Dec 20

Sometimes you can’t beat the classics. This reminder brought to you by a cup of Darjeeling Summer in the middle of the afternoon. We know it’s winter, at least our side of the pond, but it was still nice to have a reminder that somewhere there was light and flowers and sun.

We’ve been working from home, and that means we don’t have the alarm on that much. We’d been trying to figure out why we were getting up later and later, and then over breakfast and the Advent Calendar, it dawned on us we were approaching the shortest day. The thing Donne calls “The Year’s Midnight.”

Other countries have it worse, but we once spent a winter solstice in St Andrews, Scotland, and we’ll never forget it. It’s not even that far North, as North goes. I mean, you can keep going for miles before you hit Orkney or Norway or wherever. It was enough for us. The sun came up after nine and was gone by two. Sort of amazing.

So, anyway, just so we all remember that sun exists, and that summer exists, have a poem on the subject. We figured it paired well with light and floral Darjeeling Summer.

Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.