It's Warm Outside...

After the snow leaves and cabin fevers subside, it's nice to get outside and breathe.

Apart from the running I do during the spring, I tend to take walks in the afternoon when the sun blinds your eyes. But I like that feeling--to be surrounded by light. Spring in the UK can be lovely.

So soon enough, though, my time here will be finished. The semester has gone amazingly quickly. And sometimes I feel like I'll miss out on good things in the future. Not because I won't seek opportunities but that I'll not be around when something great happens.

In reading John Keats, I've come across some real chestnuts; but none as aesthetically dignified as his sonnet When I Have Fears which expresses these anxieties really well:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

A good poem can open up new conceptual space. And this is what's nice about Keats; he's able to express certain sentiments in ways that are new and inventive.

Be well.

JS