with John Donne. (I think I'll end up being the girl who cried wolf...someday I'm going to make a real, honest to goodness Announcement, and everyone will zoom by it because they'll think I'm just being silly again. Anyway, John Donne.)
No, but seriously! The man was incredible. He wrote about faith and love and death, some of the themes that devolve into cheesiness and cliches most often, with wit, humor, and extremely original images. And not the sort of images that you read them and go, Oh back when they were writing them they were fresh, but now we're used to that sort of thing. No, no, no. His words are just as fresh four hundred years later as they were the day he penned them.
Holy Sonnet 1
Thou has made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Ty grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.
(Adamant is a magnetic stone.)
See? Amazing.
Some of his love poetry is fairly bawdy, but not all of it. He also wrote Meditation 17 which, if you have not read it, is astounding.
In other news, I am trying to avoid the plague that is going around campus. By plague I mean cold type sickness not literally the plague. Although if it was literally the plague Sam would be excited. She likes diseases like I like books. And John Donne.
Also, it was CHILLY today. I even have on a sweater. And my red Attolia earrings. Because they match the sweater, not because it's cold.
It's so funny to look at pictures of myself with long hair now. In some ways I still feel like I have long hair--I keep waiting it for it to whip around the breeze--but I like the length I have it now. It makes me feel younger and older at the same time.
This entry has been rambly and all over the place (which is what rambly means...we like tautologies, we do!) but fear not. It is ending. I am off to cook dinner.
P.S. Pushing Daisies tonight. SQUEE!!
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4 comments:
I like the poem. Think I will go back and open my copy again. (In college I was too overwhelmed with personal stuff to hear a lot of what I was supposed to be learning.)
I wonder who Sam is? Roommate? My
roommate in college was a girl from Jamaica who was in the pre-med program. I now know lots about Jamaica!
She's my former roommate and good friend--the one I cook dinner with.
Wow, your roommate sounds neat!
I'm pulling out my sweaters this week too.
There's a house in my village named after a John donne poem, with the poem on plexiglass on the side. I'll try to find out what it is and get back to you - FD
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