By Christina Rossetti
Piteous my rhyme is
What while I muse of love and pain,
Of love misspent, of love in vain,
Of love that is not loved again:
And is this all then?
As long as time is,
Love loveth. Time is but a span,
The dalliance space of dying man:
And is this all immortals can?
The gain were small then.
Love loves for ever,
And finds a sort of joy in pain,
And gives with nought to take again,
And loves too well to end in vain:
Is the gain small then?
Love laughs at "never",
Outlives our life, exceeds the span
Appointed to mere mortal man:
All which love is and does and can
Is all in all then.
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I had a relatively quiet but fairly nice Tuesday. I had a bunch of chores to do in the morning and four loads of lanudry to fold, so I put on When in Rome, which I knew very little about and expected to be very silly, but I've generally liked Kristen Bell since Veronica Mars and I never mind getting a movie tour of Rome. As it turns out, Rome is only barely in the movie -- it's mostly set in New York City -- but I had no idea that Anjelica Huston played Kristen's boss, nor Lee Pace her ex, nor that Will Arnett, Don Johnson, Danny DeVito, and a really fun supporting cast were involved. Josh Duhamel doesn't do all that much for me -- he's cute, but he's not even as talented as Ryan Reynolds, which isn't saying much -- but I really enjoyed everyone else and the storyline wasn't nearly as sexist as I feared.
In the afternoon I took Adam to tennis, then walked for an hour in Cabin John Park, which I have really been enjoying and will be sad when the clocks go back in a couple of weeks, making it too dark to walk in the woods. There were a couple of people out walking dogs and a couple of bikers, but no runners, and there were several deer, plus the usual black and gray squirrels, chipmunks, birds, etc. Evening naturally involved Glee, about which I am ambivalent for a couple of reasons involving female characters being made to look bad -- and a dearth of Sue Sylvester -- but which very nearly made up for it by letting Mercedes and Santana sing a duet and having both Finn and Kurt's dad spell out explicitly something that bothered me all of last season, namely that when Kurt self-righteously announces, "You have issues with the fact that I'm gay," Finn can finally articulate, "No, I don't. I have issues with the fact that you don't understand no means no." I still like Sam better than Finn -- he looks just as hot with his shirt off and he's also much more understanding of both Kurt and Finn, plus he saw Avatar six times. And I just won't talk about the Brittany-Artie storyline so I don't start ranting.
It was an up and down news day: excellent where the Chilean miners are concerned, terrific (judge) then disappointing (Justice Department) where DADT is concerned, too bad where DC public schools are concerned, highly amusing and unsurprising where Doctor Who is concerned (minor SJA spoiler). Hopefully tomorrow it will be all good.
One of the watercolors by May Morris on display at the Delaware Art Museum, which has a collection of May's work along with that of her father, William Morris, and his Pre-Raphaelite collaborators.
This is one of May's autograph notebooks, in which she painted, sketched, and took notes.
William Morris encouraged his daughter to copy artwork by masters as she studied technique. These sketches are based on an unknown painting and a Donatello relief.
A longtime member of a socialist league, May Morris designed the spine of this collection of essays compiled and edited by George Bernard Shaw.
A holiday card from Morris with an original drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was often a guest at her parents' home.
Morris wrote and designed this guide to decorative needlework to encourage readers to look to medieval crafts and the natural world for inspiration.
This is an embroidery pattern sketched on greaseproof paper to transfer the design to cloth by being pricked through with a pin, then rubbed with charcoal to leave a pattern on the fabric.
The Delaware museum also has an exhibit on the art of Leonard Baskin, who did this engraving of William Morris because he admired him as a designer and the founder of Kelmscott Press.
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