1. Meeting up with some new Objectivist friends before the lecture and discovering we have lots in common. Makes me feel all excited and giddy.
2. Discovering a poet who is new to me (Charlotte Smith) and who is relatively unknown, but rocks!
3. Holding hands with Aaron at the lecture and realizing that I have such a major value right beside me, just as excited as I am about capitalism, just as determined to be rational and happy, and all in love with me! Then, we continued a great conversation all the way home and for an hour or so after we got home, one that I couldn't have with any old boy, and it made me so glad to have found someone who shares my values AND compliments my personality.
In honor of my discovery of Charlotte Smith, I give you the first two sonnets in the collection called Elegiac Sonnets:
SONNET I.
THE partial Muse, has from my earliest hours,
Smil'd on the rugged path I'm doom'd to tread,
And still with sportive hand has snatch'd wild flowers,
To weave fantastic garlands for my head:
But far, far happier is the lot of those
Who never learn'd her dear delusive art;
Which, while it decks the head with many a rose,
Reserves the thorn, to fester in the heart.
For still she bids soft Pity's melting eye
Stream o'er the ills she knows not to remove,
Points every pang, and deepens every sigh
Of mourning friendship or unhappy love.
Ah! then, how dear the Muse's favours cost,
If those paint sorrow best--who feel it most!
SONNET II.
Written at the close of Spring.THE garlands fade that Spring so lately wove,
Each simple flower, which she had nursed in dew,
Anemonies, that spangled every grove,
The primrose wan, and hare-bell mildly blue.
No more shall violets linger in the dell,
Or purple orchis variegate the plain,
Till Spring again shall call forth every bell,
And dress with humid hands her wreaths again.--
Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair,
Are the fond visions of thy early day,
Till tyrant passion and corrosive care
Bid all thy fairy colours fade away!
Another May new buds and flowers shall bring;
Ah! why has happiness--no second spring?
