Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: Boston Common

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: this landscape painting.

It hangs in the provincial museum, housed in the castle.

Wewelsburg Castle, by Rotterken.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: Safi, from the Kechla Citadel (which houses Morocco's National Ceramic Museum).

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: the Petit Palais, from the Papal Palace, Avignon.

‘Climbing Snowdon’ from Book 13, The Prelude

William Wordsworth

This small adventure - for even such it seemed

In that wild place and at the dead of night-

Being over and forgotten, on we wound

In silence as before. With forehead bent

Earthward, as if in opposition set

Against an enemy, I panted up

With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts.

Thus might we wear perhaps an hour away,

Ascending at loose distance each from each,

And I, as chanced, the foremost of the band -

When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten,

And with a step or two seemed brighter still;

Nor had I time to ask the cause of this,

For instantly a light upon the turf

Fell like a flash: I looked about, and lo,

The moon stood naked in the heavens, at height

Immense above my head, and on the shore

I found myself of a huge sea of mist,

Which meek and silent rested at my feet.

A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved

All over this still ocean, and beyond,

Far, far beyond, the vapours shot themselves

In headlands, tongues and promontory shapes,

Into the sea, the real sea, that seemed

To dwindle and give up its majesty,

Usurped upon as far as sight could reach.

Meanwhile, the moon looked down upon this show

In single glory, and we stood, the mist

Touching our very feet; and from the shore

At distance not the third part of a mile

Was a blue chasm, a fracture in the vapour,

A deep and gloomy breathing-space, through which

Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams

Innumerable, roaring with one voice.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: a recent upload, taken by a fellow hiker, on the 'Walk & Talk' hike up Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa, last Saturday.

I thought we would die on that mountain. Not in my heart but in my head.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: view to the Atlas mountains, from Demnate, Morocco.

Today's photo with the most hits: wildflowers at Wycoller.

The Four Lakes of Madison

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Four limpid lakes,--four Naiades Or sylvan deities are these, In flowing robes of azure dressed; Four lovely handmaids, that uphold Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold, To the fair city in the West.

By day the coursers of the sun Drink of these waters as they run Their swift diurnal round on high; By night the constellations glow Far down the hollow deeps below, And glimmer in another sky.

Fair lakes, serene and full of light, Fair town, arrayed in robes of white, How visionary ye appear! All like a floating landscape seems In cloud-land or the land of dreams, Bathed in a golden atmosphere!

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: a hike, many years ago, in the Soganli Valley, Cappadocia, Turkiye.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: taken from the terrace of the monastery of St Nicholas Anapafsas, Meteora, Greece.

Stone

Alasdair Maclean

A long peninsula of solid rock, upholstered every year in threadbare green. Stones everywhere, ambiguous and burgeoning. In Sanna ramparts of them march around our crofts but whether to keep cattle out or other stones no man can say. And at Kilchoan there were three houses cropped from one field. That was when I was a boy. The masons left the pebbles and there’s a castle now, waiting to be harvested. God was short of earth when He made Ardnamurchan.

Ingleton Falls: Halfway

Robert Ingham

Up here the water braids a dirty white Tinted with blonde from God knows what leached in, The limestone slowly pushes through the skin Investigating rediscovered light.

Downstream, into the future, where we came, The walls are brittle, carried, veined with trees, The silver-spittle symptoms of disease Accumulate; the impulse breaks its frame,

Each strand a bright-edged darkness, immolates Upon the rocks in spume, uncovering The sun’s duplicity – the pure outfiling Of light is scattered in particular states,

Into its greasy spectrum. Slipping down, The river combs its current smooth again Through spatulate ledges where the shallows stain Into green shadows, leafy, overgrown.

It turns to stillness, fondled by the sun Once more; that breeder in mortality Will undertake its motion from the sea. At any point the circle has begun,

The past returns to an unaccustomed place, The imperceptible present slides away Held by the surface tension of each day, Where it runs clear we see a stony face

from Lochaber for Ever

Alice Claire Macdonnell

In all thy moods I love thee, In sunshine and in storm; Lochaber of the towering bens, Outlined in rugged form. Here proud Ben Nevis, snowy crowned, Rests throned amidst the clouds; There Lochy’s deep and silvery wave, A royal city shrouds; Whose waters witnessed the escape Of coward Campbell’s dastard shape, Disgrace eternal reap: Whilst fair glen Nevis’ rocks resound, With “Pibroch Donald Dubh” renowned, From Inverlochy’s keep. Grey ruined walls, in latter years, That saw the great Montrose, MacDonell’s, Cameron’s men led forth, To victory ‘gainst their foes. Oh! Lochaber, dear Lochaber, The rich red afterglow Of fame that rests upon thy shield, Unbroken records show. “O, Lochabair, mo Lochabair fhein gu bràth.” …

In all thy moods I love thee, But I think I love thee best, When the moon is rising slowly Behind Beinn Chlinaig’s crest; To list the plaintive owlet calling, When the woods are very still, The gentle plash of waters falling, Ringing, rhyming, down the hill; So rich with flowers the river braes, Whose honeyed perfume scents the ways, Sweet lingering on the air. Wild purple bloom the heather shows, O’er hanging rocks the rowan grows, Where scarce a foot may dare: Enough it is among thy braes, To dream, to breath, to live; With the soul’s repose of trustfulness, Whate’er the future give; Across the hazy distance, Thy children look and long, For thy spell is found resistless, And their hearts beat true and strong. “O, Lochabair, mo Lochabair fhein gu bràth.”

(“O, Lochaber, my own Lochaber for ever.”)

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: the Langharda Pass, near Sparta, Peloponnese.

Today's photo with the most hits: the Holsworth Historic Site, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.