Stormy weather in March does have a few wee compensations… and the rainbows which sometimes appear during torrential showers of hail are especially bright. So when Algy saw the massive black clouds sweep in from the sea, with the sun still shining through from the south, he leaned back happily on the waving bed of Marram grass and gazed at the sky. Algy loves rainbows, so he was inevitably reminded of Wordsworth’s famous rainbow poem:

          My heart leaps up when I behold
             A rainbow in the sky:
          So was it when my life began;
          So is it now I am a man;
          So be it when I shall grow old,
             Or let me die!
          The Child is father of the Man;
          And I could wish my days to be
          Bound each to each by natural piety

[ Algy is quoting the poem The Rainbow by the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth. ]

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Algy needn’t have worried about leaving his umbrella behind, because suddenly Nature provided him with the loveliest umbrella he could imagine. Algy perched on a wee rock beneath the beautiful bow, with the rain falling all around him, and remembered a simple little children’s poem he had once read:

          Boats sail on the rivers,
          And ships sail on the seas;
          But clouds that sail across the sky
          Are prettier than these.

          There are bridges on the rivers,
          As pretty as you please;
          But the bow that bridges heaven,
          And overtops the trees,
          And builds a road from earth to sky,
          Is prettier far than these.

Algy hopes you will all have a happy, peaceful Sunday xoxo

[Algy is quoting The Rainbow, a poem for children by the 19th century English poet Christina Rossetti.]

Postscript: several people have written to Algy about this very unusual rainbow, and he would like to assure anyone who is curious that it really did look exactly like this (even more impressive in reality, in fact), and the photo has not been altered in any way other than to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation levels a wee bit. Neither Algy nor his assistants had ever seen a rainbow quite like this before.