LENT:

17th February ~ 2nd April

Immeasurable, unsearchable,
yet not unknowable
are the ways of God:
for the one whose ways are in the desert,
the one who plants his footsteps on the seas
is one who summons us
to travel with him his journey.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
Stanzas 6 & 7

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind;
And, even with something of a mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years’ darling of pigmy size!
See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,
With light upon him from his father’s eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

William Wordsworth