Another week, another passel of links into the wide, wide world of wondrous word-smithery.  This week closes out with a bit of verse from Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was born on July 28, 1844.

Short Fiction:

• “The Doors” by E.B. White
• When Jane Met Rochester – A scene from Libby Sternberg’s soon to be released novel Sloane Hall
• The Sisters of the Sacred Heart

Criticism and Commentary:

• The Real Carver: Expansive or Minimal?
• “The Designs of E.B. White” by Gerald Weales
• What is Art?
• A Fish Studying Water – On studying and teaching one’s native language
• Comics and Graphic Novels vs. The Critics
• Fritz Leiber Tackled the Oil Spill First

News and Reviews:

• “If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited…” – A brief review of Lars Walker’s West Oversea.
  
• In Defence of Amazon – The online bookseller isn’t to blame for the book industry’s failures
  
• Point Break – John J. Miller’s brief comments on Stephen Koch‘s The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles
• Andrew Klavan reviews David Wong’s John Dies At The End

The Writing Life:

• Wright’s Writing Corner: Cotton Candy Writing

And now for some of that high culture stuff. A bit of poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, who would have celebrated his 166th birthday on Wednesday, July 28th.

‘The Alchemist in the City” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

My window shews the travelling clouds,
Leaves spent, new seasons, alter’d sky,
The making and the melting crowds:
The whole world passes; I stand by.

They do not waste their meted hours,
But men and masters plan and build:
I see the crowning of their towers,
And happy promises fulfill’d.

And I – perhaps if my intent
Could count on prediluvian age,
The labours I should then have spent
Might so attain their heritage,

But now before the pot can glow
With not to be discover’d gold,
At length the bellows shall not blow,
The furnace shall at last be cold.

Yet it is now too late to heal
The incapable and cumbrous shame
Which makes me when with men I deal
More powerless than the blind or lame.

No, I should love the city less
Even than this my thankless lore;
But I desire the wilderness
Or weeded landslips of the shore.

I walk my breezy belvedere
To watch the low or levant sun,
I see the city pigeons veer,
I mark the tower swallows run

Between the tower-top and the ground
Below me in the bearing air;
Then find in the horizon-round
One spot and hunger to be there.

And then I hate the most that lore
That holds no promise of success;
Then sweetest seems the houseless shore,
Then free and kind the wilderness,

Or ancient mounds that cover bones,
Or rocks where rockdoves do repair
And trees of terebinth and stones
And silence and a gulf of air.

There on a long and squared height
After the sunset I would lie,
And pierce the yellow waxen light
With free long looking, ere I die.