Bad Habit

And here I am again. I live for posting things! However, for the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to not post anything on Facebook, at least. It's a stupid compulsion to post the song that defines my current mood or emotional state, or to share every beautiful or worthy thing I live for or have recently discovered. No one is looking, besides my family. I do want to share everything, and it's so much easier when it can be done in a impersonal, indirect kind of way, and at least this way, posting these compulsions on my blog, I won't embarrass myself. Only my family and Russians (huge fans of my blog...apparently) will see these.

Anyways. I was listening to the soundtrack of the film Atonement just now and suddenly wanted to hear all the words from the track, "Elegy for Dunkirk." The words are from an actual hymn, which, in turn, come from a Quaker's poem, John Greenleaf Whittier's "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind."

In the movie, this track is played during an incredibly long shot of wounded soldiers waiting on a beach, hoping that help will come by sea. It shows one of the characters wandering the beach; he passes a group of men singing the hymn and their voices fade away as the camera and the character move away, synced into the soundtrack. It's really, really beautiful, just as the entire movie is. The film is adapted from one of my favorite books. Ian McEwan is the author, and he is like a modern, concise Virginia Woolf. It's beautiful, beautiful writing.

So, here's the song. Below are the lyrics (not the whole poem!) sung towards the middle of the track.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!