Someone else has asked whether there’s a fretting nun in this blog’s tagline simply because Spain is one of the lands of the setting sun. I suppose you could say that it’s also a passing nod to Iberian anti-clericalism, but, despite any impression left in the course of reading it (I’m not talking about the impression left by the keyboard on your forehead), the reference is actually to Wordsworth:
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
I’m not sure solace is the word, but you get the drift or it will get you.
I used to sing a rather fine Dutch sonnet which begins as follows:
Elvis Aaron Presley overleden
de koning van de rock ‘n’ roll is dood
de grootste zanger van de wereldkloot
tot hij in militaire dienst moest treden.
Unfortunately I’ve forgotten the next ten lines. Verse that’s not divisible by four tends not to stick.
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