November 11, 2003
Some of you may have noticed that I haven't updated anything for a couple of weeks. Reason? Hell Week and Hell Week II, if you must know. First we had tech week for the play which was a nightmare in seven chapters, then I had PSSA retakes (long story), a couple of tests, a presentation and SATs the next week. It took me all of last week to recover, and I'm not completely recovered yet.
I hereby swear that to uphold your house
I would lay my bones in quick destroying lime
Or turn my flesh to timber for all time;
Cut down my womanhood; lop off the boughs
Of that perpetual ecstasy that grows
From the heart's core; condemn it as a crime
If it be broader than a beam, or climb
Above the stature that your roof allows.
I am not the hearthstone nor the cornerstone
Within this noble fabric you have builded;
Not by my beauty was its cornce gilded;
Not on my courage were its arches thrown:
My lord, adjudge my strength, and set me where
I bear a little more than I can bear.
From "One Person" by Elinor Wylie
We have today off for Act 80, so I've been sitting at my computer finishing off my English portfolio, which had turned out to be due a week before we thought. x_x Let's see: went to see Godspell (very kewl), went to see Matrix Revolutions (pretty bad), went to a Lion's Club dinner last night to receive an academic award (had to say a few words: ack), gotten more compliments on my drawing (?) (I do so love doing white and black charcoal on toned paper), saw a preview for "Troy" (yayness!). Coming up: volunteering five hours at the public library (first installment this afternoon), Humanities/Art field trip, have to write my Scholastic entry (x_x again), County Chorus rehearsals and concert (have to be at school at 6:30 one morning--I'm gonna die), Sharps trip (yay!).
Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
Arthur Hugh Clough
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerald Manley Hopkins
