Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Literary thought of the day

"After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think."
- Dorothea, in Middlemarch by George Eliot

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Okay, okay

My mum tells me that my last post doesn't count. So, here; this time I'll included the latest poem I've learned. It's "Star-gazer", by Louis MacNeice:

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those almost intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.

And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain.

I really am planning to write more bloggish posts soon. I've just been working like a crazy person between visits to the MVA (Maryland's DMV from...an unhappy place, for you non-Marylanders), getting lost driving around Baltimore, housepainting, meeting the realtor, having friends, garden sprucing-up, and you know, eating and sleeping. So I haven't had much time for blogging. But I'll get to it.

(By the way, isn't that a great poem?)

Monday, March 22, 2010

A post

This is a post, because people have been complaining that I haven't posted anything.

So, here you go.