The Tyger

by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Today is pretty varies and yet much of a piece.

As is the way this week, I am running late with everything - not my 'style' and not very energising it has to be said.  Still, overall things are good and enjoyable.

After yesterday's fun game of sending dead chairs to the tip and, with the help of two friends, getting a new table into my (overcrowded with oddments of furniture) kitchen, today should be calmer!

A sermon to write, lunchtime reflection in which to participate, then a train ride to Edinburgh for charity carol service.

Once Christmas is past I really, really, really must get rid of some of the extraneous stuff that clutters my home!

The Seecond Coming

by W B Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Ozymandias

by P B Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

I have just cleaned the cat fur from my four dining chairs for the last time - this time tomorrow the chairs will be history, having gone to the great kitchen in the... well to the tip, actually.  I have only cleaned the cat fur off of them because this evening, in a fitting 'last supper', they will be sat on by visitors who have come round to help with making props for the Christmas Eve service.

I came by these chairs, along with a table that lasted around seven days, when I bought my first house in Derby.  The vendors' dog had chewed the legs of all the chairs and epsecially the table and they weren't going to take it to their brand new home, oh no.  I think I may have paid for the chairs, I can't recall; they certainly sold me other bits and pieces that turned out to be impossible to move when I sold the place two years later - ah well.

More than 27 years on, and 4/5 (depending how you count) house moves later, these chairs have served me incredibly well.  They have been climbed on by cats and children, had paint, food, drinks, glitter, glue and goodness knows what spilled onto them.  They have witnessed laughter and tears, been the place where essays were written, sermons planned and earnest conversations held.

They are, it has to be said well and trully worn out, should probably have been replaced at least two decades ago but somehow there was always something better to do with the moeny I had at the time.

So tomorrow they take their final journey and will end their days dismantled and disseminated between various skips at the recycling centre, well hopefully, it is entriely feasible they'll end up in landfiill.

Well done good and faithful chairs, you have served me well.  May you rot in peace!!