Nostalgia

When I was writing my earlier post, on my Kellogg essays being as perfect as I could get them to be (IMHO), I was trying to find words to describe my feelings for those essays. I wanted to say that anything I added or removed from those essays would mar the story. For some reason a line from a poem that I had studied in school some 15 years ago came to mind. I couldn't remember the exact line, nor could I remember the poet nor the poem. All I could remember was that the poem was written by the poet to profess his love for his cousin (half sister actually), and that it was a romantic poem.

After that I just had to find the poem and the exact line I was searching. In a fair indication of my dog like tenacity and single track mind, I spent the whole of the morning reading through the works of several poets in an attempt to find the needle in the haystack. With extremely slim clues and not even the correct verbiage to Google, it was pain-staking work.

But I was driven (as I say in my essays), I huffed and I puffed (as the wolf says), till I found my man. Tah - Dah, the poet was Lord Byron and the Poem "She walks in Beauty". A simply marvelous piece of poetry as I am sure you will agree, here is the text:

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meets in her aspect and her eyes,

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress

Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow

But tell of days in goodness spent, -

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.

- George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

And having read the poem after a long hiatus, I am ashamed that I thought to use these words to describe my crappy work. But nothing lost, the wife will have a pleasant 5 minutes while I recite this to her. This poem certainly bought back a few memories of innocent childhood. It is surprising at the things the mind remembers, and how connections are made in our brain. I worked a great deal on Artificial Intelligence during my graduate studies, and nothing none of the AI systems I studied could in anyway match the random connections that the human mind makes. I hope you enjoy the poem as much as I did then and now.