HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS

HUGO VAN DER GOES. PORTINARI ALTARPIECE (1475)

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone and a blessed Christmas holiday and health and great happiness for the New Year. Thank you all for your support! I love you all! See you in the New Year, with more Stuff to come! Love, Susie x

AH, MY DEAR ANGRY LORD

I love this terse little poem by the English poet, orator, and priest, George Herbert about the contradictory nature of religious belief, its good and bad sides, and its joy and sorrow. There's nothing like a bit of hard religion on a Sunday morning!!

NO TEAR-FLOODS OR SIGH-TEMPESTS

In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, the English poet, John Donne, likens his relationship with his wife, Mary, to a spiritual entanglement between two souls as he says farewell to her before he goes on a mission to Europe. I love the lines ‘let us melt and make no noise/no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move’. Beautiful!

THE CARNIVAL IS OVER

I have just a simple song for you all from 1967, all the way from Australia (where my husband is), by The Seekers. I love this song, melancholy but so stirring, and Judith Durham, dressed in what looks like something from the archives of The Vampire’s Wife, is so touching. It is a song full of tears about the end of things and love’s enduring presence. We adore this song here at The Vampire’s Wife.