{"id":3980,"date":"2012-08-16T11:56:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T15:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?page_id=3980"},"modified":"2012-08-16T11:56:56","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T15:56:56","slug":"epithalamion","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/epithalamion\/","title":{"rendered":"Epithalamion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FOR KIRBY THOMPSON HALL<br \/>\nSEPTEMBER 13, 1952<\/p>\n<p>Now she comes moving on the whirling aisle.<br \/>\nI praise her beauty now<br \/>\nWho tall and pale comes moving on the aisle,<br \/>\nErect, whose hands allow<br \/>\nNo motion but of love and dignity,<br \/>\nAnd stay the shuddering sea;<br \/>\nWhose stateliness<br \/>\nProtects a wilderness<br \/>\nOf joy.<br \/>\nAnd I,<br \/>\nWitnessing by this marriage Kirby made<br \/>\nMost beautiful,<br \/>\nGrow in my strength as storm- and sea-winds fade,<br \/>\nFor on the bed of love the heroes play<br \/>\nWho are the poem of our wedding day.<\/p>\n<p>Yet we are parted by our humanness,<br \/>\nNot touching hand to hand.<br \/>\nWe do not stand<br \/>\nIn full reflection of another face<br \/>\nBut haunt in singularity<br \/>\nAn unfamiliar place,<br \/>\nLost from all station in reality.<br \/>\nAnd now within the whirling church<br \/>\nComes chaos swinging from the dark;<br \/>\nWe cannot halt such vertigo to search<br \/>\nA solid mark.<br \/>\nNo. It is by choice and form<br \/>\nWe build defenses from the storm,<br \/>\nImposed upon vacuities of space.<br \/>\nAnd so we summon heroes who must say<br \/>\nThey are the poem of our wedding day.<\/p>\n<p>Out of the whirling images and sound,<br \/>\nThey march to take our names,<br \/>\nWhose formal feet attend the formal ground,<br \/>\nWho play our games.<br \/>\nWe all must choose<br \/>\nMoments of light to flash against the screen,<br \/>\nAnd build, not lose,<br \/>\nThe planned and formal characters we mean.<br \/>\nBy form and fashion, we<br \/>\nHave come from the incomprehensible sea<br \/>\nTo this hard shore.<br \/>\nThough irony marks the mind\u2019s unwilling core,<br \/>\nWe in our formal character<br \/>\nWill live together.<br \/>\nSo let our heroes laugh, and let them play,<br \/>\nAnd waltz together on our wedding day.<\/p>\n<p><em>-Donald Hall<\/em><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-3980\" data-postid=\"3980\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-3980 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FOR KIRBY THOMPSON HALL SEPTEMBER 13, 1952 Now she comes moving on the whirling aisle. I praise her beauty now Who tall and pale comes moving on the aisle, Erect, whose hands allow No motion but of love and dignity, And stay the shuddering sea; Whose stateliness Protects a wilderness Of joy. And I, Witnessing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3981,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3980\/revisions\/3981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}