lyric that is definitely about tea, sung by the great Jack Buchanan, and surely a fitting anthem for International Tea Day. His account of the genesis of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony is, I fear, unsound.

Danish

 Last night I watched an episode of Andrew Graham-Dixon's The Art of Scandinavia. The subject was Danish art, so I was expecting good stuff. Alas, I was disappointed: for one thing, this was more a potted cultural history of Denmark, from Christian IV and the Frederiksborg Palace to the original Legoland, by way of Hans Christian Andersen (no Kierkegaard). But more importantly, the coverage of actual Danish art was at best patchy. Plenty of  Thorvald's heroic neo-classical sculpture (a little of which goes a long way), and more than enough of Eckersberg's unalluring nudes – after which it was straight on to Hammershoi's pallid interiors. So, no sighting of the greatest of the Golden Age painters, Cristen Koebke, no Golden Age landscapes (that's one of Købke's above), and nothing of Krøyer and the Skagen painters – in other words, all the most beautiful and enjoyable Danish art was missing. 
   Though I can't say I like him, I know Graham-Dixon has made some excellent TV programmes, many of which I've enjoyed – but this certainly wasn't one of them. He's also written a big fat book about Vermeer, which everyone is raving about (just as they were about Laura Cumming's recent book on Dutch art, Thunderclap, which I found disappointing). I don't think I'll be reading it – life seems too short.

Britain's Favourite Butterfly – and Mine

I see that the charity Butterfly Conservation is running a poll to find Britain's Favourite Butterfly. At present, the Peacock is leading the vote, unsurprisingly, and in second place I'm delighted to see the Orange Tip, ahead of the Red Admiral. Has anyone voted for the Dingy Skipper, Britain's dullest butterfly, I wondered? They have – it's there at number 37 (of 60 eligible species). So what is at number 60, the bottom of the poll? Incredibly, it's the Silver-Spotted Skipper, a beautiful little butterfly that gladdened my heart on many a late-summer walk in the Surrey Hills. Of my own favourites, I was also startled to see the lovely Dark Green Fritillary way down the chart at number 49. But Nige, I hear you ask – if you were to vote, what would it be? Readers of this book need hardly ask – yes, it would have to be the White Admiral (currently at number 26). The special magic of this butterfly is as much in its flight as in its beautiful wing markings. Jeremy Thomas writes that 'No account can do justice to the White Admiral's dainty movements, or convey the character of a creature so ideally suited to gliding in and out of dappled shade among the branches of mature woodlands.' Indeed. 
  This video gives some idea of the beauty of Limenitis camilla...

Dark

 And here, by way of counterweight to the International Day of Light, is a poem by Edward Thomas. As with the Donald Justice, it is one of his last and most beautiful (and untitled), written on his last Christmas at home with his family. A few months later, on Easter Monday 1917, Thomas was killed in action at Arras, shot through the chest. 

Out in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe ;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round

And, when the lamp goes, without sound

At a swifter bound

Than the swiftest hound,

Arrives, and all else is drowned ;

And star and I and wind and deer,

Are in the dark together, – near,

Yet far, – and fear

Drums on my ear

In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.

Light

  I'm sure it can't have escaped your attention that today is International Day of Light. I must admit it was passing me by until it got a mention on the radio this morning. I've no clear idea what it is – some kind of Unesco invention, it seems – but it gives me the perfect pretext to post again one of my favourite poems – one of the last, and most beautiful, written by Donald Justice. Three six-line stanzas, rhyming by repetition, the last stanza directly paraphrasing Chekhov's Uncle Vanya – that's all there is to it, and yet it creates something far bigger than the sum of its parts. I find it intensely moving, and I rate it among the great short poems of the twentieth century...

1 
There is a gold light in certain old paintings
That represents a diffusion of sunlight.
It is like happiness, when we are happy.
It comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, this light,
  And the poor soldiers sprawled at the foot of the cross
  Share in its charity equally with the cross.

2
Orpheus hesitated beside the black river.
With so much to look forward to he looked back.
We think he sang then, but the song is lost.
At least he had seen once more the beloved back.
  I say the song went this way: O prolong
  Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong.

3
The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work.
One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good.
The orchard will bloom; someone will play the guitar.
Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good.
  And all that we suffered through having existed
  Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed.

West Wind

 The mid-May weather here has been unseasonally cold, with sudden violent showers of rain and hail. The swifts have withdrawn to await better things; only the doughtiest butterflies – holly blues (amazingly abundant this year) and speckled woods – are showing themselves, in the rare moments of relative warmth; and me, I'm back in my herringbone tweed jacket. The worst of it is the relentless, hard-blowing West wind. I'm no fan of strong winds, from whatever quarter, but the West is undoubtedly the worst, scrambling my brain in a way no other wind does. If I were to write an Ode to the West Wind, it would consist of three words: Cease And Desist. Or I might adapt the ancient lyric, with apologies to Anon: 
Westron wind, when wilt tha cease?
Thy blowing drives me mad.
All I ask is a little peace
And the quiet I once had.

In the Mediterranean world, away from the rude Atlantic blast, the West wind is regarded as a welcome visitor, a soft, warm breeze,  personified as Zephyr. (Even Chaucer talks of Zephyrus with his sweet breath – really? In England?). Here is a glorious madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi (baptised on this day in 1567, fact fans) in which 'Zephyr returns, and with gentle words warms the air and sets the waters free, and whispering among the verdant boughs, makes the field flowers dance to his glad sound'. If only.