When I feel anxious about what's happening, this Wordsworth poem comes to mind:
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
I love everything about this sonnet, except perhaps the last two lines. I don't think neo-paganism will solve my problems, or Wordsworth's. And old Triton blowing his wreathed horn is a hokey image. If I were a wealthy philanthropist, I would sponsor a contest to re-write the last two lines.
2 comments:
When I was young, foolish, and rude, I stood up and recited this poem to a couple of investment bankers who had just given a career presentation. They emphasized the necessity of working 80 hours a week for the first five years, then 60 or 70 for years 6-10.
Hi R.E.!
Unluckily for me, I am now old, foolish and rude. It's a good thing that I don't know any investment bankers, and that I don't have to sit through their presentations. However, the professionalization of academia has made "investment banker-ese" much more noticeable in my life. One of the recent comparisons that provoked much grousing from people-who-think at my workplace was that of an "outcomes" specialist: people who don't graduate from college are like IPods thrown on a trash heap.
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