What Is Man?

The big highlight of my monthly trip to Mt Auburn (aside from seeing my doctor; he's a hoot!) is the leisurely walk along the Charles and bit of lollygagging in Harvard Square I indulge myself in afterwards. For some reason yesterday, I felt particularly drawn to Harvard Yard, to Emerson Hall, to this line from the psalms:



1 O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth, Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens!

2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength, Because of thine adversaries, That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honor.

6 Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet:

7 All sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the field,

8 The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

9 O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth!

(More pictures of Cambridge if you're interested.)

My dad, ever the good sport and a patron saint of Patience sent this along both for Poetry Month and to cheer me up:

"I thought of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem for the April blog:

Laugh and the world laughs with you
Weep and you weep alone
For this grim old Earth
Must borrow its mirth
It has troubles enough of its own.

These lines begin "Solitude," first published in the Feb. 25, 1883, issue of the New York Sun.

I did a search on Google to find the date and among other things came across the stuff below. It is almost better than the poem."

Thanks, Dad.

Shakespeare's Birthday fell on a Monday (the 23rd) this year. It also fell a day after my having to say difficult goodbyes to a dear friend, to give him back to his land, his world, his life across the ocean.

XXIX. Remembrance

WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste;

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before:

—But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.