A Quiet Tuesday

Greeting from Gulfport. I drove down this morning and made it just in time for the 9:00 Katrina Anniversary service at St. Peter's By-the-Sea. Afterward, I wandered around what is left of the building and grounds and the landscape reminded me of a poem I read in college by William Wordsworth. I am posting it below so you all can read it. I was a Sewanee English major, so it's tough to get these old verses out of the bloodstream.

"Among the Ruins of a Convent in the Apennines"

Ye Trees! whose slender roots entwine
Altars that piety neglects;
Whose infant arms enclasp the shrine
Which no devotion now respects;
If not a straggler from the herd
Here ruminate, nor shrouded bird,
Chanting her low-voiced hymn, take pride
In aught that ye would grace or hide--
How sadly is your love misplaced,
Fair Trees, your bounty run to waste!
Ye, too, wild Flowers! that no one heeds,
And ye--full often spurned as weeds--
In beauty clothed, or breathing sweetness
From fractured arch and mouldering wall--
Do but more touchingly recall
Man's headstrong violence and Time's fleetness,
Making the precincts ye adorn
Appear to sight still more forlorn.

1837