Wednesday, March 23, 2011

"For This, For Everything, We Are Out of Tune"

Caspar David Friedrich, Wreck in the Moonlight.



THE world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

---Wordsworth, 1806.

Thanks Grandmere for sending this.

4 comments:

June Butler said...

Lovely post, Counterlight. The painting, the poem, the title of the post, all fit together perfectly.

her_own_lagoon said...

"Love" is not enough to describe how I feel about Friedrich!

JCF said...

I keep thinking this is my own head (feeling everything is rather sucktastic right now).

Then I see it reflected in everybody else, too! [Well, I'm still going to ask the doctor 4/1---first time I've seen a doctor since moving last summer---to get me back on the head meds (which ran out last August) anyway. I'm sure it couldn't hurt!]

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

What Grandmère said!