Poem for Tuesday

From The Divine Comedy, Inferno: Canto I
By Dante Alighieri
Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

But after I had reached a mountain's foot,
At that point where the valley terminated,
Which had with consternation pierced my heart,

Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,
Vested already with that planet's rays
Which leadeth others right by every road.

Then was the fear a little quieted
That in my heart's lake had endured throughout
The night, which I had passed so piteously.

And even as he, who, with distressful breath,
Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
Turns to the water perilous and gazes;

So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
Turn itself back to re-behold the pass
Which never yet a living person left.

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So I did the 50 Closest Non-Friends thing, and discovered that over 3/4 of the names are on my alter ego's Friends list already, anyway. Hmm. Someone will suspect that I read RPS. *eg*

Yesterday a good friend of mine originally from Trek fandom, a captain in the army, called me from Chicago for the first time since her return from Baghdad. While her unit was over there, she had visited Babylon. I suppose it is very wrong of me to feel jealous of this -- she was sent as an officer in a war of which she could not vocally disapprove if she wanted to, given her career, plus her position is in media relations, and you couldn't have paid me anything to have gone as an observer let alone a soldier. Yet she has laid eyes on a 6000-year-old city that in all likelihood I will never see, even if regional attitudes towards Americans and Jews change markedly at some point. To stand where the Hanging Gardens once stood...I can't even imagine.

Quiz spotted in 's LJ. Again Ravenclaw, even though the questions were less obvious. I should stop taking quizzes and accept that I have been sorted into that house!


Ravenclaw. Logical and dedicated to learning, you
sometimes forget the smaller things in life.

A genuine Sorting Hat quiz
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