My Wordless Wednesday this week was an odd looking machine – but all machines are odd to me! For those wondering what it was, here’s the answer!
The ‘Vita’, was Vita Sackville-West, an English writer, poet and gardener, best known for her affair with Virginia Wolfe and the wonderful garden she created at Sissinghurst, Kent.
Here is the opening section of the poem ‘Sissinghurst’ as in the photo above.
A tired swimmer in the waves of time
I throw my hands up: let the surface close:
Sink down through centuries to another clime,
And buried find the castle and the rose.
Buried in time and sleep,
So drowsy, overgrown.
That here the moss is green upon the stone.
And lichen stains the keep.
I’ve sunk into an image, water-drowned,
Where stirs no wind and penetrates no sound,
Illusive, fragile to a touch, remote,
Foundered within the well of years as deep
As in the waters of a stagnant moat.
Vita Sackville-West 1931
Lucid Gypsy 
Aha, I knew about Vita Sackville-West and her affair with Woolf, but I got this one wrong. It is a PRINTING press after all. Oh, well, better luck next time.
Hugs from Ecuador,
Kathy
It must have been a difficult thing to wrap! I didn’t guess it was a printing press, though of course, I can see it now – what a strangely romantic gift.
Strange to read this poem, knowing that Virginia Woolf drowned herself ten years later.
and here was I wondering if it was maybe a corn shucker or even something used with tobacco leaves! Way off course!
Hard to understand that this is actually a printing press. But makes completely sense as a present from one writer and lover to another. 🙂
Thanks for enlightening me, Gilly. I’m quite miffed that I didn’t get it right. 😦
Well, I never knew this about Virginia Wolf. 🙂 But I guess there’s lot I have to learn.
My first guess was right! 🙂 Thanks for the back story.