Fresh Perspective

A busy day so far, reading Il 3, Aen 6, Rev 21, and Midsummer Night's Dream. After weeks of procrastination I finally entered my Lenten Amen into Finale Notation software, thereby making it legible. (But unfortunately, not improving its quality) I remembered more of the keyboard shortcuts than I expected...many of my undergraduate hours were spent in the Cox Hall computer lab typing music. I had lunch with J, and made progress in planning Shakespeare at St. Vivian's. I was struck by CSL's comments on poetry that the Personal Heresy was dangerous inasmuch as it emptied quotidian things of their natural strangeness and splendor. Lines like "hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set." ought not to exalt Shakespeare, but to exalt and vivify the scene unfolding right outside the window of my study. Old Winter is doing battle with the first forces of spring under the pine and maple in our front yard, and the first muddy advances of the resurrection to come mock his weakening grip. This line "Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up." is spine-tingling. If there is any image that might retain its spiritual power even into this dark age, it is the lightning bolt; perhaps this is why The Thunderer was the head of the Pantheons.