English: Bandstand at the Horniman Museum SE23. The historic bandstand offers free concerts on summer Sunday afternoons. (This concert was by a Brazilian band, "Kakinha".) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitchedst here thy golden tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most
beautiful words in the English language."
Henry James
"The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of grose and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling "The Roses are Blooming in Picardy" and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again."
Samuel Becket
A perfect summer afternoon is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.
James Dent
