A couple of canning days: refrigerator dills and bread-and-butter pickles and also apple butter, which the boys show every signs of demolishing by the end of the week. Why did I bother to put it into jars?

This is my current favorite poem at the moment. I haven't stopped to analyze why. Sound mostly, I think, and also it's so sad, and it has the most beautiful first line of any sonnet I know. I might change my mind about all this by next week.

Sonnet

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, alas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I, by no means, my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore,

Fainting I follow. I leave off, therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I, may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written, her fair neck round about,

"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."