Unthinkable Wings

A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW.


STAND still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent,
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.
So whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did, and shadows, flow
From us and our cares ; but now 'tis not so.

That love hath not attain'd the highest degree,
Which is still diligent lest others see.

Except our loves at this noon stay,
We shall new shadows make the other way.
As the first were made to blind
Others, these which come behind
Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
If our loves faint, and westerwardly decline,
To me thou, falsely, thine
And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
The morning shadows wear away,
But these grow longer all the day ;
But O ! love's day is short, if love decay.

Love is a growing, or full constant light,
And his short minute, after noon, is night.

John Donne. (I was going to post 'Air and Angels,' but then I remembered how much the last lines annoy me, so, despite the fineness of 'extreme and scattering bright', I won't).

Germaine Greer has a really interesting article in the Grauniad about the Newbattle portrait of John Donne, and I like her theory that Donne's ,elancholy is more the result of grief and doubt than a pose calculated to get a girl into bed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1696541,00.html

The picture is interesting in itself, though; it strikes me as bearing a certain resemblance of how a lot of fangirls see Snape.

On the other hand, it would make an awfully good Sirius, epsecially if you adopt the Greer reading (we have an overbearing mother, a dead brother who was the 'good son' and the subject himself increasingly alienated from his childhood beliefs). Or alternatively, you could make it Regulus, brooding over what to do about his suddenly unwanted tattoo...