A little Longfellow for my Wednesday

"All are architects of fate
working in these walls of time
some with massive deeds and great
some with ornaments of rhyme ..."

-- Longfellow, The Builders

In keeping with CS Lewis' advice to often read verse aloud in a solitary place, I read this stanza out loud at a stoplight today, and I hope that it will stay in my head for a while. It is indeed profound.

I didn't like the sound of my voice much. It doesn't have the manly gravitas that I would wish for it. And my sense of poetic cadence is not great. We must, I was told back in college, not read poetry in sing-song form, like a child's nursery rhyme. But I sing-songed Longfellow.

I need more practice. In more solitary moments.