"The Holly Bough"

Ye who have scorned each other,
Or injured friend or brother,
   In this fast-fading year;
Ye who, by word or deed
Have made a kind heart bleed,
   Come gather here.

Let sinn'd-against, and sinning,
Forget their strife's beginning,
   And join in friendship now;
Be links no longer broken,
Be sweet forgiveness spoken,
   Under the holly bough.

Ye who have loved each other,
Sister and friend and brother,
   In this fast-fading year;
Mother and sire and child,
Young man and maiden mild,
   Come gather here;

And let your hearts grow fonder,
As memory shall ponder
   Each past unbroken vow.
Old loves and younger wooing
Are sweet in the renewing,
   Under the holly bough.

Ye who have nourish'd sadness,
Estranged from hope and gladness,
   In this fast-fading year;
Ye with o'erburthen'd mind,
Made aliens from your kind,
   Come gather here.

Let not the useless sorrow
Pursue you night and morrow;
   If e'er you hoped, hope now—
Take heart, uncloud your faces,
And join in our embraces
   Under the holly bough.

Charles Mackay (1814-1889)

The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch, # 223.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/22/05 08:54:19 AM
Categorized as Literary.

Indefinite Blogspension

I have decided to suspend blogging indefinitely. In the coming year, I really need to focus on other things, at least for a while. But I can't see me staying away from blogging forever.

Things are looking up on the financial front. Our real estate office is merging with some nearby Century 21 offices. And I'm going to be teaching two night classes in the Spring. And... I'm going to try to get a whole new line of work started. :-)

Thanks for all your support, Faithful Reader. And thanks to all my fellow bloggers, who have been very kind to me over the past three and a half years.

A farewell poem will conclude this phase of The Blog from the Core.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/22/05 08:34:14 AM
Categorized as Blog Stuff.

Disaster Strikes Again

Another crash of '05.

I had just about gotten everything recovered and restored from Black Saturday when, yesterday, the new hard drive failed. I am thinking I'm going to have to ship everything to Gateway for service, since it seems to me now that more may be wrong than just with the hard drive(s).

Thanks for your e-mails. If you sent me anything yesterday, I'll never get it. If you send something henceforth to my regular e-mail addresses, it may be quite a while before I get it. If you'd like, you can reach me more quickly via the following e-mail address (which I display in an image to foil the accursed spammers).

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/22/05 08:19:15 AM
Categorized as Blog Stuff.