"Teach your children poetry; it
opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues
hereditary."
~ Walter Scott
"Be thou the rainbow in the storms
of life. The evening beam that smiles
the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic say."
~ Lord Byron
I recently came
across a weathered book on my shelf. I
was amazed that I still had it. It was
the book we used in a class I took in high school several decades ago --
Romantic and Victorian Poets. I'm not
sure how I ended up in that class, but I do know that the soft-spoken, gentle
nun who taught it instilled in me a love of poetry and furthered my fascination
with the English language and writing. A
few years later while in Greece with my mother, I made her join me in finding
Lord Byron's name etched in the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon outside of
Athens. It was a cold and windy day, but
I was determined to find the poet's name.
I probably never thanked the kindly nun for the impact that her teaching
had on me, but it is a part of me all these years later.
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