Happy Fall Break & Thanksgiving!

Dear Members, Alumni, and Friends of the James Scholar Advisory & Leadership Team:

Quotemail will return in 2 weeks and will be distributed on the first three Fridays of December with poems and prose to celebrate the holiday season. In the meantime, however, Fall Break and Thanksgiving are just around the corner, so here are some versified treats to enjoy as we make the transition from late autumn into early winter.

“Leaves”

By Anonymous

The leaves had a wonderful frolic.

They danced to the wind’s loud song.

They whirled, and they floated, and scampered.

They circled and flew along.

The Moon saw the little leaves dancing.

Each looked like a small brown bird.

The Man in the Moon smiled and listened.

And this is the song he heard.

“The North Wind is calling, is calling,

And we must whirl round and round,

And then, when our dancing is ended,

We’ll make a warm quilt for the ground.”

“A Calendar of Sonnets: November”

By Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

This is the treacherous month when autumn days
With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts.
Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts
Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze
Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,
And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,
The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts
Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning's rays
Will idly shine upon and slowly melt,
Too late to bid the violet live again.
The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;
Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet's day of pain? 

“November Morning”

By Evaleen Stein (1863-1923)

A tingling, misty marvel 
  Blew hither in the night, 
And now the little peach-trees 
  Are clasped in frozen light.

Upon the apple-branches 
  An icy film is caught, 
With trailing threads of gossamer 
  In pearly patterns wrought.

The autumn sun, in wonder, 
  Is gaily peering through 
This silver-tissued network 
  Across the frosty blue.

The weather-vane is fire-tipped, 
  The honeysuckle shows 
A dazzling icy splendor, 
  And crystal is the rose.

Around the eaves are fringes 
  Of icicles that seem 
To mock the summer rainbows 
  With many-colored gleam.

Along the walk, the pebbles 
  Are each a precious stone; 
The grass is tasseled hoarfrost, 
  The clover jewel-sown.

Such sparkle, sparkle, sparkle 
  Fills all the frosty air, 
Oh, can it be that darkness 
  Is ever anywhere!

“Simple Gifts” (1848)

By Joseph Brackett, Jr.

1. ‘Tis the gift to be simple,
‘Tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

Refrain: 

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
And to turn, turn will be our delight,
‘Til by turning, turning we come round right.

2. ‘Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,
‘Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,
And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,
Then we’ll all live together and we’ll all learn to say,

Refrain

3. ‘Tis the gift to have friends and a true friend to be,
‘Tis the gift to think of others not to only think of “me,”
And when we hear what others really think and really feel,
Then we’ll all live together with a love that is real. 

Refrain

Until next time – Happy Fall Break & Thanksgiving! :)

Rob

20th Anniversary Quotemail: 1995-2015! :)

Dear Members, Alumni, & Friends of the JSMT:

Sunday, November 8^th marks the 20^th birthday of the Quotemail emailing list AND the 20^th birthday of my younger cousin, A.N.A. In honor of these two birthdays, and the longstanding interest in astronomy that I share with many of our listmembers, here’s a selection of my favorite poems about the Pleiades star cluster (a/k/a M45, the Seven Sisters, etc.), which is visible all night long during the month of November. We begin with an invocation to Urania, the Greek Muse of Astronomy:

From Paradise Lost: Book 7, Lines 1-20

By John Milton (1608-1674)

Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call: for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwellest; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee
Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering: with like safety guided down
Return me to my native element:
Lest from this flying steed unreined, (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime,)
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn.

“On the Beach at Night”

By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

On the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

 

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

 

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Watching, silently weeps.

 

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

 

Something there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

From “Locksley Hall”

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through' the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipped into the future far as human eye could see;

Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.—

From The Works and Days (Lines 383 ff.)

By Hesiod (fl. 8^th century BCE)

“When the Pleiades, Atlas’ daughters, start to rise, begin your harvest; plough when they go down. For forty days and nights, they hide themselves, and as the year rolls round, appear again when you begin to sharpen sickle-blades; this law holds on the plains and by the sea, and in the mountain valleys, fertile lands far from the swelling sea.”

The Pleiades (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain)

HAPPY 20^TH BIRTHDAY TO QUOTEMAIL AND TO MY COUSIN, A.N.A.!

Rob