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To: Rambi who wrote (2280)	9/14/2001 8:04:13 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 51706

I clicked back to re-read it, and got goose shivers again, as i always do. I should know it by heart by now, but.... Maybe i should get it, and everything else, tattooed on my person. I'm happy for your friend and her family. Here is another GMH poem I love, and I think it is appropriate for this time, though in a painful way, because it celebrates the life and death of a particular, single, individual, Felix Randal the farrier (a horse-shoer), a friend of Hopkins. And reminds us that each of the thousands who died was an individual human life, like Randal. "One death is all deaths," someone said. It takes some concentration, but is worth it even though there are allusions one doesn't get. (N tells me "all road ever" means "in whatever way he may have offended," for example; and that "our sweet reprieve and ransom" refers to having received Holy Communion. He read it somewhere, and needs no tattoos.) I think all Hopkins is read-aloud. The last three lines of this poem are... beautiful. The last six, I mean... well, you know... Read aloud. (I discovered, or rediscovered, Richard Wilbur today. I'm going to see if a couple of my favorites are online later.) Felix Randal (by Gerard Manley Hopkins.) FELIX Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended, Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended? Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended! This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears. My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal; How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!