ABOUT THE COVER ©
by Tira Brandon-Evans

And when the sunset reddened on our woods,
I came upon a pathway fringed with ferns,
That led through brushwood to a little dell,
All dreamy with its stillness 'mid the hills.
Through sundered crags, half clothed
      with tangled growth,
My brook had slipped, and, with a little fall,
Plashed lightly down, and stole before me there,
A silver serpent, flashing back the beams
That slanted eastward from the lingering sun.
(Lillian Gray: a Poem - Agusta Webster - 1864)


Augusta Webster, neé Julia Augusta Davies, was born January 31, 1837, in Poole, Dorset in England. Her father was an Admiral in the Royal Navy and she spent a good deal of her childhood aboard ship in Penzance and Banff Castle. Augusta entered the Cambridge School of Art. While there she met and married a fellow of Trinity College, Thomas Webster. In 1870 they left Cambridge and Thomas worked as a solicitor. Augusta was one of the first women elected to the London Shcool Board. Even though she was often in ill health and suffered from chronic bronchitis, Augusta Webster worked tirelessly for women's rights and with the Committee for Women's Suffrage, in London. She wrote poetry, plays, and essays. She was educated in Classical Languages and translated Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound and Euripides' Medea.

Christina Rossetti thought her "by far the most formidable" woman poet, and Augusta Webster's work was favourably compared to Browning. At the time of her death, September 5, 1894, she was one of the most influential English poets of her generation. Much of her work was published under the pen-name Cecil Home

REFERENCES

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/386.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Webster



Midsummer Magic

Midsummer Magic
© Tira Brandon-Evans
2009


This picture was taken with an Olympus digital camera. It is a close up of a fern growing on the bank of the Chilliwack River, near my home. The play of green light and shadow is typical of the rainforest in this area of British Columbia.



Tira Brandon-Evans is a Chartered Herbalist, the Founder and Moderator of the Society of Celtic Shamans, editor of Earthsongs: Journal of the Society of Celtic Shamans, and a Faery Shaman. Her books, The Green and Burning Tree: A Faery Shaman's Handbook, Portals of the Seasons: A Celtic Wheel of the Year, Through the Unremembered Gate: Journeys of Initiation, The Labyrinthine Way: Walking Ancient Paths in a Modern World, and Healing Waters, are all published by Elder Grove Press. She is presently writing a book about the Ogham. You may contact Tira by email at info@faeryshaman.org.



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