When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
― Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
PSALM 122
1 I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
2 Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
3 Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together,
4 to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
5 There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!
7 Peace be within your walls
and security within your towers!”
8 For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, “Peace be within you!”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
ST. FRANCIS’S PRAYER OF DESIRE
Therefore, let us desire nothing else, let us want nothing else, let nothing else please us and cause us delight except you our Creator, Redeemer and Savior, the only true God, Who is the fullness of good, all good, every good, the true and supreme good, Who alone is good, merciful, gentle, delightful, and sweet, Who alone is holy, just, true, holy, and upright, Who alone is kind, innocent, clean, from Whom, through Whom and in Whom is all pardon, all grace, all glory of all penitents and just ones, of all the blessed rejoicing together in heaven. Amen.
ART APPRECIATION
By the early 1900s, Dufy had developed a style in line with the Fauves. The Fauves, meaning “wild beasts,” received this name because they used such bright and unrealistic colors in their works.1
Raoul Duffy (1877-1953) was a Modern artist best known for his colorful paintings of luxury and pleasure. In 1900, Dufy attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and he painted in an Impressionist style in his early works.2
MUSIC APPRECIATION
Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni
This is the Intermezzo from the middle of the opera Cavalleria Rusticana, which Mascagni wrote in just two months so he could enter it in a competition to have it performed as his first opera. He won the competition, and the opera, as well as this intermezzo, went on to be performed 14,000 times during his lifetime, and many more times since then.3
Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music. However, though it has been stated that Mascagni, like Leoncavallo, was a “one-opera man” who could never repeat his first success, this is inaccurate. L’amico Fritz and Iris have been popular in Europe since their respective premieres. In fact, Mascagni himself claimed that at one point Iris was performed in Italy more often than Cavalleria (cf. Stivender). 4
- Lange, Krista, and Leigh Lowe. First Grade Enrichment: Classical Core Curriculum. Teacher Guide. Memoria Press, 2017. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Fata, Patrick. Music Appreciation I. Memoria Press, 2017. ↩︎
- “Pietro Mascagni: Kennedy Center.” The Kennedy Center, http://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/m/ma-mn/pietro-mascagni2/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2024. ↩︎
Providence School of Tifton 