(no subject)
WTF
bah. anywho, happy thanksgiving.
What I want you to know is this: I don't like complaining but I feel compelled to. I wish people could understand what's going on in my head. I wish I could understand other people. There is this impassable wall between us. My mind has the depth of a shot glass but is as shallow as the sea.
To commemorate Thanksgiving, here is the best poem I've read in a long long time. I posted that keats poem awhile ago and, while that was quite amazing, I must say that this one tugs at a few strings that happen to be closer to the heart. I almost posted a Barret-Browning poem, but that'd probably be misunderstood as nothing more than sentimental tripe.
Read this one nice and slowly. Let it sink in. Read it at least twice.
Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
~1867
bah. anywho, happy thanksgiving.
What I want you to know is this: I don't like complaining but I feel compelled to. I wish people could understand what's going on in my head. I wish I could understand other people. There is this impassable wall between us. My mind has the depth of a shot glass but is as shallow as the sea.
To commemorate Thanksgiving, here is the best poem I've read in a long long time. I posted that keats poem awhile ago and, while that was quite amazing, I must say that this one tugs at a few strings that happen to be closer to the heart. I almost posted a Barret-Browning poem, but that'd probably be misunderstood as nothing more than sentimental tripe.
Read this one nice and slowly. Let it sink in. Read it at least twice.
Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
~1867