#francis warner

Seriously, though. If I happen to have the need to write another thesis in the future, I'm writing about his poetry just so I can keep researching him. I think I have exhausted Google searches.

I have had some really amazing conversations with him the past two days. We talked about thesis, Oxford, Waugh, Milton, he gave me a wonderful suggestion for the title of my thesis, we talked about him growing up, his boarding school, friends of his, Ian McKellan, C.S. Lewis, and above all, music.

Our conversation about music today was just fantastic. He asked me if I had gotten back into playing (which surprised me as I didn't even realize he remembered that I played and had to stop because of my wrist!) and we talked about how soothing music is. I talked to him about my music class and how even when I am having a bad day, studying for that is beyond relaxing. He then told me a story about his childhood at his boarding school. Whenever he got homesick, he would go to the music building and practice. It wasn't just the music that soothed him, though. There was a quote on the inside of the entrance:

In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart  Fall asleep, or hearing, die. 

He said as a boy it was simply a soothing quote. It wasn't until he was older that he learned it was Shakespeare. 

He then told me that they are about to carve a new quote opposite the Shakespeare quote. He recited the couple of lines that were also about music but I don't remember what they are. They were lines from his own poetry. 

His poem about music is going to be carved in stone opposite Shakespeare.

I mean, seriously? Could this man be any greater?

Well, of course he can. In my Google search I found a photo of him playing an organ. The caption said that it was the organ in the church at Westminster College in Fulton, MO. that was bombed in London during the Blitz and then shipped over to MO and rebuilt. I went to that church back in October and now I want to go back again! My mom suggested I go back when my cousin graduates college in a couple of years (she goes to Westminster's sister school a couple of blocks away).

My sister and I were both able to stop in on the meeting about going to Oxford for interested students and see Francis and Penelope again! I also later ran into them as they were about to go into the caf to eat! I just kind of laughed inside my head thinking: "you can't take Francis Warner into the caf to eat, he's too classy!" I wish I'd had a meal plan so I could have joined them.

Francis was sweet enough to sit and chat with me for a minute though and ask what classes I was in and had just come from. I told him I'd been in Greek, translating and he asked me what. I told him we were doing Shepherd of Hermas and had just finished the martyrdom of Polycarp and he goes, "I wrote a play about that, it's in your library." I just thought: "Of course you did, Francis! And OF COURSE it is!" So tonight I went to the library to check it out. I also brought back another play of his and a copy of a lecture he lent me when we were talking about WWII back in Oxford. It's such a beautiful lecture.

-Dr. Francis Warner (program director for OOSC) on Sir Ian McKellen, his pupil at Cambridge.