Archives

John Milton, b. 1608, d. 1674

Milton was born December 9th in London. He graduated from Cambridge in 1632, and a few years later he went on a tour of the Continent. When he returned to England, he became a Puritan and a follower of Oliver Cromwell. In 1652 he became completely blind, and his first wife died. He later remarried. He wrote much of his poetry after he became blind.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. L’Allegro It seems to me that there a quite a number of people who cannot hear the music these days. He who has ears to hear, let him hear—and dance.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Samson Agonistes There is good reason to be silent and let some people talk themselves and their ideas into oblivion. Who has the time to argue with the wind, and why?

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
Paradise Lost
Familiar, but still true. I hear people say all the time–in one way or another–I will not submit. I will do what I want to do. I WILL–no matter where it leads.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. And this is true liberty, not license. If we do these things, are free to do these things, according to conscience, we will surely come to the Truth , and the Truth shall make us free.

Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Paradise Lost Which is why the job in Iraq is only half-finished. We must leave Iraq better than we found it, and we must demonstrate democracy amd the peace of God before we leave.

Join voices, all ye living souls: ye birds, That singing up to heaven-gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Paradise Lost Great idea.

Happy Birthday, Sir

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite musicians. See if you can guess who?

1. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
2. He began his musical career by playing the penny whistle as a small child.
3. He is 65 years old today.
4. He tours extensively playing both classical and popular music.
5. He has collaborated with such musicians as Henry Mancini and John Denver and with actor Liam Neeson.
6. He also performs on several tracks from the soundtrack for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in a score composed, orchestrated and conducted by Academy Award-winner Howard Shore.
7. Twice Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England has honored him, in 1979 with an Order of the British Empire and in 2001 with a Knighthood for services to music.
8. He reminds me of Sean Connery for some reason. I guess it’s the beard.
9. I used to try to play the same instrument that this man plays, but I was a flop.

Go here to find out more about this talented musician.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

 Christina Rossetti
Poet Christina Rossetti was born in London December 5, 1830. She was homeschooled, devoutly Anglican, and she never married. Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was both a poet and a painter. Together with William Morris, John Ruskin, William Holman Hunt, and others, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were leaders in what came to be called the Pre-Raphelite movement. The Pre-Raphaelites were concerned with medievalism, religious symbolism, and passion and realism in art. I think Eldest Daughter could have been a Pre-Raphaelite.

A Christmas Carol
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part, –
Yet what I can, I give Him,
Give my heart.

Birthdays Commemorated by Me and by Others

There were lots of great authors’ birthdays this week that I just couldn’t get around to memorializing. However, for some of them. someone else did it for me:

C.S. Lewis, b. 11/29/1898, also here
Louisa May Alcott, b. 11/29/1832 Her best books are Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom, by the way IMHO.
Madeleine L’Engle, 11/29/1918 I really should have blogged about this one. I really like Madeleine L’engle, especially her books The Love Letters (out of print) and A Severed Wasp. I’m planning on reading A Wrinkle in Time to the children as soon as we finish Johnny Tremain
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), b. 11/30/1835
Winston Churchill, b. 11/30/1874.
Jonathan Swift, b. 11/30/1667 Swift should be recognized for writing the essay A Modest Proposal in which he proposes that the poor of Ireland eat their excess children so as to put an end to their poverty. Unfortunately, I am told that some college students who read this proposal in these benighted times do not understand that it is satire and that JS was not seriously advocating the wholesale slaughter of infants for the convenience and enrichment of their parents.
L.M. Montgomery, b. 11/30/1874 Montgomery, of course, wrote the beloved Anne of Green Gables and seven more Anne books in addition to three books about another heroine, Emily of New Moon and various and sundry other books–all of which are favorites among the females around here. Eldest Daughter tried to get her dad to read Anne of Green Gables, but he never quite got into it.
Finally, for today, the author is one of my three favorite mystery writers. (The other two are Dame Agatha and Dorothy Sayers.) I think he’s the best American mystery writer, creator of that dynamic duo, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Nero is a 300+ pound genius, and Archie is his legman. Nero is a great detective, but he needs Archie to run errands since The Big Man seldom leaves his brownstone in New York City. The thirty-one Nero Wolfe novels and the multiple short stories are just pure fun–no socially redeeming value at all. If you’ve never read any of these books, I’d suggest you start with Prisoner’s Base or The Mother Hunt, a couple of my favorites. Here’s a link to a fan website dedicated to this fine author.

John Bunyan Was Born November 28, 1628

Poetry by Bunyan:

UPON THE SACRAMENTS.
Two sacraments I do believe there be,
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord;
Both mysteries divine, which do to me,
By God’s appointment, benefit afford.
But shall they be my God, or shall I have
Of them so foul and impious a thought,
To think that from the curse they can me save?
Bread, wine, nor water, me no ransom bought.

UPON APPAREL.
God gave us clothes to hide our nakedness,
And we by them do it expose to view.
Our pride and unclean minds to an excess,
By our apparel, we to others show.

And Sherry says, “Amen.”

You can go here to find the online texts of John Bunyan’s many works. And in honor of Bunyan’s birthday, here’s a hymn by John M. Neale written in 1862. We sing a version of this at my church set to a different tune than cyberhymnal gives for it.

O happy band of pilgrims,
If onward you will tread,
With Jesus as your Fellow,
To Jesus as your Head.

O happy if you labor,
As Jesus did for men;
O happy if you hunger
As Jesus hungered then.

The cross that Jesus carried
He carried as your due;
The crown that Jesus weareth
He weareth it for you.

The faith by which you see Him,
The hope in which you yearn,
The love that through all troubles
To Him alone will turn.

The trials that beset you,
The sorrows you endure,
The manifold temptations
That death alone can cure.

What are they but His jewels

Of right celestial worth?
What are they but the ladder
Set up to heaven on earth?

O happy band of pilgrims,
Look upward to the skies,
Where such a light affliction
Shall win you such a prize.

To Father, Son, and Spirit,
The God Whom we adore,
Be loftiest praises given,
Now and for evermore.

Author Birthdays

1. She was born in Manchester, England in 1849, but after the death of her father, her family moved to Tennessee. She began writing short stories to help support her family, and then she began writing full length romanic novels. Some of these were quite successful, but she is remembered nowadays for her children’s fiction, three books in particular: Little Lord Fauntleroy, Sara Crewe(A Little Princess), and The Secret Garden. My favorite of the three is The Secret Garden, although it is spurned by some because it includes elements of the author’s faith in spiritualism. I just skip over the part where the children are chanting to “the spirits” and concentrate on the captivating idea of a secret garden where wounds both of the spirit and of the body can be healed. Wouldn’t everybody love to have a secret garden?
2. Carlo Lorenzini (b. 1826, d. 1890) was the real name of a Florentine journalist who wrote the fantasy story of a wooden puppet who, after many misadventures, finally became a real boy. Do you know the author’s pen name and the name of his famous book?
3. This science fiction author was born in 1933. She wrote two YA novels about a girl who was training to observe cultures on other planets as they evolved into advanced cultures capable of joining the World Federation of Planets (or some such name). The rule (prime directive) is that observers are not allowed to interfere in the evolution of the culture being studied unless the planet is in danger of being destroyed or destroying itself. Of course, Elana, the young observer-in training, finds herself in a situation that calls for her to violate her oath and interfere in a way that may have unexpected and tragic consequences.
These two books were favorites of mine in junior high, and I still think they’re not bad, although a little dated. The evolution of cultures theme doesn’t really ring true to me, but the idea of having to make a choice that may be wrong either way (damned if you do, and damned if you don’t) does make both books thought provoking.

Elizabeth George Speare

Today is the 96th birthday of this author of children’s books, four children’s books to be exact, each one a classic. We just finished reading out loud in our homeschool two of Speare’s books, The Sign of the Beaver and The Witch of Blackbird Pond, a Newbery Award winner. Calico Captive was her first book about sisters who were captured by Indians, and she also won the Newbery Medal for The Bronze Bow, a beautiful book about forgiveness and healing set in Palestine in the time of Jesus. My nine-year old loved The Witch of Blackbird Pond, especially because she had figured out exactly who was going to marry whom about halfway through the book. (It’s a chick thing!) I think Karate Kid enjoyed Sign of the Beaver more since it was about manly man stuff like hunting and trapping and making your own bow and arrows and Indians and stuff like that. When I read Sign of the Beaver to my older children several years ago, they always asked me to read just one more chapter. I finally answered them, “I’ll read only one more chapter. But at the end of that chapter, even if Attean is hanging off the edge of a cliff by his fingernails, we’re stopping for today.” So now it’s a common phrase around our house, “We’re quitting here—even if Attean is hanging off the edge of the cliff by his fingernails!”

Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on November 20, 1752 and is generally regarded as the first Romantic poet in English.

'Thomas Chatterton plaque' photo (c) 2009, Open Plaques - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

I thought I knew something about English literature, and I think I’ve heard the name before. However, I ‘ve never heard this story about a poverty-stricken and depressed poet who forged much of his poetry in mock-medieval style and on old paper and attributed it to a made-up medieval priest. Then, he went to London, tried to make a living as a professional writer, and, unsuccessful, he committed suicide at the age of seventeen by drinking arsenic. Samuel Johnson, a contemporary, said of Chatterton: “This is the most extraordinary young man that encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.” Later, the Romantic poets–Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Rossetti–all seem to have mentioned Chatterton and tried to make him into some sort of icon for their own ideal of the Romantic Poet.
Here’s a sample of his (unforged) poetry:

Then why, my soul, dost thou complain?
Why drooping seek the dark recess?
Shake off the melancholy chain.
For God created all to bless.

But ah! my breast is human still;
The rising sigh, the falling tear,
My languid vitals’ feeble rill,
The sickness of my soul declare.

But yet, with fortitude resigned,
I’ll thank th’ inflicter of the blow;
Forbid the sigh, compose my mind,
Nor let the gush of mis’ry flow.

The gloomy mantle of the night,
Which on my sinking spirit steals,
Will vanish at the morning light,
Which God, my East, my sun reveals.

Read the full poem here.

The psychologists would mutter nowadays about “clinical depression” and prescribe some sort of anti-depressant, I’m sure. I just hope he is now healthy and filled with joy in the presence of the Lord.

Happy Birthday, Jean Fritz

George Washington’s Breakfast, George Washington’s Mother, Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln, And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George?, Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution, What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?, Where Do You Think You’re Going, Christopher Columbus?, Who’s That Stepping on Plymouth Rock?, Will You Sign Here, John Hancock?, You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?, The Double Life of Pocahontas, Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt, The Great Little Madison, Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers, Make Way for Sam Houston, Stonewall, Traitor: The Case of Benedict Arnold, Why Not, Lafayette?.
The titles of Jean Fritz’s historical non-fiction books are self-explanatory. Fritz is an invaluable treasure for students and teachers of U.S. history. In fact, I have some of Fritz’s books on the reading list for my AP US history students, even though the books were written for elementary age students. Jean Fritz makes history so interesting; she writes about people and finds the most intriguing episodes in their lives.
Did you know?
Lincoln didn’t scribble the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope.
Samuel Adams didn’t ride horseback.
Stonewall Jackson liked to suck lemons.
James Madison was really short.
George III collected clocks.
Benedict Arnold loved shoes.

Jean Fritz was born on November 16, 1915 in Hankow, China. She was the only child of missionary parents.

Oliver Goldsmith

Born November 10, 1728. You can read She Stoops to Conquer online. The Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith’s novel, is also available here. Said novel starts with this line:

I was ever of opinion that the honest man who married and brought up a large family did more service than he who continued single and only talked of population

This was written back when populating the world was still considered a service. The book goes on to tell the story of Dr. Primrose, the vicar of Wakefield, and his family and his many troubles. Samuel Johnson said of Goldsmith: “Goldsmith, however, was a man, who, whatever he wrote did it better than any other man could do.” High praise, indeed.
Goldsmith, however, said of Samuel Johnson: “There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it. “