No Icon Post: A Commemoration of a Special Day
Today marks the end of an era.
In lieu of an icon post, I offer this poem, which started as an inane little exercise in preparing for my final in early Romantic literature, but which bloomed like a cancerous cauliflower, insinuating itself into my consciousness, creating a linear idea that is wholly derived from what I was studying. I cleaned it up today, as I numbly and quietly reel, and I think it sums up the whole of the literary/mental/psychological philosophies of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake that I have been specifically concerned with for the last ten weeks. It also contains some Platonic and Aristotelian concepts on "soul" and "mind," which I studied extensively this quarter for my medieval literature class.
And I think it also sums up the mental/emotional/spiritual fusion, the “connubial felicity” and “penetrating sagacity” I speak of, that I’ve been chasing, to formulate into a cohesive idea since I was in early middle school. This is still rough around the edges, and I haven’t written poetry voluntarily, ever (the last poetry I’ve ever written was forced out of me by my high school creative writing teacher). This is a work in progress, and I title it tentatively “Spots of Time,” to refer to Wordsworth’s “spots of time”, which constituted a little moment of enlightenment for me, this past quarter.
Therefore, I think the following is an apt momento for this special day.
(Tentative Title) Spots of Time
Amid sickly qualm of disappointed hope,
The vaporous sighs and tears of a sober energy,
And the still seriousness of regret,
Give rise to formless sensation and of matter, the immortal soul,
A profound benevolence engrosses the thoughts,
Coalesce in sanguine ardor,
A wanton stimulus presupposes a true Promethean sentiment.
It is none of that fastidious sensitiveness,
Yet a vulgar gesture or disregard of real kindness
Is the soul of genius,
Stirs reverence, coming of a nobler spring.
Imagination in repose and sober reflection,
Rouses that species of Pity,
With the markings of connubial felicity,
Of penetrating sagacity.
True sensibility is the auxiliary of virtue,
And the great tribunal of the Mind,
Breeds the beginnings of abundant recompense,
Surging into a newborn universe
Forming one exquisitely polished instinct.
In lieu of an icon post, I offer this poem, which started as an inane little exercise in preparing for my final in early Romantic literature, but which bloomed like a cancerous cauliflower, insinuating itself into my consciousness, creating a linear idea that is wholly derived from what I was studying. I cleaned it up today, as I numbly and quietly reel, and I think it sums up the whole of the literary/mental/psychological philosophies of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake that I have been specifically concerned with for the last ten weeks. It also contains some Platonic and Aristotelian concepts on "soul" and "mind," which I studied extensively this quarter for my medieval literature class.
And I think it also sums up the mental/emotional/spiritual fusion, the “connubial felicity” and “penetrating sagacity” I speak of, that I’ve been chasing, to formulate into a cohesive idea since I was in early middle school. This is still rough around the edges, and I haven’t written poetry voluntarily, ever (the last poetry I’ve ever written was forced out of me by my high school creative writing teacher). This is a work in progress, and I title it tentatively “Spots of Time,” to refer to Wordsworth’s “spots of time”, which constituted a little moment of enlightenment for me, this past quarter.
Therefore, I think the following is an apt momento for this special day.
(Tentative Title) Spots of Time
Amid sickly qualm of disappointed hope,
The vaporous sighs and tears of a sober energy,
And the still seriousness of regret,
Give rise to formless sensation and of matter, the immortal soul,
A profound benevolence engrosses the thoughts,
Coalesce in sanguine ardor,
A wanton stimulus presupposes a true Promethean sentiment.
It is none of that fastidious sensitiveness,
Yet a vulgar gesture or disregard of real kindness
Is the soul of genius,
Stirs reverence, coming of a nobler spring.
Imagination in repose and sober reflection,
Rouses that species of Pity,
With the markings of connubial felicity,
Of penetrating sagacity.
True sensibility is the auxiliary of virtue,
And the great tribunal of the Mind,
Breeds the beginnings of abundant recompense,
Surging into a newborn universe
Forming one exquisitely polished instinct.