Good Senses

• Smell: My darling father's aftershave. It lingers, and yet it isn't overbearing. It seems to make the whole house smell amazing. I never get tired of it, and I tell him so constantly. He definitely smells good.
  
• Sight: My calendar, when I cross off the 26th of every month. It means that the next day, the 27th, my texting bill starts over. Yes, this makes me ridiculously happy. It shouldn't, but it does.
  
• Sound: The crunch and swoosh of my beautiful formal dress. All these poofs and layers. Occasionally I just put it on and swirl around my room. I feel like a Disney princess - completely beautiful.
  
• Taste: One of those giant orange sodas from the cookie kiosk at the mall. I love those things.
  
• Touch: The genuine squeeze of a genuine person who's genuinely glad to see me. Every time I see someone like this, I don't know whether to grin in cheesy joy just to be near them, or stand paralized in awe of their awesomeness. Do I make sense? Probably not. I'm good at that. :)

The Splendor Falls

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! How thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Isn't this beautiful? I'm getting to be a poetry person...huh. Never saw that one coming. :)

So...Today...

Man, it's been a long few weeks. Cramming for finals, EOCs, etc, etc, etc. My thoughts today...

• Aw, shoot. School's almost out. I love school!
• Being a senior is just about as cool as you get in high school.
• As a result, I love seniors.
• As a result, I want to be one.
• Graduations make me cry.
• How in the world do sponges digest food? The absence of a cell wall allows animals what?
• I won't have to take biology as a senior.
• I refuse to wear heels when I'm graduating.
• I'm way too hung up on seniority tonight.

Moving along...

• I wish I could take good pictures. Practice, yes...but you kind of have to have a camera that works...and a lot of time.
• Lemon cake is delicious.
• Pink laptops are very cute.
• My birthday is coming up soon!
• Elyse on World War II: Hitler was crazy, his wife must have been crazy, too, and it's very hard to grasp the fact that one man was responsible for the destruction of almost half a race.

Well, enjoy the evening. I'll be weeping for the by-gone seniors. And looking up sponge facts.

The House With Nobody In It

WHENEVER I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

- Joyce Kilmer

Relyn did a post about this a while back, and I read it four times in a row. It's so beautifully sad. And if you know me, you know I'm not a poetry kind of gal. This was touching.