Tea and Poetry

Tea and Poetry

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Today’s Tea Tidbit (from 365 Things Every Tea Lover Should Know):

In early eighteenth century Britain, tea was served in coffeehouses, which were restricted to men only. If women wanted tea from these locations, they had to have a man purchase the tea for them.

Today’s Poetry selection is one of my favorite fun poems by Jack Prelutsky:

We’re Four Ferocious Tigers

We’re four ferocious tigers,
at least, that’s what we seem,
our claws are at the ready,
our sharp incisors gleam,
we’re quite intimidating,
our start will make you blink,
our roar will make you shiver,
at least, that’s what we think.

We’re four ferocious tigers,
at least, that’s what we hear,
our ominous demeanor
will chill your atmosphere,
and yet you need not fear us,
don’t scream and run away,
we only eat spaghetti,
at least, that’s what we say.

Tea and Poetry

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Today’s Tea tidbit is a quote by Charles Dickens (from 365 Things Every Tea Lover Should Know):

“My dear, if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should               better understand your affairs.”

And today’s poem is by William Wordsworth:

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once i saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way.

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance.

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed-and gazed-but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Tea and Poetry

/ kellyfbarr / 2 Comments

I’ve decided it was time to find something to put back on my blog for Fridays, and since my poetry posts were fairly popular I  decided to try a new twist for poetry posts.

You see, I have a son who attends a school in South Carolina and we went down for his graduation over Mother’s Day weekend, and because he had plans to leave, soon after, to go to Uganda for the summer, we decided to take a few extra days and do a family vacation. Therefore, I checked online for things to do in the areas where we would be and found that Charleston, South Carolina is the home of the ONLY tea plantation in North America. So, being a tea drinker, I thought this would be a great place to visit, and it was — our whole family enjoyed it and we got to taste different flavors of both hot and cold teas and I bought lots of great tea related items in the gift shop.

One of the things I bought was this cute little book entitled “365 Things Every Tea Lover Should Know”. That’s how the idea for this new Friday post began, not to mention that our youngest son and I incorporated a “Tea and Poetry” time into our school days this year and our son loves them. Therefore, each Friday, I will do a Tea and Poetry post, where I will share a great tea tidbit as well as a poem. However, not all of the poems I will share will be written by me. I will sometimes include a poem I have written, other times it may be a poem our son has written. It may simply be a poem our son and I have read in our own Tea and Poetry time, or just a poem I particularly like from one of my poetry books.

I hope you will enjoy this new Friday post and will visit often. I will begin this Friday with the following tea tidbit (from 365 Things Every Tea Lover Should Know):

“Iced tea was invented at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair by an expatriate Englishman      named Richard Blechynden. His hot tea wasn’t selling so he poured it over ice and had      an instant success.”

And here is a poem by Jewel Kilcher:

Sometimes

Sometimes

I feel

my heart

fall

to vague depths

between

words there

are such

spaces that

I can’t help

but feel

My Heart

fall

between

the pregnant pause

of all you will

not say

and all

I can

not ask