Archives

Who Is It?

Jan6

1. He was born on January 6, 1878.
2. He quit school after the eighth grade and worked for the next ten years at a variety of jobs: delivering milk, harvesting ice, bricklaying, threshing wheat in Kansas, and shining shoes.
3. He then became a hobo and then a soldier.
4. He finally went to college and became a writer, a socialist, and a labor organizer.
5. He won two Pulitzer Prizes–one for his biography and one for his poetry.
6. He raised goats and collected books.
7. He wrote this poem, a favorite of mine and of my children:

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven — or five
six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky — or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply — and you carry the
multiplication table in your head and hope you won’t lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

Who is it?

Rudyard Kipling, b. 1835, d. 1936

Dec30

Here’s my post last year on this date, and I think it was almost prescient–except it was the Spanish who cut and ran and the Italians who honored bravery with bravery. And here’s another Kipling poem for this birthday:

When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from — Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!

Work for the joy of working and plenty of time to do whatever you’re called to do. It sounds heavenly to me.

John Milton, b. 1608, d. 1674

Dec9

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.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Dec5

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.

Thomas Chatterton

Nov20

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.

I’m Nobody

Nov16

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us–don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

I quote this poem to my children often. I don’t exactly know why; I suppose it’s because I have it memorized, and I like the sound of it. I hope that’s not what I’m doing when I blog: telling my name the livelong day to an admiring bog. However, there’s probably no danger. I don’t really think there’s much of a “bog” out there—just a few discerning frogs and tadpoles.
My American Literature discussion group will be talking about Emily Dickinson tomorrow.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Aug6

On this date in 1809, Alfred was born, the fourth of twelve children, and his father educated him at home. Also of interest, Tennyson couldn’t see very well; without a monocle he could not even see to eat. Therefore, he composed much of his poetry in his head, memorizing and working on the poems over the course of many years sometimes. Tennyson was enormously popular in Victorian England; his Idylls of the King sold more than 10,000 copies in one month. I can’t imagine a book of poetry being that popular in this day and time. Tennyson was a Christian, and he asked that this famous poem be printed at the end of any collection of his poetry:

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho? from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Tennyson died in 1892 at the age of 83.

Days of Wine and Roses

Aug2

I never knew where this phrase came from, “days of wine and roses.” Of course, there’s a famous movie with that title and a well known Frank Sinatra song. It turns out that the phrase comes from a poem written by Victorian poet Ernest Dowson who was born on this date in 1867. Here’s the poem, rather haunting I think:

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem nos Vetet Incohare Longam

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Memorizing Poetry

Jul21

Via Joanne Jacobs:
Go here for an article advocating the memorization of poetry by children in school. I think memorizing poetry, speeches, and other good examples of well-written material is a very useful exercise for children and adults. I tend to memorize things easily, but even if it’s hard for you to memorize, it can be done. Most children will memorize anything that you read aloud to them every night for a month. Eldest Daughter memorized the 23rd Psalm this way when she was only four years old. I memorized all kinds of things when I was younger: 1 Corinthians 13, John 14, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, The Gettysburg Address, The Preamble to the Constitution, The Raggedy Man by Eugene Field, Nobody by Emily Dickinson, various passages from Shakespeare. And look at this list of poets and others that New York schoolchildren used to be required to memorize:

The standard of literacy in the 1927 Course of Study in Literature for Elementary Schools is astonishingly high. Poems for reading and memorization by first-graders include those of Robert Louis Stevenson (Rain and The Land of Nod), A. A. Milne (Hoppity), Christina Rossetti (Four Pets), and Charles Kingsley (The Lost Doll). Second-graders grappled with poems by Tennyson (The Bee and the Flower), Sara Coleridge (The Garden Year), and Lewis Carroll (The Melancholy Pig). In third grade came Blake’s The Shepherd and Longfellow’s Hiawatha, while fourth grade brought Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, and Kipling. In the grades that followed, students read and recited poems by Arnold, Browning, Burns, Cowper, Emerson, Keats, Macaulay, Poe, Scott, Shakespeare, Southey, Whitman, and Wordsworth. Eighth-graders tackled Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address.

What poetry do you have memorized? What do you or would you require your children to memorize?

Clerihew

Jul11

Edmund Clerihew Bentley was born on this date. This brief bio is from Wikipedia:

E. C. Bentley (July 10, 1875 – March 30, 1956), who is now best remembered as the inventor of the clerihew, was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century. Born in London, Bentley worked as a journalist on several newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph. His detective novel, Trent’s Last Case (1913), was much praised, numbering Dorothy L. Sayers among its admirers. The success of the work inspired him, after only 23 years, to write a sequel, Trent’s Own Case(1936).

My random thoughts on E.C. Bentley:
1) If Dorothy Sayers liked his novels, maybe i should add them to my ever-growing list of books to read.
2) Here’s an example of one of his clerihews:
The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.
3) I read in another place that Bentley and G.K. Chesteerton were “lifelong friends.” Now I am even more interested.
4) The author of a paper on Tolkien avers that Tolkien was a clerihewer. However, I can’t find any examples on the web. Anyone have a Tolkien clerihew?
5) One more clerihew by Chesterton:
The novels of Jane Austen
Are the ones to get lost in.
I wonder if Labby
Has read Northanger Abbey.
(Labby was somebody Chesterton knew or knoew of. Never mind.)
6) Is anyone inspired to write a clerihew? If so, post here. I’m too tired.