Ensemble: Elite Global Arts & Science Magazine for Mensans & the Gifted

29/02/2024

14/02/2024

11/11/2023

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe
( Poetry Book: https://amzn.to/42NUXHp )

15/07/2022

Dame Nellie Melba outside the Gresham Hotel, Brisbane - circa 1909.
Nellie Melba was born Helen Porter Mitchell on 19 May 1861 at Richmond, Melbourne. Her Scottish father, David Mitchell, was a building contractor and a good bass vocalist, and her mother, Isabella (nee Dow) was her first music teacher. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne and received her early singing tuition from Ellen Christian and the Italian tenor, Pietro Cecchi, who is credited with urging her to make singing her vocation. After the death of her mother in 1881, followed by that of her youngest sister, Nellie accompanied her father to Mackay in Queensland, where he purchased a sugar mill. She married Charles Armstrong in Brisbane in 1882 and they had a son, George, the following year. The marriage ended in divorce in 1900.

Nellie returned to Melbourne in 1884, decided to become a professional singer and gave a number of concerts and recitals. In 1887, Melba made her operatic debut in Brussels as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto and went on to sing with great success in London, Paris, Milan, New York and other major cities. Within a few years she was regarded as one of the most accomplished and famous sopranos of her time.
(SLQ)

12/07/2022

"What you're seeing are galaxies, galaxies shining around other galaxies, and just a small little portion of the universe." 🤯

This is the first full-colour image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the "deepest and sharpest" infrared image of the distant universe to date. It shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.

If you held a grain of sand at arm's length, that's about the size of the patch of the universe this image covers.

📸: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

04/07/2022

The chemistry of color.

20/06/2022

A First Nations couple from Canada, 1886.

20/06/2022

Titanic at the docks of Southampton, 1912.

01/06/2022

29/05/2022

The death mask of scientific genius Isaac Newton photographed in 1906

29/05/2022

29/05/2022

Architecturally mind blowing 🤯

The Sumela Monastery in Turkey’s Black Sea Province of Trabzon.

28/05/2022

The first successfully sequenced human genome from an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE is presented this week in a study published in Scientific Reports. Prior to this, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from Pompeiian human and animal remai...

26/05/2022

On this day in 1553, the marriage of Jane Grey, the daughter of Henry Grey and Francis Brandon and Guildford Dudley, the son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Jane Guildford.

During the first few months of 1553, Edward VI, under the influence of the Duke of Northumberland, had made an amendment to his Devise for the Succession in which he disinherited his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth and named Jane his heir. By the May of that year and as part of his master plan Northumberland arranged the marriage of his son Guildford to Jane.
Two months later, the boy king was dead and Jane was proclaimed queen and in a surprising act of defiance refused to allow Guildford to be named king, therefore scuppering Northumberland's plans to control both Jane, Guildford and England. Soon after events took a downturn with surprising speed. By July Jane was deposed, by November she had been tried and found guilty and by the beginning of February, she was awaiting the day of her ex*****on.

You can see the couple played here by Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes in the 1986 film Lady Jane (which I quite liked but many didn't)

26/05/2022

26/05/2022

Queen Victoria had written in her diary of her first meeting with Prince Albert stating that

"He is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful."

I've just re watched the television series Victoria, and it seems it took a while for the queen to warm to the rather icy German prince, and it wasn't long before the serious and unsmiling Albert was smitten too. The climax of the evening was at a ball given by Victoria when cupid's arrow finally hit its target.

In a wonderfully romantic gesture, Albert took the Gardenia Victoria offered him, took a knife from his boot, cut his shirt and placed the flower on his heart. The truth is that he really did it.

Jenna Coleman as and Tom Hughes as Albert.

26/05/2022

Before his death, Edgar Allan Poe was found on the street, delirious and in heavily soiled, shabby clothing that was clearly not his own. On his deathbed, he was wracked with fever dreams and vivid hallucinations, while calling out for someone named Reynolds.⁠ ⁠Read about the death of the famed gothic writer that sounds like an Edgar Allan Poe story: https://bit.ly/3ymWjfC

25/05/2022

25/05/2022

Future King George V of the United Kingdom (then Prince of Wales) (right) standing with his first cousin, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (left). Photograph taken in the United Kingdom in 1909 during the Cowes Sailing Regatta.

Credit: valazarova on Instagram
historycolored.com⁠

25/05/2022

Art within art!