Sir Philip Sidney

[pecunium]

Maia is now gone for three months of fieldwork. I'll be away for three weeks in June, and maybe two weeks in July, somewhere in there I hope to be able to hie myself to Palo Alto and visit.

Plants; horses, dogs, snakes and mice, perforce need attention, and so someone will have to be persuaded to look in on them.

In the meanwhile:

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

Comments

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

a lovely poem -

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

If you make it up to Palo Alto, let me know, and I'll try to meet you, your schedule and migraines permitting,.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

My migraines will permit. :)

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'm almost tempted to volunteer -- taking care of the plants & all those animals (except for the geese) was great fun a few years ago. But I'm currently committed to three full mornings per week of other work, and my body now has less energy (especially in hot weather), so I'll just wish you Good Luck in the persuasion department.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's ok. 1: We aren't in the same place (the numbers are less, but the plants need more care; being in pots) and for the guaranteed trip I actually have someone who is volunteering).

Thank you for the offer, but no need to put yourself out with trips to Pasadena.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Glad you found someone to volunteer, and hope that can be extended or expanded to cover the additional absence(es).

But... errr... perhaps you should read more carefully, or I should write more carefully, or sharpen my sense of irony-appreciation. I _thought_ I had very carefully declined to offer to help. (If my body says "stay at home today", and I (properly) heed it, plants probably would survive. Animals are a more serious responsibility.)

The trips to Pasadena would be no problem in themselves -- I drove almost that far to work for decades. The incidental expenses, maybe. Not so much for gasoline, though that's a growing consideration, but the route passes by a Trader Joe's and is close to several bookstores, restaurants, and microbrew & other Pubs. In Theory, these could be ignored, but perhaps it's better not to put this to the test.

*& loff*

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
John Donne


As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Er, Terry, it's usually written as 'Sidney' not 'Sydney'. the same for his relative, the republican theorist Algernon.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well, yes (though I didn't know about algernon).

Spelling was more flexible then, no?

Well, it was, though most people didn't do as Raleigh did and spell their own names more than one way in the same letter.

I'll fix it, and plead emotional distress; instead of faulty memory.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's why I said 'usually written', Terry. Algernon isn't as well-known, alas, though he was, perhaps, more influential since the founders of the United States read his work.

One of my teachers in grad school won the Leo Strauss Prize of the American Political Science Association for his study of Algernon Sidney.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

If memory serves, Sir Phillip also sometimes wrote his last name as "Sidnei". Not being British, I have no idea how it might have been pronounced.