the crime of the ages

by Augusta Cooper Bristol

                 Poet, write!
Not of a purpose dark and dire,
That souls of evil fashion,
Nor the power that nerves the assassin's hand,
In the white heat of his passion:
                 But let they rhyme,
                 Through every clime,
A burthen bear of this one crime:
Let the world draw in a shuddering breath,
O'er the crime that aims at a nation's death!

                 Minstrel, sing!
Not in affection's dulcet tone,
Or with sounds of a soft recorder:
Strike not they harp to a strain arranged
In measured, harmonic order:
                 But loud and strong
                 The tones prolong,
That thunder of a Nation's wrong;
Let a sound of war in thy notes appear,
Til the world opes wide a startled ear!

                 Soldier, fight!
Thou has a patriot's throbbing pulse,
And future history's pages,
Shall tell of the blood so freely shed
To redeem "the crime of the ages."
                 Well may'st thou fight
                 For Truth and Right,
And teach a rebel foe thy might!
Leta a loyal heart, and undaunted will,
Show the world we are a Nation still!

                 Prophet, speak!
Speak for the children of martyred sires,
An offspring the most ungrateful!
Warn them of Justice hurrying on,
To punish a deed so hateful!
                 O read with thy
                 Prophetic eye,
The omens of our troubled sky!
What is the picture beyond the gloom?
New life, new birth, or a Nation's tomb?

of drafts and decisions

In my Draft box for Concrete & Grace, I have exactly 40 posts.
40, unfinished, not entirely written, mostly forgotten, drafts.

It's been nearly a month, since my last post. Half hearted and rambling as it was.
Since then I have started a handful of updates, just more writings left behind in the draft box.

Because I haven't been feeling that inspired about it. Because I suppose I've lost the point of why it is I'm doing Concrete & Grace.
I've never really had a specific reason, a purpose, just that I wanted to. I want to. That's enough.
And it still is, I find. It just complicates things when I am feeling so entirely uninspired. And without inspiration, typing up a post that doesn't sound completely insane, a post that maybe someone will actually read and maybe even, in some small way, care about, or like; has turned into a chore.

And here's the thing I've been trying and starting but not finishing to post about: Fine Arts.
I keep going back and forth on how to let anyone know. I mean, does anyone I need to tell actually read this? Who do I really need to tell? Does anyone even care to know? How much of the story of the decision making process, how it is that everything came about, do I tell?
The fact of the matter is,  I don't know. I don't know how to tell everyone this, I don't know how to make everyone understand. So I will but I won't.
I will tell the outcome, flat, straight and true.
How the realizations and decisions came to be as you see before you, I will not explain. Because I will just ramble on, hoping to make everyone happy, make everyone understand.
And that, is most definitely, never going to happen. You can never make everyone understand, and you can most surely never make everyone happy.
So here it is, the final, straight up, no strings attached, news.

I am not doing Fine Arts this year.