By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams, come back to me.
Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,
Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
And the answer from the shore!
Most of all, the Spanish ballad
Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos
And the sailor’s mystic song.
Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
Flow its unrhymed lyric lines:—
Telling how the Count Arnaldos,
With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
Steering onward to the land;—
How he heard the ancient helmsman
Chant a song so wild and clear,
That the sailing sea-bird slowly
Poised upon the mast to hear,
Till his soul was full of longing,
And he cried, with impulse strong,—
“Helmsman! for the love of heaven,
Teach me, too, that wondrous song!”
“Wouldst thou,”—so the helmsman answered,
“Learn the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!”
In each sail that skims the horizon,
In each landward-blowing breeze,
I behold that stately galley,
Hear those mournful melodies;
Till my soul is full of longing
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.
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Friday was, yet again, a gorgeous day -- chilly but sunny. We saw many ducks and geese in the lake and both pairs of eagles, again, one in the big tree at the south end of Idylwood Beach and one in the big tree at the edge of Marymoor Park where the Sammamish River flows into the lake. I talked to Laurie on Zoom after lunch and watched the episodes of Loki with Kristen that we meant to watch on Wednesday, but my neighborhood's internet went out. We watched the season finale of The Agency before dinner because I couldn't wait to find out what happened, but it left so many things hanging that it was almost a cliffhanger! Meanwhile Paul discovered that it was National Peanut Butter Day and made peanut noodles for dinner.
We had read so many bad reviews of Section 31 that we decided we really needed to watch it. And I wish I had good things to say about it, but apart from Michelle Yeoh always being a delight to watch no matter how absurd her dialogue, it's...pretty bad. It starts as The Hunger Games except a version where Katniss has to murder Prim and enslave Peeta, then turns into Mission: Impossible. It alternatively feels like bad old sci-fi or like parodies -- we were citing Galaxy Quest and Red Dwarf -- and although it occasionally drops the names of familiar Star Trek people and planets, nothing about it feels like Star Trek, not even the bits I remember of Discovery. The naval base and nautical monuments around the USS Constitution and Charlestown Navy Yard:
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