A romantic view

He read as if this was the last time he would be allowed to read, he read not as a refuge but as an attack on all that was unknown to him and in him.

No matter what he read, the news wasn't good, it wasn't meant to be he supposed. The new poets he was reading were writing more about death than life; he had to go back to Wordsworth to find a poet expressing sustained love for the world, and was transfixed once again by "The Prelude."

The morning light was good and the sun warmed the porch.

He read--murder, mayhem, delusions, the follies of the past recycled for use in the present and, undoubtedly, the future--until the heat caused him to stop reading and come inside the cabin.

If only the world would be as calm as it had been last night when he couldn't sleep and had walked out into the cold to look at all the stars.