Dead Poets Humor

Because I'm feeling a little punchy... NB: This is humorous. It's not serious.

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

~Ogden Nash

A vote for them.

This situation, with its lights and shadows, ought to make us all fully aware that we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the “culture of death” and the “culture of life”. We find ourselves not only “faced with” but necessarily “in the midst of” this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.
– Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II

Thanks for the quote, Danielle!

Dead Poets Month continues

Doesn't this nicely complement election day?

The Day is Done

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

The Grave of Keats

by Oscar Wilde

Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain,

He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water - it shall stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.

I mostly chose this poem because of Isabella's name in the last line and the "gentle violets weeping with the dew."

Poetry month begins...

November is poetry month. Here is one of my absolute favorites: a repeat from last year. I believe it is one of the most poignant arguments against abortion (and contraception, for that matter) in the English language.

The Great Minimum
by G.K. Chesterton

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

All Souls 2008

Today the Church prays for the dead. We "celebrate their lives"--not so much by parties or reminiscence--by asking God to grant them the fullness of life in eternity. Amen.

Because of the time change, the girls were up at 5am this morning. We were blessed, however, with a family run followed by pancakes together. We've taken to watching EWTN on the Scientist Dad's computer, and this morning they ran the Mass in the Extraordinary Form from Birmingham, England. Today, the Oratory there transferred the remains of John Henry Newman from the main church to a smaller chapel--he may soon be beatified, I gathered.

A great thinker, a great man:

"We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe."

All Saints Day 2008

Here is Miriam's hallows get-up. She saw a clip of the movie "Therese" a few weeks ago and immediately determined to be Therese for trick-or-treat. She loved the habit so much, she wore it to Mass this morning--much to the delight of our Monsignour!