By Gerard Manley Hopkins
felled 1879
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
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My Friday was weird and mostly involved working on a Shutterfly book that must be finished by Sunday when my coupon expires. I had plans with Alice, but her son had too much homework, so those got postponed. My mother's birthday is this weekend, so I was going to pick up a cake for her and have dinner with my parents and son, but she had some horrible dental work done earlier in the week that required heavy meds which left her dizzy; she stumbled and cracked her ribs and is now in horrible pain, so we postponed her birthday dinner, too.
So I wound up just doing stupid chores, getting into arguments on other people's Facebook timelines for insisting that their facts be correct if they're going to post political opinions, and not getting as long a walk as I wanted because it snowed all afternoon though almost nothing stuck. We watched Blindspot, then because I was in the mood for it we watched the Ritchie-RDJ-Law Sherlock Holmes (I can only watch things I've seen before while working on photo books). Again I need spring, so here are flowers from Brookside Gardens' conservatory:
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