All Ye That Walk In Willow-wood

Here are four of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnets, a series called the Willowwood sonnets, followed by a response from his sister Christina Rossetti. I am interested here, besides the beauty of the language and the depth of emotion that all five sonnets produce in me, in the question of originality.

Our modern conception is that for a work of art to be great it must be thoroughly original. But that has not always been the assumption for great art. Sometimes it is in the interplay between the source material and the new version that we find the real ART. Take for example CS Lewis' reworking of the Myth of Sisyphus, which he titled "Till We Have Faces."

If I Have Freedom In My Love

To Althea, From Prison

When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fetter'd to her eye,
The gods, that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.

I Have Not Yet Stopped Shivering

Well, a new decade for us all! 'Tis the season for evaluating our pasts and for making goals for the future. In that spirit, I want to present a couple of "Top Ten" lists.

First, here is the Top Ten list of books that I have read over the past decade. It is not the top ten books written in the past decade, but rather ones that I have read. I'm not so big on reading all the new books, I like to read and re-read books that have timeless authority and that give me a larger vision of life, this world, and God's hand in the lives of his people.

So, without further ado:


10. The Rabbit Proof Fence,