“…And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing/ Under an arch of the railway:’Love has no ending!/I’ll love you dear, I’ll love you/Till China and Africa meet-/Till the river jumps over the mountains/And the salmon sing in the street!/I’ll love you till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry/And the seven stars go squawking like geese about the sky! / The years shall run like rabbits, for in my arms I hold/The flower of the ages, and the first love of the world!’
But all the clocks in the city began to whirr and chime:/O let not Time deceive you, you cannot conquer Time!/ In the buroughs of the nightmare where justice naked is/Time watches from the shadow, and coughs when you would kiss./In headaches and in worry vaguely life leaks away/ And Time will have his fancy, tomorrow —or today…”
From As I Walked Out One Evening, W. H. Auden
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Yesterday we went to our clay pigeon shooting range, at a lower altitude than our Plateau. It was, like 50 degrees there, the sun felt warm. It was warmer here, too, about 40, with gigantic icicles plummeting from the eaves like spears, like missiles.
Oh there’s still plenty of snow, about 3’ I’d say. It seems invulnerable. And there will be more of it.
But a midwinter thaw like we’ve had always makes me melancholy. I love the seasons here in the temperate zone. All four of them. But the time comes when the seasonal round reminds a person of her own mortality. How many such inexorable cycles, white winters, harsh wet springs, verdant summers, red autumns, will she see—and how many of them will look over the woods and water for her, in vain?
Later in the poem: “Oh look, look in the mirror/Look, in your distress./Life remains a blessing/Although YOU cannot bless./ Oh stand, stand at the window/As the tears scald and start:/ You shall love your crooked neighbor/With your crooked heart.”
Yes, that’s the melancholy: fellow-feeing for all of us humans: sick with desire, dying of unrequited love for life.
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So beautiful, Hypatia, thank you!
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Captain Hook’s nemesis, Tick-Tock the Croc, did not get that name for nothing.
Speaking of which, it is shameful how Disney characters are now being erased from history by our post-modern so-called Progressives. They lied about everything until they came into power. Now we see that the Left was never tolerant. They simply could not afford to show their true colors until now.
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P.S. I like this poem because I can understand it. So much of poetry bruises my brain in trying to decipher the author’s (hidden?) meaning.
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Time giveth, and time taketh away.
“The innocent and the beautiful/Have no enemy but Time” wrote Yeats, “Time who never goes anywhere without his great dog Death” wrote Annie Dillard. God bless and comfort you all, my dear fellow mortals, brief beautiful.candle flames.
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