Today is a poetry day

There are some moods that are conducive to despair and raging when they meet the practical.  It's particularly odd, because the same mood on a day when the only task is to walk along the ocean front, sip tea, write in a journal, can be almost a pleasant thing, almost a particular sharp-edged gift.  I only know that this mood is not a gift because of one thing: it detests company, it detests engagement in the world of men.

So today I'm comforting myself with Gerard Manley Hopkins.  It's a sharp kind of comfort, but oftentimes effective... somewhere between
"Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee" and "Ah, as the heart grows older / It will come to such sights colder / By and by, nor spare a sigh / Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie."

On the pleasantly engaged side, you see, there's always remembering that I only ever heard of Gerard Manley Hopkins through the offices of some realistic fiction Dorothy Canfield Fisher award nominee as a kid and David Telfair's novel Cherton.