April 15, 2021: The Virtuous Life

               The Virtuous Life

 Righteous living is a high ideal;

The harmonious journey on the stony path;

The confrontation with what is real;

The smartening rod; the protecting laugh.

 

Oh, I am ready to leap to the battle call,

But what is difficult is to sustain

My impossible quest when my back’s to the wall,

Or when life becomes crazy, or plain.

 

Sometimes untroubled, the days go past,

And thoughts blow by but remain unspoken.

“Good” takes the form of a sheet of glass:

Hard and clear, and easily broken!

 

Mold it like sand, and it falls apart,

And those never reach it who are trapped in its lines.

Virtue is natural, as the pulse of the heart,

And intentional – from the depth of the mind.

 

Virtue is not a mortuary

For dressing up the dead.

Virtue is not a monastery,

Or just keeping clothed and fed.

 

Virtue is not making sacrifices,

Nor is it the blowing of horns,

But detaching one’s self from all enticements,

And saying “For This I was born!”

 

Virtue takes care and sobriety,

But its lonesomeness isn’t bored.

It’s the cutting edge of society,

And it’s the wounds of that double-edged sword.

 

To virtue belongs a baby’s crying,

And indifference which is never aloof:

But conscious, confident, hopeful, climbing

The mountain of Beauty and Truth.

 

Virtue is an imposition for fools –

For it’s the only real way to be.

It’s facing the truth, no matter how cruel,

With a resolve that can set you free!

April 15, 2021: The Daffodils by William Wordsworth in Harvard Classics (1938), Vol. 41 pg. 639

 The Daffodils

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had bought;

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.