
Choose something
May 25, 2022…And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
–Robert Frost, “Choose Something Like a Star”
The shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas left me unsteady today.
For reasons that I do not understand, it was helpful, for a few minutes, to give myself over to Randall Thompson’s setting of “Choose Something Like a Star,” commissioned for the bicentennial of a Massachusetts town, and which I had once sung in choir.
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