Tag: The Wind in the Willows

A fisherman’s ballad. Apricot skies.

June 14th, 2025

Those eyes were of the changing foam-streaked grey-green of leaping Northern seas; in the glass shone a hot ruby that seemed the very heart of the South, beating for him who had courage to respond to its pulsation. The twin lights, the shifting grey and the steadfast red, mastered the Water Rat and held him bound, fascinated, powerless. The quiet world outside their rays receded far away and ceased to be. And the talk, the wonderful talk flowed on – or was it a speech entirely, or did it pass at times into song – chanty of the sailors weighing the dripping anchor, sonorous hum of the shrouds in a tearing North-Easter, ballad of the fisherman hauling his nets at sundown against an apricot sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique?

Kenneth Grahame’s prose rakes. This is why, this is why, you shouldn’t dismiss the nudge for a second reading. You don’t know what jewels you left behind during your first read.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p168,169
Badger wisdom

May 5th, 2025

“Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn’t bother themselves about the past – they never do; they’re too busy.”

– Badger

Badger knows.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows (Puffin Classics). United Kingdom, Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008. pg71
Mid-December nightfall

December 20th, 2024

The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered around the tea-table, absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each that happy grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation.

Winter approaches. Christmas grows closer…

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p81
Frosty Tides

December 19th, 2024
```
Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
     Joy shall be yours in the morning!
```
Kenneth Grahame yuletide poet.

As read from the poem “Carol”.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p91
Toad loves a secret

August 8th, 2024

Secrets had an immense attraction for him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another animal, after faithfully promised not to.

Have we all felt this?

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p 200-201
Ratty’s cure

July 28th, 2024

The Rat pushed the paper away from him wearily, but the discreet Mole took occasion to leave the room, and when he peeped in again some time later, the Rat was absorbed and deaf to the world; alternately scribbling and sucking the top of his pencil. It is true that he sucked a good deal more than he scribbled; but it was joy to the Mole to know that the cure had at least begun.

We all need a friend like Mole.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p165
Back to poetry for Ratty

July 27th, 2024

By degrees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eye brightened, and he lost some of his listening air.

Presently the tactful Mole slipped away and returned with a pencil and a few half-sheets of paper, which he placed on the table at his friend’s elbow. “It’s quite a long time since you did any poetry,” he remarked. “You might have a try at it this evening, instead of – well, brooding over things so much. I’ve an idea that you’ll feel a lot better when you’ve got something jotted down – if it’s only just rhymes.”

At Mole’s behest Ratty returns to poetry. What feeding of the soul do you need to return to?

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p165
Singing garlic. Crying cheese. A picnic from The Wind in the Willows

July 22nd, 2024

There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.

Water Rat and Sea Rat sit down for a poetic lunch. Kenneth Grahame’s prose is a counter argument against “simple” prose.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p116
Summer at the river bank. Kenneth Graham sets the scene for chapter 7 of the Wind in the Willows

June 29th, 2024

Though it was past ten o’ clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light from the departed day; and the sullen heats of the torrid afternoon broke up and rolled away at the dispersing touch of the cool fingers of the short midsummer night.

– Kenneth Grahame

BAM! Kenneth Grahame dropping you right into summer!

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p116
Mr. Toad at his best. On the road.

June 17th, 2024

As if in a dream, he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver’s seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the archway; and, as in if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest, Toad the terror, the traffic queller, the Lord of the lone trail, before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and everlasting night.

Kenneth Grahame’s repetition of the phrase “As if in a dream” has a poetic quality to it. Later it’s enhanced with the phrase Toad the terror, the traffic queller.

Poetry slipping into the prose is brilliant.

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p111