I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
“Tropical vegetation cannot well be described; but the fact that even when seen it is hard to understand, need not prevent an attempt to sketch the general features. The real trouble that meets the novice on the threshold of the tropics in the utter inadequacy of the English language to express the variety and luxuriance he sees in the vegetable world. Even in color his vocabulary fails him, and he must include in the name “green” so many distinct tints that at last he relinquishes the difficult task and falls back upon the commonplace epithets, or leaves his tale untold.”
- William T. Brigham, In the Land of the Quetzal. 1887.
My last semester of college is proving to be extremely busy already so it’s nice to have memories of Italy - where my days revolved almost around entirely food. Chocolate cake before dinner? Why not?
Personality is that peculiar, incalculable thing that is meant when we speak of ourselves as distinct from everyone else. Our personality is always too big to grasp… Personality is like an island, we know nothing about the great depths underneath, consequently we cannot estimate ourselves. We begin by thinking that we can, but we come to realize that there is only one Being Who understands us, and that is our Creator…
… If you give up your right to yourself to God, the real true nature of your personality answers to God straight away. Jesus Christ emancipates the personality, and the individuality is transfigured; the transfiguring element is love, personal devotion to Jesus.
(The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem of the same name. Good stuff.)
“What could Europe show for all of Rousseau’s tirades against civilization but a band of bohemians, congregating amid the brick and mortar of Paris, trying to keep alive a yearning for such naturalness and spontaneity as any child of the Ohio Valley indubitably flaunted without, like them, becoming an outcast from society?”
