Christopher Smart, b. 1722. English poet and song-writer, he was sometimes confined to the madhouse for praying in the streets and at other times arrested and thrown into jail for debt. Wouldn’t this poem make a great hymn?

Glorious the sun in mid career;
Glorious th’ assembled fires appear;
Glorious the comet’s train:
Glorious the trumpet and alarm;
Glorious th’ almighty stretch’d-out arm;
Glorious th’ enraptur’d main:

Glorious the northern lights a-stream;
Glorious the song, when God’s the theme;
Glorious the thunder’s roar:
Glorious hosanna from the den;
Glorious the catholic amen;
Glorious the martyr’s gore:

Glorious–more glorious is the crown
Of Him that brought salvation down
By meekness, call’d thy Son;
Thou that stupendous truth believ’d,
And now the matchless deed’s achiev’d,
Determin’d, dar’d, and done.
From Song to David by Christopher Smart

Dr. Samuel Johnson on Christopher Smart.

Karen Edmisten says you are what you read. I wonder what Christopher Smart was reading.

The Prattling Pastor’s Wife once thought poetry was a waste of time, until she discovered children’s poetry and later began to enjoy poetry with her own children. Now it’s Poetry Every Day.

It’s National Library Week (April 2-8, 2006), and Kim Winters, author of Kat’s Eye, an online journal featuring rants, raves, and musings about writing, balancing work and family, and life after the MFA, commits the Faux Pas of all Faux Pas in her post by the same name. Unfortunately, it involved a library book and RAIN.

Do you have any librarians on your blogroll? I have several who are worth a visit: Camille at Book Moot, Norma of Collecting My Thoughts, Sarah Louise at pink sneakers n’at. H2Oboro Lib Blog is, I assume, written by a librarian. Kendra at Preschoolers and Peace owns and manages her own private library. I have a soft spot for librarians because I was one once upon a time, and I’m still a librarian at heart. My library threatens to take over my home, and I like it that way.

Born April 4th:
Children’s author Glen Rounds, b. 1906. The Blind Colt and its sequels are great selections for elementary age horse lovers. Rounds wrote both fiction and nonfiction about the American West.

Poet Maya Angelou, b. 1928. Touched By An Angel

Children’s author Johanna Reiss, b. 1932. She wrote The Upstairs Room, a fictional story for children about two Dutch Jewish girls who were hidden in a secret upstairs room for three years during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

THE SONNE.

LET forrain nations of their language boast,
What fine varietie each tongue affords:
I like our language, as our men and coast;
Who cannot dresse it well, want wit, not words.
How neatly do we give one onely name
To parents issue and the sunnes bright starre!
A sonne is light and fruit; a fruitfull flame
Chasing the fathers dimnesse, carri’d far
From the first man in th’ East, to fresh and new
Western discov’ries of posteritie.
So in one word our Lord’s humilitie
We turn upon him in a sense most true :
For what Christ once in humblenesse began,
We him in glorie call, The Sonne of Man.

George Herbert, b. 1593.

Yes, Praise Him in English!

Washington Irving, b. 1783. “Rip van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought and trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled his life away in perfect contentment . . .
I think I know someone with this sort of disposition, but can a lazy, happy fellow like this survive these days?

Edward Everett Hale, b. 1822. Author of the classic short story, The Man Without a Country.

John Burroughs, b. 1837. “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” Don’t we all?

Thomas Spencer Baynes, b. 1823. Philosopher, professor of English literature, Shakesperean scholar, editor of the 9th through the 11th editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Fanny Crosby, b. 1820.

Wiliam Morris, b. 1834. On Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere.

Olive Schreiner, b. 1855 in South Africa to missionary parents. She wrote the novel, Story of an African Farm, a story of life in South Africa. Has anyone read it?

Malcolm Muggeridge, b. 1903. “One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”

Ian Hamilton, b. 1938. Poet, critic, editor, and biographer.

William Barnes, b.1801. Dorset poet. You can read read some of his poems here if you can cut through the dialect.

Thomas Cooper, b. 1805. He was the son of a dyer, educated himself at home, and then opened his own primary school. A Wesleyan Methodist, then later a Baptist itinerant preacher, he was involved politically with the Chartists in protesting the poor working conditions for factory workers at that time in England. When he was in his sixties, he wrote his autobiography, The Life of Thomas Cooper.

Henrik Ibsen, b. 1828. Norwegian playwright. “There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.” —A Doll’s House.

Mitsumasa Anno, b. 1926. Author and illustrator of children’s books, born in Tsuwano, Japan. He was a teacher of mathematics for ten years before he began to write and illustrate children’s books. His books show both a love of mathematics and puzzles and a love of travel.
Try Anno’s USA or Anno’s Mysterious Multiplying Jar.

I was once asked at a symposium, “Why do you draw?” I knew what they would have liked for an answer, “I draw for the children of Japan who represent our future, blah, blah, blah”. But what I actually wound up saying was, “I draw because that’s my work. I made it my work because it’s what I like to do”. Michael Ende then said, “The same goes for me. I’m just like Anno-san”, while Tasha Tudor said, “I do my work so that I can buy lots of flower bulbs”. From a 2004 interview with Mitsumasa Anno

I like Tasha Tudor’s answer.

Fred Rogers, b. 1928. I still say to my urchins, “Right as usual, King Friday.” The younger ones don’t even know where the phrase comes from, but I used to watch MisterRogers’ Neighborhood with Eldest Daughter about sixteen years ago. I thought then, and I still think, that it was much better than Sesame Street or most of the other PBS children’s shows. It was slower, of course, more reminiscent of Captain Kangaroo, the TV show I remember watching as a preschooler.