Alms for Oblivion

Health Care

2009-11-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

Pass or fail, I really don't see any way but that the health care reform debate is going to take us into next February at the earliest.

A Triolet

2009-11-11T03:16:00.000-08:00

Love had not matched their early hope,
There at the end of life's proceeding.
Life showed them on the downward slope
Love had not matched their early hope.
The dismal frayed end of the rope
Outdid their dread, their fears exceeding.
Love had not matched their early hope,
There at the end of life's proceeding.

-Thomas Banks-

Horace Ode 1.19

2009-11-04T14:47:00.000-08:00

Beware, O bark, the waves that wish to tear thee from these shores;
And bravely seek the harbor, for thy sides are reft of oars;
See how thy broken mast and yards are groaning in the gale!
Unsound, alas! thy ropeless hull, unsafe thy shredded sail!

Thou hast no gods to call upon when Sable Care is thine;
The sailor trusts no showy sterns, though built of Pontic pine.
O ship that wert my woe, that art my love, avoid the seas
And shun the treacherous waters of the shining Cyclades.

-Translated from the Latin by Franklin P. Adams-

A Villanelle of Changes

2009-10-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

Since Persia fell at Marathon
The yellow years have gathered fast.
Long centuries have come and gone.

And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),

This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes with a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone,

The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first is fallen to the last,
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.

-Edward Arlington Robinson-

You Ask Me Why...

2009-10-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

You ask me why, though ill at ease
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist
And languish for the purple seas.

It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land where, girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent;

Where Faction seldom gathers head,
But, by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute
Opinion, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute,

Tho' power should make from land to land
The name of Britain trebly great-
Tho' every channel of the state
Is filled and choked with golden sand-

Yet waft me from the harbor mouth
Wild Wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I shall see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson-

The Trees

2009-10-22T17:00:00.001-07:00

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of growing new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

-Philip Larkin-

Transit

2009-10-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her townhouse door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?

Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issue in the street,
Leaving the stations of her body there
Like whips that map the countries of the air.

-Richard Wilbur-

Everyone Sang

2009-10-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields- on, on, and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun;
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away; O, but everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

-Siegfried Sassoon-

Nobel

2009-10-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

So President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. They might as well just change the name of it to the "Thanks for Not Being Bush Prize."

Juliet

2009-10-06T15:33:00.001-07:00

"How did the party go in Portman Square?"
"I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there."

"And how did Lady Gaster's party go?"
"Juliet was next to me and I do not know."

-Hillaire Belloc-

Lines

2009-09-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

Say not the righteous come into Death's keep:
For here good Saon lies, whose noble name
Secures him holy sleep.

-Translated from the Greek by Thomas Banks-

Laura

2009-09-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

Rose cheeked Laura, come;
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.

Lovely forms do flow
From consent divinely framed:
Heaven is music, and thy beauty's
Birth is heavenly.

These dull notes we sing
Discords need for help to grace them;
Only beauty purely loving
Knows no discord.

But still moves delight,
Like clear springs renew'd by flowing,
Ever perfect, ever in them-
Selves eternal.

-Thomas Campion-

Minor Key

2009-09-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.

About my path their flits a Fair,
Who throws me not a word or sign;
I'll charm me with her ignoring air,
And laud the lips not meant for mine.

From manuscripts of moving songs
Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown,
I'll pour out raptures that belong
To others, as they were my own.

And some day hence, towards Paradise
And all its blest-if such there be-
I will lift glad, afar-off eyes,
Though it contain no place for me.

-Thomas Hardy-

For a Dead Lady

2009-09-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

No more with overflowing light
Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another's fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.
No more shall quiver down the days
The flowing wonder of her ways,
Whereof no language may requite
The shifting and the many-shaded.

The grace, divine, definitive,
Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that love could not forgive
Is hushed, and answers to no calling;
The forehead and the little ears
Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;
The breast where roses could not live
Has done with rising and with falling.

The beauty, shattered by the laws
That have creation in their keeping,
No longer trembles at applause,
Or over children that are sleeping;
And we who delve in beauty's lore
Know all that we have known before
Of what inexorable cause
Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.

-Edward Arlington Robinson-

Credo

2009-09-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

I cannot find my way; there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all-above, beyond it all-
I know the far-sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.

-Edward Arlington Robinson-

Your Body Is Stars

2009-09-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

Your body is stars whose millions glitter here:
I am lost amongst the branches of the sky
Here near my breast, here in my nostrils, here
Where our vast arms like streams of fire lie.

How can this end? My healing fills the night
And hangs its flags in worlds I cannot near.
Our movements range through miles, and when we kiss
The moment widens to enclose long years.

Beholders of the promised dawn of truth
The explorers of immense and simple lines,
Here is our goal, men cried, but it was lost
Amongst the mountain mists and mountain pines.

So with this face of love, whose breathings are
A mystery shadowed on the desert floor:
The promise hangs, this swarm of stars and flowers,
And then there comes the shutting of a door.

-Stephen Spender-

Away

2009-09-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

There is no sorrow
Time heals never;
No loss, betrayal,
Beyond repair.
Balm for the soul, then,
Though grave shall sever
Lover from loved
And all they share;
See, the sweet sun shines,
The shower is over,
Flowers preen their beauty,
The day how fair!

Brood not too closely
On love, on duty;
Friends long forgotten
May wait you where
Life with death
Brings all to an issue;
None will long mourn for you,
Pray for you, miss you,
Your place left vacant,
You not there.

-Walter De La Mare

To Laurels

2009-09-13T20:31:00.001-07:00

A funeral stone
Or verse, I covet none;
But only crave
Of you that I may have
A sacred laurel springing from my grave:
Which being seen
Blessed with perpetual green,
May grow to be
Not so much called a tree,
As the eternal monument of me.

-Robert Herrick-

Epitaph

2009-09-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

He wished for none to wait on his commanding;
He knew no thralldom, and he wished no throne.
But what few seek and fewer find, he won-
The Peace of God Which Passes Understanding.

-Thomas Banks-

A Reckoning

2009-09-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

At my age one begins
To chalk up all his sins,
Hoping to wipe the slate
Before it is too late.

Therefore I call to mind
All memories of the kind
That make me wince and sweat
And tremble with regret.

What do these prove to be?
In every one, I see
Shocked faces that, alas,
Now know me for an ass.

Fatuities that I
Have uttered, drunk or dry,
Return now in a rush
And make my old cheek blush.

But how can I repent
From mere embarrassment?
Damn-foolishness can't well
Entitle me to Hell.

Well, I shall put the blame
On the pride that's in my shame.
Of that I must be shriven
Before I'll be forgiven.

-Richard Wilbur-

Iste Mundus

2009-09-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

This world, deep in madness raving,
False delights and pleasures yields,
Which desert us, fade around us
Like the lilies of the fields.

Life's mundane distracted prospect
Drives the Heaven from our eyes,
And sinks men's souls in Tartarus,
Where the death-worm never dies.

What we see and taste and touch
Of the world we populate
Falls and withers round about us
Like oak leaves grown to Autumn's date.

The things of flesh and mortal law
Prove their slightness when they fade,
That of swiftly passing shadows
And of breathless bloodless shade.

But should we loose our earthly ties
And deny this world our trust,
We shall find far greater joys
And be numbered with the just,
And shall merit for our wages
To behold the Age of Ages.

-Translated from the Latin by Thomas Banks-

A Dirge in the Woods

2009-09-07T23:09:00.001-07:00

A wind sways the pines,
And below,
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that grow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.

-George Meredith-

Sidney

2009-09-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

Leave me O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind inspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
What ever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might,
To that sweet yoke, which lasting freedoms be:
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,
That does both shine and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth draws out to death,
And think how evil becometh him to slide,
Who seeketh heav'n, and come to heavenly breath.
Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,
Eternal Love maintain thy life in me.

-Sir Philip Sidney-

When the Eye of Day Is Shut

2009-09-05T09:54:00.001-07:00

When the eye of day is shut,
And the stars deny their beams,
And about the forest hut
Blows the roaring wood of dreams,

From deep clay, from desert rock,
From the sunk sands of the main,
Come not at my door to knock,
Hearts that loved me not again.

Sleep, be still, turn to your rest
In the lands where you are laid;
In far lodgings east and west
Lie down on the beds you made.

In gross marl, in blowing dust,
In the drowning ooze of sea,
Where you would not, lie you must,
Lie you must, and not with me.

-A.E. Housman-

More Bridges

2009-09-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

The first we met we did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master;
Of more than common friendliness
When first we met we did not guess.
Who could foretell this sore distress,
This irretrievable disaster
When first we met? We did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master.

-Robert Bridges-

Some Bridges

2009-09-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

All women born are so perverse
No man need boast of their possessing.
If naught seems better, nothing's worse;
All women born are so perverse.
From Adam's wife, that proved a curse
Though God had made her for a blessing,
All women born are so perverse
No man need boast their love possessing.

-Robert Bridges-

Winter

2009-08-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

I am Winter, that do keep
Longing safe amidst of sleep.
Who should say if I were dead
What should be remembered?

-William Morris-

Summer

2009-08-31T21:21:00.000-07:00

Summer looked for long am I;
Much shall change or e'er I die.
Prithee take it not amiss
Though I weary thee with bliss.

-William Morris-

Martial: Epigrams

2009-08-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

1.

You came to see me only once
When I was sick in bed;
I thank you, Oppian; had you come
More often, I'd be dead.

2.

I'll not believe that I'm your heir, until
I read it after probate, in your will.

3.

Fabulla swears the hair she wears is hers;
Does that place her among the perjurers?

4.

Matho complains that my book is more than a little uneven;
If he is telling the truth, then he is praising my pen.
Books that are even throughout, Matho, are sure to be dreadful;
Books without height and depth come from the stupidest men.

-Translated by Rolfe Humphreys-

Mass at Dawn

2009-08-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

I dropped my sail and dried my dripping seines
Where the white quay is chequered by cool planes
In whose great branches, always out of sight,
The nightingales are singing day and night.
Though all was grey beneath the moon's grey beam,
My boat in her new paint shown like a bride,
And silver in my baskets shown the bream:
My arms were heavy and I was heavy-eyed,
But when with food and drink, at morning light,
The children met me at the water side,
Never was wine so red or bread so white.

-Roy Campbell-

Since There's No Help

2009-08-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st yet him recover.

-Michael Drayton-

Napoleon

2009-08-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

'What is the world O Soldiers?
It is I.
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky,
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.'

-Walter de la mare-

Ronsard

2009-08-22T18:36:00.000-07:00

See, Mignonne, hath not the rose
That this morning did unclose
Her purple blossoms to the light,
Lost before the day be dead,
The glory of her raiment red,
Her color, bright as yours is bright?

Ah, Mignonne, in how few hours
The petals of her purple flowers
All have faded, fallen, died;
Sad Nature, mother ruinous,
That seest thy child perish thus
'Twixt matin song and eventide.

Hear me, my darling, speaking sooth,
Gather the flower of thy youth,
Take ye your pleasure at the best;
Be merry ere your beauty flit,
For length of days will tarnish it
Like roses that were loveliest.

-Pierre Ronsard-

Nil Nimium Studeo, Caesar, Tibi Velle Placere

2009-08-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

Caesar, it is not much my care
To flatter in a pleasing light;
Nor do I care which rumor's true,
Whether your soul be black or white.

-Translated from the Latin by Thomas Banks-

From the Greek of Plato

2009-08-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled;
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.

-Translated by P.B. Shelley-

The Fall of a Soul

2009-08-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

I sat unsphering Plato ere I slept:
Then through my dream the choir of gods was borne,
Swift as the wind and splendid as the morn,
Fronting the night of stars; behind them swept
Tempestuous darkness o'er a drear descent,
Wherein I saw a crowd of charioteers
Urging their giddy steeds with cries and cheers,
To join the choir that aye before them went:
But one there was who fell, with broken car
And horses swooning down the gulf of gloom;
Heavenward his eyes, though prescient of their doom,
Reflected glory like a falling star,
While with wild hair blown back and listless hands
Ruining he sank toward undiscovered lands.

-John Addington Symonds-

Politics

2009-08-19T00:53:00.001-07:00

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish Politics?

Yet here's a well traveled man
That knows what he's about,
And there's a politician,
That has both read and thought;

And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But oh, that I were young again,
And held her in my arms!

-William Butler Yeats-

As I Gird on for Fighting

2009-08-16T23:08:00.001-07:00

As I gird on for fighting
My sword upon my thigh,
I think on old misfortunes
Of better men than I.

Think I, the round world over,
What golden lads are low
With hurts not mine to mourn for
And shames I shall not know.

What evil luck soever
Remains for me in store,
'Tis sure much finer fellows
Have fared much worse before.

So here are things to think on
That ought to make me brave,
As I strap on for fighting
My sword that will not save.

-A.E. Housman-

Aedh

2009-08-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

Bind up your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress:
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day our, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.

You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh:
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.

-William Butler Yeats-

Melancholia

2009-08-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

The sickness of desire, that in dark days
Looks on the imagination in despair,
Forgetteth man, and stinteth God his praise;
Nor but in sleep findeth a cure for care.
Uncertainty that once gave scope to dream
Of laughing enterprise and glory untold,
Is now a blackness that no stars redeem,
A wall of terror in a night of cold.

Fool! thou that hast impossibly desired
And now impatiently despairest, see
How naught is changed; joy's wisdom is attired
Splendid for others' eyes if not for thee.
Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled;
If they delight thee not, 'tis thou art dead.

-Robert Bridges-

Epigram

2009-08-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

When Adam day by day
Woke up in Paradise,
He always used to say
"Oh, this is very nice."

But Eve to realms of bliss
Transported him for life;
The more I think on this,
The more I beat my wife.

-A.E. Houseman-

The More Loving One

2009-08-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

-W.H. Auden-

Epitaph on a Tyrant

2009-08-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And he was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

-W.H. Auden-

As the Ruin Falls

2009-07-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I have never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch out of my proper skin:
I talk of love- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, merely end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

-C.S. Lewis-

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

2009-07-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air-
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath-
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear. . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

-Alan Seeger-
1888-1916

Rectius Vives

2009-07-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

Licinius, stray thou not so high
That fear of heaven you forget,
But slip not down where cowards lie,
Not thus low yet;

Do thou the shining middle keep,
Not envying the envied throne,
Thou shalt not as a pauper sleep,
Nor woebegone.

The tallest pine is oft blown down,
The tower from its proud height drops,
And crashing lighting strikes upon
High mountain-tops.

The ready heart prepares for ill,
Braced to receive the evil lot;
But Jove blows back the same snow's chill
His winds have brought.

Though fortune favor thee not now,
Why must the future thee misuse?
Apollo oft unbends his bow
To court the muse.

Take spirit in the narrow strait,
But wisely navigate the gail,
And 'till the blasting wind abate,
Keep short thy sail.

-Translated from the Latin by Thomas Banks-

A Farewell to Arms

2009-07-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd;
O time too swift, of swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age had ever spurn'd,
But spurn'd in vain; youth waineth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,
And lovers' sonnets turned to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must serve now on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age's alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song-
'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that wish her any wrong.'
Goddess, allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.

-George Peel-

Late Flowering Lust

2009-07-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.

I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim,
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.

But I've a feeling of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shown
To hold each other tight.

Dark sockets look on emptiness
That once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.

I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me;
I feel how frail you are, my dear,
And wonder what will be.

A week? Or twenty years remain?
And then- what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?

Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late flowering lust.

-Sir John Betjeman-

A Clock Striking Midnight

2009-07-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

Hark to the echo of time's footsteps; gone
These moments are into the unseen grave
Of ages. They have vanished nameless. None,
While they are deep under the eddying wave
Of the chaotic past, shall place a stone
Sacred to these, the nurses of the brave,
The mighty, and the good. Futurity
Broods on the the ocean, hatching 'neath her wing
Invisible to man the century,
That on its hundred feet, a sluggish thing,
Gnawing away the world, shall totter by
And sweep dead mortals with it. As I sing
Time, the colossus of the world, that strides
With each foot plunged in darkness silent glides,

And puffs death's cloud upon us. It is vain
To struggle with the tide. We all must sink,
Still grasping the thin air, with frantic pain
Grappling with fame to buoy us. Can we think
Eternity by whom swift Time is slain,
And dragged along to dark destruction's brink,
Shall be the echo of man's puny words?
Or that our grovelling stars shall e'er be writ
In never fading stars; or like proud birds
Undazzled in their cloud built eyrie sit
Clutching the lightning, or in cloudy herds
Diving amid the sea's vast treasury flit?
Sink, painted clay back to thy parent earth
While the glad spirit seeks a brighter birth.

-T.L. Beddoes-

Dante

2009-07-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverend feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an indistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

-Longfellow-

False Though She Be

2009-07-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

False though she be to me and love,
I'll ne'er pursue revenge;
For still the charmer I approve,
Though I deplore her change.

In hours of bliss we oft have met:
They could not always last;
And though the present I regret,
I'm grateful for the past.

-William Congreve-

Carmen Saeculare

2009-07-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

Enter A Statesman, preparing his memoirs.

To me, their spite was worth more than their praise;
The moan and murmur of the stiff-necked host
When budding bureaucrat for its love plays,
Teaches of Demos' whims and ways the most.

The public votes for beer to fill its stock,
(For native rights, mind you, not surpluses)
And acquiescing tribunes split the rock
Out of which flow both bread and circuses.

The man's love for his child knows no loss,
The kings of labor bless the poor with alms,
But the same mob nails the preacher to the cross
Five days from feting him with prayers and palms.

To anarchy and insurrectionist
They turned the all forgiving eye that grieves,
And instantly they rounded out death's list
And hung some holy fool between two thieves.

They work their work, I mine- till God prefers
By death or ballot us to separate-
War's rumors, cries for peace, a world of stirs-
These will suffice to summarize The State.

-Thomas Banks-

The Truly Great

2009-07-09T00:22:00.000-07:00

I think continually on those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot with song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from the ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how their names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
And wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while toward the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

-Stephen Spender-

Lines

2009-07-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

I would not have her other than she is;
No curtsying change, no bowing alteration
Would I ask for my worship; None of this.
Her radiance is my remuneration.

-Thomas Banks, 2005-

The Leveller

2009-07-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate,
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield,
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, come to death.

The garlands wither on your brow,
Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon death's purple altar now,
See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just smell sweet,
And blossom in the dust.

-James Shirley-

A Light Woman

2009-07-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

So far as our story approaches its end,
Which do you pity the most of us three?
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me?

My friend was already too good to lose,
And seemed in the way of improvement yet,
When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose
And over him drew her net.

When I saw him tangled in her toils,
A shame, said I, if she adds just him
To her nine-and-ninety other spoils,
The hundredth for a whim!

And before my friend be wholly hers,
How easy to prove to him, I said,
An eagle's the game that her pride prefers,
Though she snaps at a wren instead!

So, I gave her my own eyes to take,
My hand sought hers as in earnest need,
And round she turned for my noble sake,
And gave me herself indeed.

The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,
The wren he is, with his maiden face.
You look away and your lip is curled?
Patience, a moment's space!

For see, my friend goes shaling and white;
He eyes me as the basilisk:
I have turned, it appears, his day to night,
Eclipsing his sun's disk.

And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief;
"Though I love her-" that he comprehends-
"One should master one's passions, (love in chief)
And be loyal to one's friends!"

And she, she lies in my hand as tame
As a pear late basking over a wall;
Just a touch to try and off it came;
'Tis mine; can I let it fall?

With no mind to eat it, that's the worst!
Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist?
'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst
When I gave its stalk a twist.

And I- what I seem to my friend, you see-
What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess:
What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?
No hero, I confess.

'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,
And matter enough to save one's own:
Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals
He played with for bits of stone!

One likes to show the truth for the truth;
That the woman was light, is very true:
But suppose she says- "Never mind that youth!
What wrong have I done to you?"

Well, anyhow, here the story stays,
So far at least as I understand;
And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
Here's a subject made to your hand!

-Robert Browning-

The Nation That Is Not

2009-06-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh be strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
There the hater hates no more.

Lovers lying two by two
Care not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

-A.E. Houseman-

Campion

2009-06-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore,
Never tired pilgrim's limbs affected slumber more,
Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast:
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!

Ever blooming are the joys of heaven's high paradise,
Cold age deafs not there our ears nor vapour dims our eyes,
Glory there the sun outshines, whose beams the blessed only see:
O come quickly, gracious Lord, and raise my sprite to thee!

-Thomas Campion-

Multa per Gentis et Multa per Aequora Vectus

2009-06-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

Cross land and sea, my brother, have I come
Unto thy grave, unto these tearful rites,
To make thee offering in these late lights,
Vain gifts for these thy ashes, fallen dumb,
And weep that wicked fate has stolen thee,
Alas, the better brother, lost to me.
This yet is mine, while still thy loss I wail,
To prove the ancient honors- to adorn
Thee brother; thy mound I pray receives our mourn;
To thee forever, brother, hail and farewell.

-Trans. from the Latin by Thomas Banks-

Dirce

2009-06-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed,
Or Charon, rising, may forget
That he is old, and she a shade.

-Walter Savage Landor-

The Kiss

2009-06-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

To these I turn, in these I trust-
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.

He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.

-Siegfried Sassoon-

At Rubicon

2009-06-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

"Te, Fortuna, sequor."

Stay you, great Caesar, for the battered cause
Smiles bruisedly on her beloved ones,
And we esteem ourselves too faithful sons
To cross this river with you, and Rome's laws.

Think us not traitors to your hopes and trust:
You follow Fortune. May she ever smile
On you; but we shall keep this shore awhile,
Sworn to old Gods, and to our fathers' dust.

Great sire, what triumph shall atone the loss?
No shining order has yet shown herself sure,
Only a hope that blinds from yonder shore.
Past Rubicon's a Rubicon to cross.

-Thomas Banks-

From the "Orphica"

2009-06-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

And you shall find, arrived in Hades' land,
A spring and a white cypress there beside;
But come not near; on these banks do not stand;
For from the pool of Memory a tide

Of water, cool and rapid, pouring forth,
And by Her pool a gaurdian: this thy
Password: "A child I am of heaven and earth;
Yea, even thus. My birth was of the sky.

But I am dry with thirst and perishing.
Give me to drink from the pool of memory.
And this allowed, to taste the holy spring,
With heroes dwell, a god new born in thee.

-Translated from the Greek by Thomas Banks-

Ecclesiastes

2009-06-11T15:28:00.001-07:00

There is one sin: to call a green leaf gray,
Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.
There is one blasphemy: for death to pray,
For God alone knoweth the praise of death.

There is one creed: 'neath no world-terror's wing
Apples forget to grow on apple-trees.
There is one thing is needful: everything.
The rest is vanity of vanities.

-G.K. Chesterton-

Forget

2009-06-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

Forget all these, the barren fool in power,
The madman in command, the jealous O,
The bitter world biting its bitter hour,
The cruel now, the happy long ago,

Forget all these, for, though they truly hurt,
Even to the soul, they are not lasting things:
Men are no gods; we tread the city dirt,
But in our souls we can be queens and kings.

And I, O Beauty, O divine white wonder,
On whom my dull eyes, blind to all else, peer,
Have you for peace, that not the whole war's thunder,
Not the world's wreck, can threat or take from here.

So you remain, though all man's passionate seas
Roar their blind tides, I can forget all these.

-John Masefield-

A Fragment from Euripides

2009-06-05T22:05:00.001-07:00

Who judges Eros for an impish god,
And less than lord of every holy thing?
O darling fool, naive and overawed!
No god directs our paths save this sweet king.

-Trans. from the Greek by Thomas Banks-

Horace, Ode 1.11 (Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi. . .

2009-05-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

Seek not to know what mortal end
The gods, my friend, have writ for thee,
Nor in dark divination look,
Not necromancer's prophecy.

Far better friend, to take from god
Whatever winters he bestows,
Which number now in secrecy
Hides where the tide Tyhrennian flows.

Be wise, quaf wine; put off vain hopes.
While now we speak, the hour retires.
Live thou today, tomorrow's life
Exalted less in thy desires.

-Translated from the Latin by Thomas Banks-

The Long War

2009-05-21T13:28:00.000-07:00

Less passionate the long war throws
Its burning thorn about all men,
Caught in one grief, we share one wound,
And cry one dialect of pain.

We have forgot who fired the house,
Whose easy mischief spilled first blood;
Under one raging roof we lie,
The fault no longer understood.

But as our twisted arms embrace
The desert where our cities stood,
Death's family likeness in each face
Must show at last our brotherhood.

-Laurie Lee, 1945-

Desertion Reconsidered

2009-05-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

"Non tamen Aenean, quamvis male cogitat, odi."

I pitied Dido, that her pious lord
Did not slacken his sails or bless her nearness.
My prayers are with him, for his conscience' sake;
His broken vows must vex him, and fate's goading.
His only crime was that he did did not want
For rest except the rest that fate had promised.
But though his mourning her was no event,
Her once loved flesh reduced to unwept ash,
Curse not his coldness, balanced with itself.
The host and queen and mistress met in her
Showed much to him of peace, but could not show
The shadow of Troy's sins that trailed behind.
Gods guide him to his home on Sabine hills;
Beside Sychaeus she resumes her place
And flinches from her quondam king's unfaith,
Who could not know to love her as a church.

-Thomas Banks-

The Sunlight on the Garden

2009-05-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend,
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

-Louis Macneice-

On Pronunciation

2009-05-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

The level of a man's confidence reveals itself nowhere more candidly than in his pronunciation of an unfamiliar word. A friend of mine, who has seen three continents and lived in two, once became the object of reproach when, reading out loud in a German literature class, he met with the name "Goethe," having had no previous encounter with the patronymic of the celebrated polymath. Being himself the very soul of fortitude, he took his phonetic leap of faith and offered the approximation "Goatie." The professor, a woman of refinement, caught her breath in such a way as to appear to have detected a gas leak, or maybe to have been stuck with a hypodermic needle; the posture achieved was one that diversely communicated an absolute authority both over her students and the proper utterance of the family names of the leading Weimar Dramatists. The chastisement that fell upon the head of my friend was of a length and intensity sufficient to cause Kali, Goddess of Blood, the Avenging Furies and the Angel of Death to entertain doubts concerning their future job security.

Such is the nature of Shiboleths. The code of international diplomacy permits that a U.N. representative may declare frankly and without reserve that Venezuela is a failed state, its leadership exemplary of the grossest despotism, its treaties dishonored by worse than Punic mendacity, and its currency not worth the llama hide it is printed on. He may say this much and more. Yet he must not indulge even the slightest liberality in his glossal representation of its name. It is imperative that he abandon the his own countrymen's received pronunciation of the locality in question, and make whatever concessions the junta of cosmopolitanism deems appropriate. Thus "Cheelay" must be "Cheelay," and "Cooba" "Cooba" at all costs. The diplomat may represent the interests and policies of his own nation in all areas but this. When he utters the names of other nations, "be they ne'er so vile," he must betray his patriot's conscience and the doubtless sainted memory of his sixth grade grammar teacher to the linguistic whims of a tin pot caudillo. I cannot help but suppose that these kowtows of the tongue appear as laughable to our enemies as they do to those of us who are not devoted listeners of National Public Radio or readers of the Huffington Post, and they go far in the encouragement of ever more daring acts of oppression whose media coverage must be almost as painful to our ears as the syllabic self abasement that inspired them.

Every diplomat worth his salt must be willing to consider every nation to which he is assigned, no matter how amicable at present, to be a potential competitor in the future, and every competitor a potential enemy. When he (heaven forbid) should have to appear in the chambers of their government to deliver a declaration of war, he should know that the manner in which he reads that declaration is as revelatory of our resolve as the first bombs that soon shall fall on them. Too many of our leaders at this present time concede their prerogatives as statesmen with such alarming alacrity that Neville Chamberlain begins to look like Winston Churchill, and Winston Churchill like Christ in the middle of the forty days of fasting and temptation. Those of us who are disturbed by this servile observance of so many delicate forms of Mandarin humbly request our representatives abroad that they be no more heedful of respecting foreign idioms than the average American is of respecting his own, and respectfully remind them that the only language a citizen of any nation need answer for having abused is the one which is his native birthright.

-Thomas Banks-

Huxley Hall

2009-05-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

In the Garden City Cafe with its murals on the wall
Before a talk on 'Sex and Civics' I meditated on the fall.

Deep depression settled on me under that electric glare
While outside the lightsome poplars flanked the rose-beds in the square.

While outside the carefree children sported in the summer haze
And released their inhibitions in a hundred different ways.

She who eats her greasy crumpets snuggled in her inglenook
Of some birch-enshrouded homestead, dropping butter on her book.

Can she know the deep depression of this bright, hygienic hell?
And her husband, stout free-thinker, can he share in it as well?

Not the folk-museum's charting of man's progress out of slime
Can release me from the painful seeming accident of time.

Barry smashes Shirley's dolly, Shirley's eyes are crossed with hate,
Comrades plot a comrade's downfall 'In the interests of the State.'

Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime juice minus gin,
Can quite shake the faint conviction that we may be born in sin.

-Sir John Betjeman-

Autumn Rain-Scene

2009-05-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

There trudges one to merry-making
With a sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.

To fetch the saving medicament
Is another bent,
On whom the rain comes down.

One slowly drives his herd to stall
Ere ill befall,
On whom the rain comes down.

This bears his missives of life and death
With quickening breath,
On whom the rain comes down.

One watches for signals of wreck and war,
From the hill afar,
On whom the rain comes down.

No care if he gain a shelter or none,
Unhired moves one,
On whom the rain comes down.

And another knows naught of its chilling fall
Upon him at all,
On whom the rain comes down.

-Thomas Hardy-

When Sometime Lofty Towers

2009-04-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded with decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, and cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

-Shakespeare-

Vobiscum Est Iope

2009-04-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admired guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the story of thy finished love,
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move,

Then thou wilt tell of banqueting delights,
Of masks and revels that sweet youth did make,
Of turnies and great challenges of knights,
And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake:
When thou hast told these honors done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.

-Thomas Campion-

The Great Minimum

2009-04-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched as all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of skeptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our ears for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

-G.K. Chesterton-

It Is Not Beauty I Demand

2009-02-26T14:07:00.001-08:00

It is not beauty I demand,
A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Not mermaid's yellow pride of hair.

Tell me not of your starry eyes,
Your lips that seem on roses fed,
Your breasts where sleeping Cupid lies,
Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed.

A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks,
Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours,
A breath that softer music speaks
Than summer winds a-wooing flowers.

These are but gauds; nay, what are lips?
Coral beneath the ocean-stream,
Whose brink when your adventurer slips
Full oft he perishes on them.

And what are cheeks but ensigns oft
That wave hot youth to fields of blood?
Did Helen's breast though ne'er so soft,
Do Greece or Ilium any good?

Eyes can with baleful ardor burn,
Poison can breath that erst perfumed,
There's many a white hand holds an urn
With lovers' hearts to dust consumed.

For crystal brows-there's naught within,
They are but empty cells for pride;
He who the Siren's hair would win
Is mostly strangled in the tide.

-George Darley-

Epitaph on One Who Lived to See His Work's Monument

2009-02-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

"...Video Mihi Nunc Frustra Sumptum Esse Laborem."

What was the building of his broken hands,
Itself lies broken, strength of stature thence
Fallen in time. He, in death's afterlands,
Discovered late his labor's vain expense.

The Unresolved but Highly Probable

2009-01-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

1. This next year I have a feeling I will eat more fish and less red meat. The latter does not excite me so much at the six P.M. of the present as in six P.M.'s of yore.

2. I find I drink slightly more than I used to, and that this is quite the best thing.

3. I have almost left off smoking altogether. Aside from the evening cigar or clove enjoyed with company now and again, the thing mostly bores me.

4. I have been teaching myself French for a week now, and believe I will be fluent in it before the start of summer.

5. I would have thought #4 would affect #3 differently than it has done. Hmm.

6. I imagine I'll write a book and see it published.

7. I think I will learn to be more decisive at critical junctures than I have been heretofore. This is quite likely.

8. I am pretty sure this is not a critical juncture.

9. I am comfortable with the single life, but have concluded, more or less, that matrimony is the more historically validated position. This may seem obvious to some, but let us examine the two sides:

Unmarried:
1)St. Paul
2)Elizabeth I
3)Thomas Aquinas
4)Leonardo Davinci
5)Virgil

Married:
1)Moses
2)Charlemagne
3)Aristotle
4)William Shakespeare
5)Dante

10. I think I would do well to read more devotional and theological literature. I'm woefully under-read in the church fathers.

From the '05 Files

2008-12-22T22:27:00.000-08:00

Tenuiter Dilexit
By Thomas Banks

I would not have her, though
Hers was the offering;
It is of her I know
My love a common thing.

It is of her I learned
That even the brightest fire
May rise from refuse burned
Upon a reeking pyre.

I would have shared, I know,
Shores rounding living waters;
Sweet substance, but below?
The leech, and the leech’s daughters.

I would have given much;
Myself my present were.
But in return for such
Had asked twice more of her.

I would not have her now,
For both our sakes; for hers,
And pray she find somehow
What fortune she prefers.

And mine, for I have loved not
My own love’s offering;
The love that grace moved not,
A blind, unblessed thing.

So Apparently. . .

2008-10-30T18:26:00.000-07:00

I read online that Spielberg is shooting a motion-capture version of some of the Tintin comics. Which is past sweet.

Rudyard Kipling's Thoughts on WWI

2008-10-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

If any ask you why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Something I Had Lying around

2008-10-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

I will not try you more; you have said "No."
Hope does no credit to herself where she
Gives lies to shield us from the final blow
Of what must pass, as you have passed from me.

-Thomas Banks, 2005-

The Vampire

2008-10-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We call her a woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the work of our head and hand,
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honor and faith and a sure intent
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(And it wasn't the least what his lady meant)
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned,
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know she never knew why)
And did not understand.

The fool we stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside-
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died-
(Even as you and I!)

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white hot brand;
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing at last she could never know why)
And never could understand.

-Rudyard Kipling-

Horace, Ode 4.7

2008-10-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, and nothing stirs.

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what the heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.

-Translated by A.E. Housman-

Plotinus

2008-09-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

As one who would draw through the node of things,
Back sweeping to the vortex of the cone,
Cloistered about with memories,
Alone in chaos, while the waiting silence sings,
Obliviate of cycles wanderings,
I was an atom on creation's throne,
And counted nothing mine unconquered own.
God! Should I be the hand upon the strings?
But I was lonely as a lonely child,
I cried amid the void and heard no cry,
And then, for utter loneliness made I
New thoughts as crescent images of me.
And in them was my image reconciled,
And fear went forth from mine eternity.

-Ezra Pound-

The Goodly Fere (Simon Zelotes Speaks after the Crusifixion)

2008-09-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

"Fere" = Mate, Companion

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priest and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.

When they came wi' a host to take Our Man
His smile was good to see,
"First let these go!" quo' our Goodly Fere,
"Or I'll see ye damned," says he.

Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears
And the scorn of his laugh rang free,
"Why took ye me not when I walked about
Alone in the town?" says he.

Oh we drank his "Hale" in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o' men was he.

I ha' seen him drive a hundred men
Wi' a bundle of cords swung free,
That they took the high and holy house
For their pawn and treasury.

They'll no' get him a' in a book I think
Though they write it cunningly;
No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere
But aye loved the open sea.

If they think they ha' snared our Goodly Fere
They are fools to the last degree.
"I'll go to the feast," quo' our Goodly Fere,
"Though I go to the gallows tree."

"Ye ha' seen me heal the lame and blind,
And wake the dead," says he,
"Ye shall see one thing to master all:
"Tis how a brave man dies on the tree."

A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us brothers be.
I ha' seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.

He cried no cry when they drave the nails
And the blood gushed hot and free,
The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue
But never a cry cried he.

I ha' seen him cow a thousand men
On the hills o' Galilee,
They whined as he walked out calm between,
Wi' his eyes like the grey o' the sea,

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret
Wi' twey words spoke suddently.

A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha' slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.

I ha' seen him eat o' the honey-comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree.

-Ezra Pound-

Best Overheard Freudian Slip Ever, from Work Today

2008-09-12T13:54:00.000-07:00

"Here's your change. Have a straight gay."

A Virginal

2008-09-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For the surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me soaked as with a gauze of aether;
As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

-Ezra Pound-

And Now for Something Totally Macabre

2008-09-03T22:54:00.001-07:00

Whispers of Immortality

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures underground
Stared backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate:
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone. . .

And even Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

T.S. Eliot

Yeats, Again

2008-09-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Spanish or on Russian or
On Roman politics?

There stands a well-traveled man
Who knows what he's about,
And there's a politician, who
Has both read and thought.

Perhaps it is true, what they say
Of war, and war's alarms;
But ah, that I were young again,
And held her in my arms!

-William Butler Yeats-

Smart People

2008-08-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

I recommend the film of the above title, especially if you like that slightly snarky Royal Tenenbaums type of humor. Now, if we could only get Wes Anderson to grow up. . .

A Request

2008-08-14T08:59:00.001-07:00

For Jeff Moss-

What's your think on the recent Russian disturbance? If you we're to pitch something up on your blog, I'd be interested in reading it.

From "Song of the Lotus Eaters"

2008-08-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer- some, 'tis whispered, down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we shall not wander more.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson-

Astrum Rebelle

2008-07-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

"Why should the candid sun excel
My native light, and blind the eye
Of man to my fierce dignity?
It better were he did compel
Me hence, so falling I might spend
My flames to scar His heavenlies,
And quench my hate beneath the seas,
To some strange depth my pathway bend,
And take my end."

-Thomas Banks-

Thoughts That Kneel

2008-07-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

From the first moment we begin to grow in them, our thoughts dictate to us our chief concerns. Those matters we have pondered are the only ones on which we can act with sober policy. The proportion of thought, then, that we allow to each human dilemma testifies to how sensitive or indifferent we are to every circumstance we confront.
Certainly it is of no small moment that we conduct ourselves in our appointed offices with the humility that reflection by itself cannot produce. A critically minded person can measure how wide a margin lies between himself and the perfected execution of whatever he must perform, but untempered by humility, and unwilling to admit where he is weak, he breaks himself upon hard surfaces. A sharp intellect submitted to the uses of life means little if can take no punishment.
Humility is a fragile thing, and it is all to easy for a man to forsake it, and with it all other men, in service to an easy and unknowing satisfaction with himself. ("Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.") And as should be the case with any fragile thing, Humility is not without its defenders. Humility in a man may be snuffed out, but his conscience is always breathing. Macbeth can kill, and in killing steal a crown, but his wife cannot get her hands clean. Thoughts come to us, though we would have none of them. They undermine our best defenses.
We cannot deny ourselves the habit of thinking, but it is ours to govern the thoughts we have. They occupy a space in all of us, and in that space we arrange them in their files. We give some to work, some to those we love and those we hate, some to art and some to politics, and not a few, if we are wise, we give to God. The arrangement of the patterns of his thought is the only freedom that a man cannot be denied. This we may take for fact that admits of no argument. To think otherwise only proves the point. Everyone is free to choose what type of vessel his mind will be, whether noble or ignoble. It is true that what imposes itself upon us from without has some part in this, and that men in all times and places are not so free as to choose their own path as we in ours, but still this part of ourselves, if nothing else, escapes all attempted containments. Boethius wrote his Consolation from prison. Dante began the Comedy as a political exile on the verge of suicide, ("Where closed/ The valley that pierced my heart with dread. . .") yet his imagination took this sight for its reward:

I look'd
While sight was unconsumed; and, in that depth,
Saw in one volume clasp'd of love, whate'er
The universe unfolds; all properties
Of substance and of accident, beheld,
Compounded, yet one individual light
The whole. And of such bond methinks I saw
The universal form; for that whene'er
I do but speak of it, my soul dilates
Beyond her proper self.

Granted its unconditional freedom, how does the mind best arrange itself? Even if we set aside moral considerations for a moment, it is naive to accept that all thoughts have equal claim to our attention. Both the educated and the uneducated mind are undemocratic, because our desires exist in disproportion, and where desire exists, thought and action bend their dual course. The oinophile gives more thought to the right conditions of his cellar for storing wine than he does to making room in it for a water purification system, simply because water purification is a subject in which he has scant interest. If someone is sitting with the other front row fanatics at a Nascar race, chances are his thoughts are not equally fixed both on the spectacle in front of him and on the latest Phillip Roth novel. His thoughts naturally follow the track of his greatest desire, which is in this case a circular one. Every mind selects its own aristocracy, except in cases of insanity. Madness is anarchy, every bit as much as Anarchy is Mad. And as with anarchy, madness ends with the most violent nerve ending making a tyrant of itself and imprisoning the mind in the despotism of a single thought. Lunatics are nothing if not single minded.
It stands to reason that the mind that is careless of its government will end by abandoning itself to gross authorities, as is the case with many countries that falls into crisis. The Will selects the aristocracy of thought as Desire directs. From these thoughts the individual takes council, and their quality of government determine what principles take root in him. Here he must ensure that the aristocracy lives up to its title. Lack of dignity in thought can only produce lack of dignity in action.
No individual can keep company with the best class of anything by itself and still retain the wisdom of the serpent. We must live in the world, and the world offers unsightly things as well as beautiful, the profane mixed with the sacred. To turn the mind only to cultivated things, whether in the arts or sciences, is no more advisable a project than the Tower of Babel. Every thought should know its place in our conscience and say its piece there, and give way to the next in order. No proverb, however wise, can speak to the sum of human affairs, and no single pillar of wisdom can support the arches of a broad philosophy. The single councilors of our conscience guide us as far as their power permits, each giving place to the one above him, until all our councilors-all of our reasons- have spent their earthly powers, and the last falls silent. Then we in turn do likewise, and take in faith our seat beneath the throne of God.

-Thomas Banks-

A Brief Note on Pantheism

2008-07-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

If you were an omnipotent god, why would you disguise yourself as a globe?

"If in That Syrian Garden"

2008-07-20T01:13:00.000-07:00

If in that Syrian Garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, Son of Man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
At the right hand of majesty on high
You sit, and sitting so remember yet
Your fears, your agony and bloody sweat,
Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

-A.E. Houseman-

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross

2008-07-17T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sombre and rich, the skies;
Great glooms, and starry plains.
Gently the night wind sighs,
Else a vast silence reigns.

The splendid silence clings
Around me; and around
The saddest of all kings
Crowned, and again discrowned.

Comely and calm he rides
Hard by his own Whitehall:
Only the night wind glides:
No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

Gone too, his Court: and yet,
The stars his courtiers are:
Stars in their stations set;
And every wandering star.

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.

Which is more full of fate:
The stars, or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows; or the dark skies?

Although his whole heart yearn
In passionate tragedy:
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.

Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.

Brief life, and hapless? Nay:
Through death, life grew sublime.
Speak after sentence? Yea:
And to the end of time.

Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom:
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom.

Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world's employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.

King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.

Yet, when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.

-Lionel Johnson-

On Learning from History- Part I*

2008-07-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Santayana's Rule, which I will not insult my readers by here repeating, has never succeeded in putting the fear of a vicious cycle into me. There stands behind this stern charge the not so well disguised belief that nobody has ever done right by its admonition, and presumably never will. It goes far in damning mankind's common span of attention. This is its only virtue. Otherwise, to adopt a cyclical view of history is to solicit the applause of defeatists at the price of little exercise of one's own imagination. Certainly if history makes no steady, if not uninterrupted motion forward, its own inertia testifies against it. For who wants to take part as a character in a tale whose author (or authors) has no thought as to arc and climax? Presuming our own free will to do so, I believe the most humane course of action we could take in such an instance would be to refuse to participate; to become the audience of history rather than its actors; critics, rather than co-creators.
If this strikes some as unmanly, they have my sincerest apologies, but the charm of playing out a saga of three hundred and sixty degrees is hopelessly lost on me. As a Theist, I find myself hard pressed to say that I would not join the other camp if I felt that God's construction of the Great Tale had the shape of the self-devouring serpent. I say this simply as a matter of aesthetic principle. I enjoy the notion, however naive, that history improves upon itself, and is driven to do so from time to time by the jolts and goadings of the Numinous.
This said, I cannot go further to describe what form our final triumph will take, or even if the appearance will be of a kind as would now touch us as particularly becoming a triumph. There may be no laurels. I cannot say whether the consummation, when it comes, will have been driven more by the operations of politics or of religion, if its success will lie at the doorsteps of the Church or of the courts and capitol buildings. My only reason for hoping as I do is this, that when the testimony of mankind's failed endeavors to improve itself, either in its nature or its circumstance, stands in contradiction to the testimony of the nature of God, that willed that our first nature be pure, and our first circumstance be a paradise, we give little credit to ourselves to let the reproachments of the first drown out the appeals of the second.
I am a Humanist as well as, or even because, I am a Christian. If the Son of God was willing to become the Son of Man then there is a native dignity in mortal flesh. I also believe personality and its expressions to be blessings as great as grace. That God would endow us with these gifts, and then leave us no applications for them, save those whereby we sank ourselves irrecoverably in the pit, seems to me an odious notion. There are those fellow travellers who persist, often with noble motives, in pointing to the adage "Narrow is the way, and those that find it are few." To them I would say that history partakes of more than the present tense; "Are" is not "Ever shall be." I do not mean here to stage my argument on purely theological grounds, because the world's last triumph must resound with a richer timbre than the feeble cantus Ecclesiae seems capable of producing at the present moment, just as the full scope of its causes, I expect, were they revealed to any historian living today, would still exceed his talents of transcription; the heart of man from age to age remains in large measure the same, but the list of his material motivations and the political vocabulary with which he keeps their record are ever increasing. The list of our cardinal vices and virtues is the same now as it has been for two thousand years. The names political philosophers give them- Capitalism, Marxism, Industrialization, Globalization- appears to be without limit. To describe the interplay of these forces in the future lies beyond the powers of even the most prescient theorist. Its events would be, and must be too large to rise fully formed in his imagination before their day should come. Let them come as they will.
It is of course pompous to assign ourselves a seat at the center of these events I have suggested, and to hope too much after these things invites disappointment. We should know the place that moderation supplies to our expectations as well as our desires. We should feel both our greatness beside all created things and our insignificance next to the Creator. Our own place is a great and glorious one, but it may not be a vantage from which we can view the pinnacle of the human monument. Let that be enough. As Browning says in his "Andrea del Sarto,"

. . .and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying a while the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting place is found,
The C major of this life, so, now I will try to sleep.

*Special thanks to Messrs. J. Moss and E. Wilson for the help I had from them gathering these thoughts in various conversations, though I think the above trifles imply disagreement with both.