I particularly like what Wordsworth is saying about the freedom of having constraints-you know exactly what is expected and needed.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

This week’s poem is Longfellow’s Mezzo Cammin

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights, —
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights, —
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

[The title means “midway through the journey” and comes from the first line of Dante’s Divine Comedy : “Nel mezzo delcammin di nostra vita.” Longfellow was 35 when he wrote this poem, halfway through the scriptural lifespan of 70 years.]

Having successfully memorised “The Cross of Snow” I’ve chosen another Longfellow sonnet for my second poem-of-the-week.

Into the darkness and the hush of night
-Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
-And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
-The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light.
The crowd, the clamour, the pursuit, the flight,
-The unprofitable splendour and display,
-The agitations, and the cares that prey
-Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
-Molests us; all its records we erase.
-From the dull common-place book of our lives.
That like a palimpsest is written o’er
-With trivial incidents of time and place,
-And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

palimpsest : A piece of parchment or papyrus that has been written on, nearly completely erased and written on again

The imagery of the day’s cares sinking away simultaneously with the landscape is particularly appealing to me. I also enjoy the phrases, ‘the better life’ and ‘the ideal, hidden beneath’, which, to my mind, means your truest self-the self you are when not trying to be who we’re expected to be during the day with colleagues and the general public.

Memorizing a poem a week and doing crosswords are two ways to keep your mind active. I’m rubbish at crosswords but I enjoy poetry. This week’s is Longfellow’s The Cross of Snow.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face-the face of one long dead-
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow on its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

I know this one is a bit bleak, but the imagery is so vivid-the language so evocative, that I couldn’t resist.