By William Ellery Channing
No abbey’s gloom, nor dark cathedral-stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways, and those fair
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.
And shalt thou pause to hear some funeral bell
Slow stealing o'er thy heart in this calm place,
Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell,
But in its kind and supplicating grace,
It says, Go, pilgrim, on thy march, be more
Friend to the friendless than thou wast before;
Learn from the loved one's rest serenity:
To-morrow that soft bell for thee shall sound,
And thou repose beneath the whispering tree,
One tribute more to this submissive ground?
Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride,
Nor these pale flowers nor this still field deride:
Rather to those ascents of being turn,
Where a ne'er-setting sun illumes the year
Eternal, and the incessant watch-fires burn
Of unspent holiness and goodness clear?
Forget man's littleness, deserve the best,
God's mercy in thy thought and life confest.
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Among other familial disasters last weekend, Daniel broke his phone screen at Molly's Bat Mitzvah, so on Thursday we took it to be repaired -- there's a local place that agreed to replace the screen for a reasonable price -- so since Daniel needs driving practice, we drove all around the area, stopping at Best Buy to get him a case and taking various back roads just to get some mileage in. Meanwhile, Adam went to track practice at school with college friends to visit high school friends. It was very bright and sunny, though cold -- a nice day to be out.
We tried to watch Los Miserables, the Spanish-language modern soap opera adaptation of Les Mis on Telemundo, but we couldn't get the translation subtitles to work and none of us speaks Spanish well enough to follow the dialogue. I must find a subtitled version! Instead we watched a bit of the Critics' Choice Awards, which were virtually identical to the Golden Globes in major categories (and it's going to be an Oscar season of glorifying white men as usual) before Elementary, where I wanted more cloning. From Sleepy Hollow Cemetery last weekend:
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