Favorite Poems from Yesteryear

Hello everyone –

Next Tuesday, I’ll be celebrating the 20^th anniversary of my 29^th birthday – and my age (in Roman numerals) will change from XLVIII to XLIX @ 9:59 PM (CDT). :) To commemorate this auspicious occasion, I’d like to share with you a few miscellaneous poems that I recall learning in elementary school, way back in the 1970s.

“The Little Turtle”

By Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

There was a little turtle.

He lived in a box.

He swam in a puddle.

He climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito.

He snapped at a flea.

He snapped at a minnow.

And he snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito.

He caught the flea.

He caught the minnow.

But he didn't catch me.

A Wise Old Owl

Anonymous (1875)

A wise old owl lived in an oak

The more he saw the less he spoke

The less he spoke the more he heard.

Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

“The Star”

By Ann Taylor (1782-1866)

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder where you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveler in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny sparks;

He could not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,

And often through my curtains peep,

For you never shut your eye

Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark

Lights the traveler in the dark,

Though I know not what you are,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

A PSALM OF LIFE

(WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream ! —

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real !   Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal ;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way ;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle !

Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, however pleasant !

Let the dead Past bury its dead !

Act,— act in the living Present !

Heart within, and God overhead !

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate ;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

Until next time –

Rob :)

Post Tenebras, Lux: After Darkness, Light

Dear Family, Friends, & Colleagues:

As we ponder the disquieting events that haunt our TV screens on the nightly news, and strive to build a better world, in which violence and intolerance are no more, and peace, justice, and freedom reign over an enlightened society, I’d like to share some reflections with you from poets ancient and modern about what we, as one human family, can achieve as the future unfolds before us.

The Ages of Humankind: A Myth for All Times & Climes

Excerpted from “A Golden Jubilee Interview with the Editor” by Maria Pauls (ACES James Scholar Alumna & Bronze Tableteer, Class of 2014)

Reprinted from Cursus Honorum (Course of Honors), Volume XII, Number 1 (August 2012)

·        Maria: What is your favorite mythological story of all time and why?

·        Rob: The myth of the “Ages of Humankind” is my all-time favorite. This story appears in the Greek, Persian, Hindu, and Abrahamic religions. There are four main ages of human history, the story goes. The first is the Golden Age, where everything is very harmonious and peaceful; then comes the Silver Age, when the human condition is a bit less harmonious and peaceful, but still idyllic. Next is the Bronze Age, wherein people may sometimes be heroic, but conflict and injustice begin to rear their ugly heads. Last of all is the Iron Age, which is the age we live in, full of conflict, disasters, and hardships. In the Greek version of this story, Astraea, the goddess of justice, ruled the world during the Golden Age, but later – because of humankind’s inhumanity to humankind – she departed into the sky to become the constellation Virgo, the celestial Maiden who holds the Scales of Justice (Libra) in her hand. Once this current Iron Age is done, the myth goes on, we will go back to this perfect age, the Golden Age, and Astraea will come back, and everyone will be nice and in harmony. I like this myth best of all because it inspires us to strive for better conditions on Earth, in which human beings can flourish and build a better society based on justice, freedom, and peace for all peoples.

Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue (Lines 1-18): The Golden Age Returns

            Based on the description of the constellation Virgo by the Greek astronomer-poet Aratus (in Phenomena 96-136), the Roman epic poet Virgil (70-19 BCE) predicted the return of the Golden Age, which would follow the birth of a world-renewing child to Virgo/Justice/Astraea.

Muses of Sicily, assay we now
A somewhat loftier task! Not all men love
Coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods,
Woods worthy of a Consul let them be.
Now the last age by Cumae’s Sibyl sung
Has come and gone, and the majestic roll
Of circling centuries begins anew:
Justice returns, returns old Saturn’s reign,
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven.
Only do you, at the boy’s birth in whom
The iron shall cease, the golden race arise,
Befriend him, chaste Lucina; ‘tis your own
Apollo reigns. And in your consulate,
This glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin,
And the months enter on their mighty march.
Under your guidance, whatso tracks remain
Of our old wickedness, once done away,
Shall free the Earth from never-ceasing fear.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s (1809-1892) Visions of the Future

Excerpted from “Locksley Hall” (1835) and “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After” (1886)

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly Earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

            *                                  *                                  *                                  *                                  *

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue,

I have seen her far away – for is not Earth as yet so young? –

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion killed,

Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert tilled,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,

Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

            *                                  *                                  *                                  *                                  *

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,

Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro’ the human soul;

Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

            *                                  *                                  *                                  *                                  *

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.

Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

Follow Light, and do the Right – for man can half-control his doom –

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.

I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

Until next time –

Rob :)

“For a life worthy to be lived is one that is full of active aspiration, for something higher and better; and such a contemplation of the world we call meliorism.”

-- Paul Carus (1852-1919): Monism and Meliorism (1885)