By Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
As oft as I behold, and see
The sovereign beauty that me bound;
The nigher my comfort is to me,
Alas ! the fresher is my wound.
As flame doth quench by rage of fire,
And running streams consume by rain;
So doth the sight that I desire
Appease my grief, and deadly pain.
Like as the fly that see'th the flame,
And thinks to play her in the fire;
That found her woe, and sought her game
Where grief did grow by her desire.
First when I saw those crystal streams,
Whose beauty made my mortal wound;
I little thought within their beams
So sweet a venom to have found.
But wilful will did prick me forth,
Blind Cupid did me whip and guide;
Force made me take my grief in worth;
My fruitless hope my harm did hide;
Wherein is hid the cruel bit,
Whose sharp repulse none can resist;
And eke the spur that strains each wit
To run the race against his list.
As cruel waves full oft be found
Against the rocks to roar and cry;
So doth my heart full oft rebound
Against my breast full bitterly.
And as the spider draws her line,
With labour lost I frame my suit;
The fault is her's, the loss is mine:
Of ill sown seed, such is the fruit.
I fall, and see mine own decay;
As he that bears flame in his breast,
Forgets for pain to cast away
The thing that breedeth his unrest.
--------
Poem in honor of The Tudors, though I didn't even realize Surrey on the program was supposed to be that Surrey and not his father because the actor is considerably older than Henry Howard was when he...well, that's a spoiler, though on this show it's hard to predict when heads will roll according to history and when there will be wild divergences -- it seems that Henry has now acquired Scottish cousins though thus far we've had no indication that he had any sister besides the one who died first season. That show was our evening television, and it was entertaining crack as usual -- it's hard to complain overmuch of slander against Catherine Howard, who quite literally couldn't cover her misdeeds to save her life.
Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet Sunday. I slept late after staying up very late to see what was going on in Times Square, though we were all up by 9 since Daniel was going to an all-day robotics demonstration in downtown Silver Spring where his chorus has performed in previous years. While he was doing that, we took Adam to Kohl's and Target to replace pretty much his entire summer wardrobe -- he's outgrown everything since last year from swimsuits to shoes -- at least it wasn't as expensive as it could have been, since I had a lot of Kohl's Bucks from the reopening sale. Adam also wanted to find SillyBandz, those stretchy animal-shaped rubber band bracelets, which he apparently learned from kids at school come in cat and penguin shapes. We struck out at Target and Walgreens but a girls' boutique near the latter had them.
Then we went to Silver Spring, where we got iced caramel frappuccinos and watched Daniel take turns steering the robot and "kicking" soccer balls with it to another member of the robotics team. Paul had made brownies and cookies for their bake sale, so we visited that, then we wandered into Borders while son was helping pack up the robot after the event ended and we came home for dinner. Here are some photos of the event, which also included a motorized Lego display so younger children could build their own robots:
Daniel steering the Blair Robot Project's FIRST competition robot...
...which has a vacuum pipe attached to the back to retrieve a soccer ball...
...which it can then shoot to another robot or a human.
The kids worked a bit on the robot's mechanics...
...and took turns changing the batteries.
Younger children got to build robots out of Legos.
There was also a bake sale and exhibit on the FIRST competition plus the team's local sponsors.
Daniel appeared to be having a good time, more so when his relatives were not hovering too near!
The last-place Orioles have swept the Red Sox! Whoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment