For Senator Ted Kennedy

To Some I Have Talked With by the Fire

While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,

My heart would brim with dreams about the times

When we bent down above the fading coals

And talked of the dark folk who live in souls

Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;

And of the wayward twilight companies

Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,

Because their blossoming dreams have never bent

Under the fruit of evil and of good:

And of the embattled flaming multitude

Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,

And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,

And with the clashing of their sword-blades make

A rapturous music, till the morning break

And the white hush end all but the loud beat

Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.

-- W.B. Yeats, 1893

Legendary eight-term Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, 76, was diagnosed with glioblastoma (a type of malignant brain tumor) today. Please join me in saying a prayer--or thinking positive thoughts--for him and his family.