Margaret’s Song

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  There was a king in Thule,  True even to the grave;  To whom his dying mistress  A golden beaker gave.  At every feast he drained it,  Naught was to him so dear,  And often as he drained it,  Gush’d from his eyes the tear.  When death came, unrepining  His cities o’er he told;  All to his heir resigning,  Except his cup of gold.  With many a knightly vassal  At a royal feast sat he,  In yon proud hall ancestral,  In his castle o’er the sea.  Up stood the jovial monarch,  And quaff’d his last life’s glow,  Then hurled the hallow’d goblet  Into the flood below.  He saw it splashing, drinking,  And plunging in the sea;  His eyes meanwhile were sinking,  And never again drank he. “Margaret’s Song” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in “Faust. Part I.”

Finished Reading: Euclid’s Elements

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Finished reading Euclid’s “Elements,” on Euclidean geometry and mathematics. You might say, “this is unlike you, to read a book on math and geometry. It doesn’t add up.” I’d say you were right, but here’s the angle: I’m a lifelong learner and I’ve never read this classic work that’s endured for centuries, that is, until now. Let me get to the point, I won’t talk in circles. Everything squares up in the end. Euclid describes the shape of space in a logical, systematic and unparalleled fashion. It’s plane to see. 

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