XC

Don October 16th, 2009

XC Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            What is it about the stars that fascinates us so?  (If you have not felt the fascination, you have been cheated of a great mystery by light pollution.)  One partial answer may appear below.

 

 

 The Contribution of Lesser Lights : Sonnet XXIX  

For a while he could almost count them as they came

                                                Like scouts, but then the whole vast army stepped

                                                At once into the sky and into flame.

                                                Like a poem he could not understand, they kept

A vigil in his spirit while he slept

                                                And swift were vanishing when he awoke.

                                                But the more garish light of day that swept

                                                Them from the sky sept no soul’s darkness, spoke

No lightning lines, no secrets could uncloak.

                                                Oh, it shone bright and clear, there was no doubt,

                                                And glanced gold fire from off the dull-leaved oak.

                                                But though man has it in him to blot out

The sun, these lesser lights still often find

                                                The chinks in the dark armor of his mind. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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