The Caged Skylark
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells —
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
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My Tuesday was fairly quiet and boring. It was chilly, which made it lovely to walk, which I did twice -- once to a Pokemon raid, once toward evening when we saw many deer in the woods. I did some online shopping and made a mask chain toward evening, then my Voyager rewatch group met and watched the still-excellent "State of Flux" together.
Paul and I watched Uncle Frank, which like so many things has an overwrought script but a great cast that makes it work -- it's about a sheltered Southern girl and her gay uncle, so right up my alley. Now we're watching The Secrets of Christ's Tomb, about the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, on NatGeo. From last weekend, Great Falls fowl:
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