Poem for Thursday and National Zoo Reptiles

From 'The Princess'
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

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I had a very nice Wednesday, mostly in Gaithersburg, where I went to meet longtime friends for lunch and did a bit of shopping before and after. My only successful purchase was tube socks for Paul at Target, but I had a delightful three-hour meal with the moms from my former baby group (they knew each other from prenatal classes, yet invited me and older son to join them and their our older sons, one of whom is finishing law school and one of whom is a tech consultant. We went to Copper Canyon Grill and it was so much fun to catch up with them.

Paul and I had to drop off the car at the dealership for an airbag recall, after which he went to Giant while I met up with a few people for a couple of Pokemon raids in the same shopping center. Then we watched The Masked Singer, which needs fewer stupid white people as judges considering who they sent home tonight and before the end of last season, followed by the funny, over-the-top, well-acted Princess Margaret episode of The Crown instead of the debate and the disturbing opposition research episode of Stumptown. From the National Zoo reptile house: