i've been thinking.

That more people should read Romantic poetry. It's not sappy. It's not mere descriptions of flowers and trees or gushy love poems. It has to do with the soul. Romantic poetry is about the soul's longing for beauty and for meaning... its an intensely personal inner monologue, that has universal appeal. For who hasn't looked at a beautiful scene and tried for a moment to allow the view to transform and fill them? Who hasn't sadly looked back at youth as a time when fulfillment seemed simpler and attainable? Who hasn't felt the ache to feel something big and beautiful and uncontained? Who hasn't longed to be somehow connected to something beyond one's own skin? William Wordsworth in particular sings of all of this with words so lovely they seem to have more than meter and voice... they seem to have an actually melody. Everytime I read this poem, the song of it floats off the page and washes over me.

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Sometimes, I wish I could spend my life being an advocate for poetry. Not a teacher or professor. But an advocate standing on a corner with a sign held high, or holding a sit in, or promoting legislation and giving speeches at rallies. "Save Poetry," I want to shout. We need it more than any of us know.