Good for your ghost

Moderation is medicine no matter how you yearn.
It’s not all good for your ghost that your gut wants
Nor of benefit to you body that’s a blessing to your soul.

(From William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Passus I, lines 35-37, tr. E. Talbot Donaldson)

The older kids and I are reading Piers Plowman to each other during our afternoon colloquium — I didn’t think they’d be interested, but I read the prologue aloud and they all wanted to continue. They were getting a little tired of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (he’s so Victorian, and, well... we’re not), so we’ve set him aside for now and are enjoying the view from the 14th century.