Saturday, January 03, 2015

Poem for Saturday and Mount Vernon Winter

January
By Helen Hunt Jackson

O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
The streams than under ice. June could not hire
Her roses to forego the strength they learn
In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
The bridges thou dost lay where men desire
In vain to build.
        O Heart, when Love’s sun goes
To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,
Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter’s own release.

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I spent most of Friday doing stuff with my kids and working on a review of Deep Space Nine's "Field of Fire", which was...well, possibly even worse than I had remembered, since I keep remembering thinking the show's final season was nearly perfect and had sort of blocked out the mediocre episodes in favor of the brilliant ones. Adam went to film movies with the friends from high school and college with whom he has made shorts before, and Daniel and I went driving together to pick him up afterward.

We had dinner with my parents, with whom we will be visiting Paul's parents on Saturday for a belated Christmas dinner since they were in Los Angeles on Christmas Day. (My father had rented The Interview and warned us that it wasn't worth watching.) We are both unexpectedly pleased at Ohio State having won a bowl game, since it was Alabama they beat (and less embarrassing for Maryland if they end up having lost to the national champion)! Some photos from Mount Vernon this week:














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