Algy lay back happily on the soft carpet of mosses and dry bracken, and gazed up through the trees at the beautiful blue sky. He knew only too well that the wind and the rain would soon return, but on such a day he was just going to relax and “be”, as the poet Longfellow suggested.

Algy was thinking especially of his Tumblr friend Leonard Adams, who had so kindly dedicated the very first post on his new blog spilledfromthecradle to Algy’s adventures. Algy knew that his friend loved the woodlands too, although the forests around his home four thousand miles away were conceived on a rather grander scale, and were covered in ice and snow just now. Algy hoped that very soon the snow would melt and his friend would be able to return to his woodland walks, and enjoy a perfect day like this one:

          O gift of God! O perfect day:
          Whereon shall no man work, but play;
          Whereon it is enough for me,
          Not to be doing, but to be!
          Through every fibre of my brain,
          Through every nerve, through every vein,
          I feel the electric thrill, the touch
          Of life, that seems almost too much.
          I hear the wind among the trees
          Playing celestial symphonies;
          I see the branches downward bent,
          Like keys of some great instrument.
          And over me unrolls on high
          The splendid scenery of the sky,
          Where through a sapphire sea the sun
          Sails like a golden galleon…

Algy hopes that you will all enjoy a truly relaxed weekend, and that the sun will shine in your hearts even if it may not be shining on your heads 🙂

[Algy is quoting part of the poem A Day of Sunshine from Birds of Passage: Flight the Second by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.]

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