It was overcast yesterday with heavy fog on the mountains and so the aptest weather for working on “Mist from the Mountains”. Today, the fog persists, accompanied by heavy rain early this morning. Venturing out regardless, just before first light, I surveyed the fog-laden mountains and was rewarded with the perfect word for a line in the poem that has troubled me over the past few days (not the “Solemn, sombre and slow” line I singled out yesterday but the one that follows it). It seems the early bard catches the word.
A Word Order Conundrum
I find myself, presently, saddled with the odd conundrum of the order in which to arrange the words “sombre”, “solemn” and “slow” in a line. “Slow” is easy, it is the rhyming element of the line and therefore must come last, but its companions are deliberately so similar in construction and pronunciation that they are interchangeable.
This is an annoyance to a pedant who wants a rationale for all things.
Of course, the purpose here is the similarity and, therefore, interchangeability—perhaps I should look to visual alliteration for the answer: “ol” in “solemn” appears reversed in “slow” and thus “Solemn, sombre and slow” is aesthetically most pleasing—but what a pity there is no linguistic rule (that I know) that specifically here applies!
A Sunbird in the Blossoms
© 2019 Forgotten Fields
The South African spring brings blossoms and sunbirds to the garden. Surprisingly forgiving of my intrusion, they permit me to come within less than a metre (four feet) of their presence, allowing me to capture photographs like this one.
This is a Southern Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus) male, named for the bright red and blue (not obvious here) bands upon its chest. Its Afrikaans name, Klein-rooibandsuikerbekkie1, translates to “little-redbandsugarbeak”.
- Pronounced [cleyn–Roowaybunt–soykeRbecky] with a trilled [RRR].
Forgotten Fields 