Head-dibs

  UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree  The village smithy stands;  The smith, a mighty man is he,  With large and sinewy hands;  And the muscles of his brawny arm  Are strong as iron bands.  His hair is crisp, and black, and long,  His face is like the tan;  His brow is wet with honest sweat,  He earns whate’er he can,  And looks the whole world in the face,  For he owes not any man.  Week in, week out, from morn till night,  You can hear his bellows blow;  You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow,  Like a sexton ringing the village bell,  When the evening sun is low.  And children coming home from school  Look in at the open door;  They love to see the flaming forge,  And hear the bellows roar,  And catch the burning sparks that fly,  Like chaff from a threshing-floor.  He goes on Sunday to the church,  And sits among his boys;  He he...

  “In primitive times, when man awakes in a world that is newly created, poetry awakes with him. In the face of the marvellous things that dazzle and intoxicate him, his first speech is a hymn simply. He is still so close to God that all his meditations are ecstatic, all his dreams are visions. His bosom swells, he sings as he breathes. His lyre has but three strings—God, the soul, creation; but this threefold mystery envelopes everything, this threefold idea embraces everything. The earth is still almost deserted. . . . He leads that nomadic pastoral life with which all civilizations begin, and which is so well adapted to solitary contemplation, to fanciful reverie. He follows every suggestion, he goes hither and thither, at random. His thought, like his life, resembles a cloud that changes its shape and its direction according to the wind that drives it. Such is the first man, such is the first poet. He is young, he is cynical. Prayer is his sole religion, the ode is his only for...

It was nuts

  A football team does not a college make. Nor a group of buildings, a library, the faculty, staff    nor students. What defines a University? John Henry Newman (1801-1890) defined the University as a “‘School of Universal Learning.’ This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot”; it’s professors and students representing knowledge of every kind. The University is “a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.” Books are a record of truth, an instrument of teaching. Conversation is the key.  “[Y]ou cannot fence without an antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputation before you have supported a thesis; and in like manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn to converse till you have the world to converse with; you cannot unlearn your natural bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other besetting deformity, till you serve your time in some s...

  “There are several of these [Quaker’s meetings] in London . . . . The brethren were already assembled at my entering . . . . There might be about four hundred men and three hundred women in the meeting. The women hid their faces behind their fans, and the men were covered with their broad-brimmed hats. All were seated, and the silence was universal. I passed through them, but did not perceive so much as one lift up his eyes to look at me. This silence lasted a quarter of an hour, when at last one of them rose up, took off his hat, and, after making a variety of wry faces and groaning in a most lamentable manner, he, partly from his nose and partly from his mouth, threw out a strange, confused jumble of words (borrowed, as he imagined, from the Gospel) which neither himself nor any of his hearers understood. When this distorter had ended his beautiful soliloquy, and that the stupid, but greatly edified, congregation were separated, I asked my friend how it was possible for the jud...

  The thousandth celestial wife of the Garland God slipped and fell to earth, where she took mortal form and served as an attendant in a temple. Death finally released her and she went back to heaven to tell her lord of the ways of men. (Harvard Classics) “How long is the life of men?”  “Only a hundred years.”  “Is that all?”  “Yes, my lord.”  “If that is the length of life to which men are born, pray, now, do they pass the time asleep and reckless, or do they give gifts and do other meritorious deeds?”  “Nothing of the kind, my lord. Men are always reckless, as if they were born to a life of an incalculable number of years, and were never to grow old and die.” . . .  “Recklessness for short-lived men is extremely unsuitable.” (“The Devoted Wife,” Translated from the Dhammapada, and from Buddhaghosa’s comment.)

  ANTONY: I thought how those white arms would fold me in,  And strain me close, and melt me into love;  So pleased with that sweet image, I sprung forwards,  And added all my strength to every blow.  CLEOPATRA: Come to me, come, my soldier, to my arms!  You’ve been too long away from my embraces;  But, when I have you fast, and all my own, With broken murmurs, and with amorous sighs,  I’ll say, you were unkind, and punish you,  And mark you red with many an eager kiss. John Dryden (1631–1700).  “All for Love.” Act 3

  “We are born with a disposition to love in our hearts, which is developed in proportion as the mind is perfected, and impels us to love what appears to us beautiful without ever having been told what this is. Who can doubt after this whether we are in the world for anything else than to love? In fact, we conceal in vain, we always love. In the very things from which love seems to have been separated, it is found secretly and under seal, and man could not live a moment without this.” (Blaise Pascal)

  François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778).  Letter XVIII—“On Tragedy.” Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum

  “In the day of battle, it is scandalous to the Prince to be surpassed in feats of bravery, scandalous to his followers to fail in matching the bravery of the Prince. But it is infamy during life, and indelible reproach, to return alive from a battle where their Prince was slain. To preserve their Prince, to defend him, and to ascribe to his glory all their own valorous deeds, is the sum and most sacred part of their oath. The Princes fight for victory; for the Prince his followers fight. . . .  In the place of pay, they are supplied with a daily table and repasts; though grossly prepared, yet very profuse. For maintaining such liberality and munificence, a fund is furnished by continual wars and plunder. Nor could you so easily persuade them to cultivate the ground, or to await the return of the seasons and produce of the year, as to provoke the foe and to risk wounds and death: since stupid and spiritless they account it, to acquire by their sweat what they can gain by thei...

  How do you view people you do not know? Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is a lesson on perspective, addressing the way we view ourselves and others.  “Gulliver’s Travels,” or “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships” was published in 1726 as satire prose. Part 1 “A Voyage to Lilliput” is most well known, the most detailed and perhaps the most humorous, but as the story progresses, satire slowly sours. Gulliver finds some measure of fault with everyone he encounters. By the end of all his adventures, the reader wonders if Gulliver/Swift likes anyone at all, including his wife and children.  Liliputian political parties call themselves the Tramecksan and Slamecksan; that is, the High Heels and the Low Heels (as indicated by the rise of their shoes). No one knew where the Emperor stood because he wore one of each. The war between Lilliput and Blefuscu erupted over a disa...

Finished reading Samuel Johnson’s  insulting  carefully crafted letter to Lord Chesterfield in 1755. Commonly called “literature's ‘declaration of independence’” Johnson quietly rails his patron for his help that came seven years too late. Johnson published his Dictionary without Chesterfield, paving the way for writers to publish without patronage. Chesterfield prized the letter. The most caustic line of the letter is: “The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.” Why was it so insulting? It should have remained in Latin. 

  “Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est  Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die. But read it thus, and that’s another sense: “Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est  Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst.” Act 5, Scene 4 of “Edward The Second” by Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

  “Then I went to the bank of the river, and found a handsome, new vessel, with sails of comely canvas, and it had a numerous crew, and was superfluously equipped. So I embarked my bales in it, as did also a party of merchants besides, and we set sail that day. The voyage was pleasant to us, and we ceased not to pass from sea to sea, and from island to island; and at every place where we cast anchor, we met the merchants and the grandees, and the sellers and buyers, and we sold and bought, and exchanged goods. Thus we continued to do until destiny conveyed us to a beautiful island, abounding with trees bearing ripe fruits, where flowers diffused their fragrance, with birds warbling, and pure rivers: but there was not in it an inhabitant, nor a blower of a fire. The master anchored our vessel at that island and the merchants with the other passengers landed there, to amuse themselves with the sight of its trees, and to extol the perfection of God, the One, the Omnipotent, and to won...

Finished reading this part autobiography, part commentary by Roosevelt Montas. A personal account of how the Great Books impact one person’s life.

  “The good man is he who works continually in welldoing; to whom welldoing is as his natural existence, awakening no astonishment, requiring no commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it not the sign of cure . . . there is a self-seeking; an unprofitable looking behind us to measure the way we have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk continually forward, and make more way. . . . Let the free, reasonable Will, which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies, be indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its right and its effort: the perfect obedience will be the silent one. . . This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state of being; yet ever the goal towards which our actual state of being strives. . .” (Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881).    “Characteristics”)

  “Take three drops of vinegar in at your nose, two at your mouth, and one at either ear; then bathe your fingers’ ends and wash your eyes, to sharpen your five senses.”  (Ben Jonson (1572–1637).  “The Alchemist.” A satire on the foolishness of humanity and people who take advantage of others. Painting by Johann Zoffany (c. 1770))

Hebrews and Chapters 7-13 of Sir Thomas Malory, “The Holy Grail” (Sangreal) in Le Morte D’Arthur (c 1400-1470)

   “A few books are better than many, and a little time given to a faithful study of the few will be enough to quicken thought and enrich the mind.” (William Ellery Channing)