wordsworth on bede

BUT what if One, through grove or flowery mead,
Indulging thus at will the creeping feet
Of a voluptuous indolence, should meet
Thy hovering Shade, O venerable Bede!
The saint, the scholar, from a circle freed
Of toil stupendous, in a hallowed seat
Of learning, where thou heard'st the billows beat
On a wild coast, rough monitors to feed
Perpetual industry. Sublime Recluse!
The recreant soul, that dares to shun the debt
Imposed on human kind, must first forget
Thy diligence, thy unrelaxing use
Of a long life; and, in the hour of death,
The last dear service of thy passing breath!

We're reading Bede in GB3...wonderful stuff...

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 10:10 AM |

expectations for things not yet written...

Yes, the title rang true. It means a longer post shall follow. This is merely a preface to greater things -- one of those disgustingly small and puny looking apologetic updates in which the author makes terribly long excuses as to why they have regrettably and unfortunately been ignoring their readers and their blog.

No, really, I will get an interesting (and long) entry up soon -- that is, as soon as I have a spare hour or two. I officially started my school year today, although Great Books already started last week and my TPS classes don't begin until next week. And I am having rather dark presentiments that spare hours will become increasingly hard to find as the year progresses.

But don't worry! As my readers anguish over the fact that my blog has not been updated for weeks upon end, I will probably be having an incomparably enjoyable and quite delightful time poring over ancient books, writing essays that try to resemble in size the collected works of Shakespeare, muddling my head over advanced algebra problems, attempting dangerous experiments during Chemistry, trying to translate everything into Spanish (this will take time -- I only started lesson one today O_o), practicing an increasingly longer and longer repertoire of songs on the piano, and lots of other interesting things.

And now I must bid you all farewell and leave you with this little post and, even better, expectations for things not yet written.

Oh! And this, a scene from The Pilgrim's Regress by C. S. Lewis because I always wanted to post it and now seems to be as good a time as any. Enjoy!

I saw where they came down to the white beaches of a bay of the sea, the western end of the world, a place very ancient, folded many miles deep in the silence of forests; a place, in some sort, lying rather at the world's beginning, as though men were born traveling away from it. It was early in the morning when they came there and heard the sound of the waves; and looking across the sea--at that hour almost colourless--all those thousands became still. And what the others saw I do not know: but John saw the Island. And the morning wind, blowing offshore from it, brought the sweet smell of its orchards to them, but rarified and made faint with the thinness and purity of early air, and mixed with a little sharpness of the sea. But for John, because so many thousands looked at it with him, the pain and the longing were changed and all unlike what they had been of old; for humility was mixed with their wildness, and the sweetness came not with pride and with the lonely dreams of poets nor with the glamour of a secret, but with the homespun truth of folktales, and with the sadness of graves and freshness as of earth in the morning.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 2:28 PM |