And yet a spirit, still, and bright, with something of angelic light…

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Perfect Woman

by William Wordsworth
She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleam’d upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment’s ornament;

Her eyes as star of twilight fair;

Like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful dawn;

A dancing shape, an image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

Her household motions light and free,

And steps of virgin liberty;

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet;

A creature not too bright or good

For human nature’s daily food;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine;

A being breathing thoughtful breath

,
A traveller between life and death;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;

A perfect Woman, nobly plann’d

To warm, to comfort, and command;

And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.

“Perfect Woman” by William Wordsworth. Public domain.

God’s Love

The Holy Spirit

 

from Romans 5:2-7

We rejoice in our sufferings

since sufferings produce endurance

endurance produces character

character produces hope,

hope does not disappoint us

since God’s Love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit

who has been given to us!

Owls: Can an owl defy gravity?

William Faulkner said:

 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things. … The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

He also said:

“It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago and, like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: he made the books, and he died.” His obituaries, when they were written upon his death in 1962, were substantially longer. The epitaph on his grave doesn’t mention his books. It reads simply, “Belove’d/ Go With God.”