Spring Poem and Review Mapp and Lucia

hello everyone my name is misba welcome back to another video so it's the middle of march now and even though it's not officially the start of spring it feels very spring-like outside with the small spring flowers in bloom and it's just very beautiful so i've been glancing through the pages of the country diary of nedwardian lady i've talked about this book in january and i'll just show you page from march love the diary entries the little poems but also love the watercolors so here you can see let's go close up here you can see the beautiful watercolors showing the daffodils and think they are the flowers for march so if your birthday is in march then daffodils are your flowers and this has inspired me to go for walk and see if can see some daffodils blooming while do my walk also read poem and it's by an american poet called emily dickinson emily dickinson didn't give her poems titles so when you look for her poems it's always the first line of the poem that you have to search for and this one's called light exists in spring and it's beautiful poem it's haunting and it explains how there is light that comes at the beginning of march that brings this beauty and it leaves us with such positive feeling and if we try to explain it using science or logic then we can't but we just know that we're better for this feeling in nature and then when it's gone we're puzzled and it doesn't feel right and she describes it as being as if trade had encroached upon sacrament so there's puzzlement as if something very coarse and vulgar had come into religious ceremony and that's how we feel when the beauty of the light is gone so the first part of the video will be the walk and the poem and hope you enjoy that and then in the second part of the video i'm going to talk about one of my favorite books it's by ef benson and it's mapping lucia so hope you enjoyed this video thank you for watching light exists in spring by emily dickinson light exists in spring not present on the year at any other period when march is scarcely here color stands abroad on solitary fields that science cannot overtake but human nature feels it waits upon the lawn it shows the furthest tree upon the furthest slope you know it almost speaks to you then as horizon step or noons report away without the formula of sound it passes and we stay quality of loss affecting our content as trade had suddenly encroached upon sacrament so so now i'm going to talk about book called map and lucia it's by an english novelist called ef benson so ef benson wrote many novels and short stories and biographies but he is best remembered for the map and lucia series it's set of six books and this is the fourth one and this one is my favorite so in this takes place in small seaside town called tilling which is based on ef benson's hometown of rye in east sussex and it features house mallards which was actually ef benson's own house there that's now owned by the national trust and you can visit it so the two characters are mapp and lucia so firstly miss elizabeth mapp she lives in tilling she owns big house mallards she is middle class and has servants and private income and she fills her days organizing the social activities of her friends and neighbors so she is queen bee in her social circle she organizes tea parties and bridge parties where they play cards she sits on committees and judges art exhibitions and so on she's quite devious quite manipulating and incredibly bossy and usually gets her own way so she is this quite eccentric english character then the second character is lucia so her name is emmeline lucas but she's known as lucia to her friends in the earlier books she lives in elizabethan town called rye's home so she has beautiful elizabethan house there and she starts off married but in this book she's widow and you never really see her husband he's background character but she has great platonic friendship with her friend george or she calls him giorgio and think it's one of the best friendships in literature they spend hours and hours together they play music they play the piano they paint and they sit and gossip for hours and she is incredibly pretentious and snobbish and she is queen bee of her circle in rise home and the reason why this story this novel works so well is because in this book and lucia comes to tilling and she rents mallards from miss map so the custom is that in the summer holidays the residents of tilling rent their houses out to earn some extra money so lucia rents mallards and then georgie comes and he rents small cottage near there so you have the clash of the two titans of map and lucia and that's what makes it so funny these incredibly bossy women who set out to bring each other down and what they argue over what they fight over just seems so trivial so for example lucia is renting the house mallards but miss elizabeth mapp insists that that means that she does not have access to any of the fruit trees in the garden she only has access to the house she can walk in the flower bed areas but she can't actually pick any of the fruit and she instructs her the gardener to pick the fruit take it to the green grocers and sell it there and then lucia has to go and buy the fruit from the green grocers so in return lucia retaliates by telling the gardener that he must neglect the fruit trees and spend all his time mowing the lawns and tending to the flower beds and and she has this conversation with elizabeth where she explains that she's paying his wages and and she you know she will decide what the gardener does so they exchange they have arguments and they exchange insults and they're always wrapped in the most layers of the most polite language and that's what makes this book so incredibly witty if you like plays like the importance of being earnest and you love that start that sense of englishness where insults are given in very polite language so for example cecily and gwendolyn when they are having their tea party in the importance of being earnest and they're actually insulting each other if that's your style of humor then you will love this find it really comforting cosy read because love the tranquility of the scenery the beautiful countryside the seaside town the eccentric english characters and it's quite cozy because nothing bad ever really happens we just have arguments about bridge parties or tea parties or you know very trivial things but these events are incredibly important to the two ladies and they are always plotting and scheming of how to get the upper hand and bring their opponent down so it's such witty interesting read so really recommend it map lucia by ef benson thank you for watching this video hope you found it interesting see you next time