Fatal Distraction, cont.

Laura Wood posted our exchange on Wordworth’s “Intimations of Immortality”, plus her full version (which I missed until I saw it at her site) of the seventh stanza:

Behold the Child among his new-born stresses,
A six years’ Darling of a pygmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his daycare worker’s kisses,
With gloom upon him from his mother’s boyfriend’s eyes!
See, at his feet, a hundred plans and charts,
Some fragments from his dream of human life,
Shaped by the school district with newly-learned art;
A math sheet or a permission slip,
A reading chart or some other mindless assignment;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his cry:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, work, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new terror and dread
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his “melancholy stage,”
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless drudgery.

- end of initial entry -

Clark Coleman writes:

In the Wordsworth entry, I think you meant Intimations of Immortality instead of Intimidations of Immortality.

LA replies:

That was a slip, showing my guilty conscience before God’s judgment.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 19, 2010 03:04 PM | Send