It’s often tempting for me to cheat on this blog.

When I wrote the rules, I knew that I would have trouble writing something original and whole every day, and I knew that sometimes I wouldn’t be able to do it. I deliberately made it easy for me to fulfill the letter of the rules if I had a day where the spirit of the blog was beyond me, because that would only feel like half a failure and be far less demoralizing to me.

This unnecessarily long introduction is my way to keeping the spirit of this blog, of writing more and stretching my ability to write, active and alive on a day when I really just want to post other people’s stuff that I think is cool. Now that I’ve done that, here’s one of my favorite poems, The Old Astronomer by Sarah Williams.

Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, ’tis original and true,
And the obliquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men’s fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant’s fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.