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Children Playing  (L.S. Lowry)

The season would like to get by, to match autumnally into the distance, but the children won’t let it. They link hands and hop across the flags in its path. To break step is easier than to make way thru their paper-chain. It is not they but the sayer of goodbyes who is ridiculous. The colours of their dresses force the eye back to find itself. Until they go in the lamps need not be lighted and the melancholy mist must wait to fall.

Hall in the Snow  (E. Box)

The lions crouch  in repose on two slabs. If they look pleased with themselves, it can only be because they are going to dine on the swan between them. What other prey will come trespassing thru so much snow? Meanwhile more are scavenging the lake, at the edge of which two black-bibbed Canada geese wait their turn at table. Framed between withering branches, the hall looks down and approves this old and ivy-coloured England where they all know their place. One by one the roots invade its foundations, one by one tendrils prize the stones apart.

An Embroidery of Tan Hill Inn  (Kenneth Dow Barker)

The doors are stitched in black thread. No one comes to unlatch the panes of stone. Foundered on the sky’s bed, the inn settles aslant into silence. The path makes a playful rush at the walls, as though at a dare, then sandily recedes. Even here something of a spring reaches faintly. Only the outhouse is aware as it tugs the unmasted shipwreck nearer to the frame. Weed sprouts from the tiles. Already it is half way over.

St Ives Harbour and Godfrey  (Alfred Wallis)

It seems to work like this. The lighthouse sails on a green cloud, from which black wherries slide to port. They are rain-bringers on the sea’s flag, their business with another element than land. That stacks with harboured boats a dry heraldic quarter, its field harvested. Life goes on elsewhere, thrusting the plantain stems of stoney landings out of the waves. In a bank of raked earth at their foot the seeds of fresh craft have already planted themselves. What more is needed to promise a full crop? Moisture, the sun’s yellow light, complete the year’s cycle.