Category Archives: Poetry

A Psalm of Life

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Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of my father’s death, it’s hard to believe that its been five years, and yet here we are; so much has happened, so much has changed and yet so much remains the same. I miss him so very much, I miss his wisdom, his humour, his strength but most of all I miss the comfort I felt simply knowing he was there. It was while I was thinking of him that I recalled this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow … which somehow feels apt… 

(What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist)

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Finds us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, -act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

Invictus

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Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gait,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

     -- William Ernest Henley

From time to time we all need a little inspiration.

Curating the Dark Data in the long tail of science

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ABSTRACT

There is a wealth of scientific data that is almost impossible to see. This is science’s dark data. Much of this data resides in the long tail of science or “small” data collection efforts. Instrumentation has made it possible to develop large collections of relatively homogeneous data, be it from space sensors or high throughput gene sequencers. The monolithic collections are easy to find and search. Dark data on the other hand may constitute the larger mass of scientific information. The collections that make up the dark data of science are much smaller but also much more numerous, being generated by thousands of scientists, on a much broader number of scientific questions, and in a complex array of formats. Unfortunately, it is also more prone to be overlooked and lost over time. Using new technology, the economics of the internet, and change in the sociology of science it is possible to make greater use of this data than was possible in the past. Data curators are the people who develop and use these technologies and procedures to make this data more useful, insuring a more efficient return on investment in the enterprise of science.

This is a really interesting tech talk given by P. Bryan Heidorn from the National Science Foundation Division of Biological Infrastructure and Associate Professor, University of Illinois.

I found the talk to be particularly useful, I’ve never come across the term Digital Curation before, and surprised to learn that it is defined as:

Digital curtaion is the acquisition, management, appraisal, and serving 
of data to maximise it's usefulness.

Curation embraces and goes beyond that of enhanced present day
re-use, and of archival responsibility, to embrace stewardship that adds
value through the provision of context and linkage: placing emphasis
on publishing data in ways that ease re-use and promoting accountability
and integration. (Rusbridge et. al, 2005)

What surprises me is that the goals of these curators are not too dissimilar to the goals of those of us working in the Linked Open Data movement, and I’m wondering whether these two communities should work more closely together … very interesting indeed.

Uesugi Kenshin

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I’m currently reading Zen and the Samurai which is a beautifully written work, much of it is devoted to anecdotes about the lives many famous Samurai and how Zen deeply influenced them. The book makes reference to the beautiful verse below which was composed by the Samurai General Uesugi Kenshin on his death bed. It was a practise amongst many Samurai to write a verse in either Chinese or Japanese at the moment of death, this was Kenshin’s Parting of Life Verse:

Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake;
A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream;
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.

… exquisite.

A Farewell to False Love

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      A Farewell to False Love

Farewell false love, the oracle of lies, 
A mortal foe and enemy to rest, 
An envious boy, from whom all cares arise, 
A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed, 
A way of error, a temple full of treason, 
In all effects contrary unto reason. 

A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers, 
Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose, 
A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers 
As moisture lend to every grief that grows; 
A school of guile, a net of deep deceit, 
A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait. 

A fortress foiled, which reason did defend, 
A siren song, a fever of the mind, 
A maze wherein affection finds no end, 
A raging cloud that runs before the wind, 
A substance like the shadow of the sun, 
A goal of grief for which the wisest run. 

A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear, 
A path that leads to peril and mishap, 
A true retreat of sorrow and despair, 
An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure's lap, 
A deep mistrust of that which certain seems, 
A hope of that which reason doubtful deems. 

Sith* then thy trains my younger years betrayed, 
And for my faith ingratitude I find; 
And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed, 
Whose course was ever contrary to kind:
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu. 
Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew. 

                  --Sir Walter Raleigh

Love and Duty

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An extract from one of Tennyson’s earlier poems … Love and Duty. 

The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good,
The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill,
And all good things from evil, brought the night
In which we sat together and alone,
And to the want, that hollow'd all the heart,
Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye,
That burn'd upon its object thro' such tears
As flow but once a life. The trance gave way
To those caresses, when a hundred times
In that last kiss, which never was the last,
Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.

              -- By Lord Alfred Tennyson

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

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       Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal


Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

             -- by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Clouds

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                     Clouds            

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.
They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.

               -- by Rupert Brooke

Desert Rose

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             Desert Rose

I don't know why I drove down that road
but it sure turned my life around,
And I'm darn glad no one else could see
What it was that I had found.
But out there in the desert
where hardly nothing grows
surviving through the loneliness
there stood a little rose.
I looked upon it with tenderness
as I touched it with Love
I knew it was special
because I felt it from above
Now I often think of that road
and the day it came into my life
The Love I gave has caused a change
For the Rose has become my wife.

                    - By Timothy A. Cook

Khayyam’s Quatrain: an Interpretation

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The original:

This Universal wheel, this merry-go-round
In our imagination we have found
The sun a flame, in the Cosmic lantern bound
We are mere ghosts, revolving, the flame surround.

                  -- Omar Khayyam

An interpretation by Shahriar Shahriari:

In our imagination, the Cosmic Wheel
Will cause us pain and cause us heal
We find our source give life and steal
We are phantoms that think and feel.

                  --  Shahriar Shahriari

… both are beautiful, and inspired.