Not Spinning My Wheels

    It is the view of many in the writing world, that research is an author's excuse for procrastination. It maybe that when I'm doing research I am procrastinating. However, recently I've never enjoyed dilly-dallying so much.

    For me it has been an educational journey, I've been reading the works of 19th/20th century authors and poets, of which before I have never read in any depth.

    Coincidentally, two of which are Scottish, one Australian, one American; their names being, Andrew Lang, Robert Williams Buchanan, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Joaquin Miller. The extracts from their poems I came across left me wanting to read more, so I did.

    I want to share one of the poems by fellow Scot and friend of Robert Louis Stevenson,  Andrew Lang;

Nysa 

On these Nysaen shores divine

The clusters ripen in a day.

At dawn the blossoms shreds away;

The berried grapes are green and fine

And full by noon; in days decline

They're purple with a bloom of grey,

And e'er the twilight plucked are they,

And crushed, by night fall into wine

But through the night with torch in hand

Down the dusk hills the Maenads fare;

The bull-voiced mummers roar and blare,

The muffled timbrels swell and sound,

And drown the clamour of the band

Like thunder moaning underground.

~

    Using delaying tactics, or not I'm going to keep on reading the words of the wonderful authors and poets that have filled and still exist in our world. Because reading is the key to learning at any age.