<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The measured word is gone; the too quick reply
Rules every square where patience once held ground.
We speak to win, not weigh, and hurry by
The cost of what is lost in being loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Screens school us well in outrage and in speed;
The pause is mocked, the listening eye made strange.
Conviction travels faster than the need
To test the truths on which we stake our rage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Courtesy, once power held in check,
Is named a fraud by those who strike with care;
The loud inherit what the wise neglect,
And certainty goes armed, but never fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet something older stands against the noise:
A law untrending, stubborn, hard to keep
That speech is more than signal or than choice,
And silence still belongs to thought made deep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If this must die, let history record
Not how it fell beneath the shouting crowd,
But how a few still honoured the old word,
And spoke it low, precise, and not aloud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am a big fan of WB Yeats , particulalry when he goes into full elegy mode where he shifted from the austere celitc romance to an ambivalent tone blendinhg personal emotion with public despair.
\nAfter a period of doomscrolling yesterday I threw on my imaginary donegal tweed waistcoat, grabbed epigrammatic blackthorn walking stick and went looking for words these are the ones I found .. aplogies to WB and my sister Janet who was better with words in verses than me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-musings"],"yoast_head":"\n