#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/11/23 -- Thanksgiving with Father Abraham

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 4: November 23, 2022

 

 

Celebrating Thanksgiving with Father Abraham

 

From an 1856 Newspaper Editorial

By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

                Whenever the day comes for him to appear, the man who shall be the Redeemer  President of These States, is to be the one that fullest realizes the rights of individuals, signified by the impregnable rights of The States, the substratum of this Union. The Redeemer President of These States is not to be exclusive, but inclusive. In both physical and political America there is plenty of room for the whole human race; if not, more room can be provided.

 

“Thanksgiving Proclamation” (October 3, 1863)

By Abraham Lincoln

 By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation

                The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

                In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

                Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State

 

1863 portrait of President Lincoln. (Photo Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“The Gettysburg Address” (November 19, 1863)

By Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

                 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

                Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

                But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

“Poem on the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln” (1909)

By Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

 Through the dim pageant of the years

A wondrous tracery appears:

A cabin of the western wild

Shelters in sleep a new-born child.

 

Nor nurse, nor parent dear can know

The way those infant feet must go;

And yet a nation’s help and hope

Are sealed within that horoscope.

 

Beyond is toil for daily bread,

And thought, to noble issues led,

And courage, arming for the morn

For whose behest this man was born.

 

A man of homely, rustic ways,

Yet he achieves the forum’s praise,

And soon earth’s highest meed has won,

The seat and sway of Washington.

 

No throne of honors and delights;

Distrustful days and sleepless nights,

To struggle, suffer and aspire,

Like Israel, led by cloud and fire.

 

A treacherous shot, a sob of rest,

A martyr’s palm upon his breast,

A welcome from the glorious seat

Where blameless souls of heroes meet;

 

And, thrilling through unmeasured days,

A song of gratitude and praise;

A cry that all the earth shall heed,

To God, who gave him for our need.

 

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) on Abraham Lincoln

Printed in the New York World – 1909

                 Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

 

“Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” (1914)

By Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

 It is portentous, and a thing of state

That here at midnight, in our little town

A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,

Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards

He lingers where his children used to play,

Or through the market, on the well-worn stones

He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,

A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl

Make him the quaint great figure that men love,

The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.

He is among us: — as in times before!

And we who toss and lie awake for long

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.

Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?

Too many peasants fight, they know not why,

Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.

He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.

He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now

The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn

Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe free:

The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,

Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,

That all his hours of travail here for men

Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace

That he may sleep upon his hill again?

 

“Lincoln”

By Vachel Lindsay

 Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,

That which is gendered in the wilderness

From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.

Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,

Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,

Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,

Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire —

Fire that freed the slave.

 

#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/11/16 -- Homer, the Sovereign Poet

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 3: November 16, 2022

 

 

Homer, the Sovereign Poet

“Ad Niniannam, Sibyllam Caecam et Animam Caram Primam in Univeristate Illinois”

 

Editor’s Note

                On the afternoon of Friday, October 28, I gave an invited presentation to the Campus Honors Program students about Homer, the legendary epic poet of ancient Greece – discussing not only the poems and tales ascribed to him, but also tracing how Homer became a literary character in his own right down through the centuries. As a Classics major at the University of Illinois during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Homer was an inspirational figure to me because I have lived all my life with low vision, and he was widely believed in antiquity to have been blind.

                Here is a short introduction to Homeric studies, along with two of my favorite poems about Homer, and a pair of ancient Greek hymns to the Muses, who inspired his masterful poetry. We conclude with some verses comparing the genius of Homer with two other epic poets: Virgil (70-19 BCE) and John Milton (1608-1674 CE), whose sonnet reflecting on his blindness (the last item in this week’s posting) reminds me of a very insightful quote by my oracular cousin, who has low vision, like me:

 

“Sight doesn’t define vision. Eyes of the heart will see far beyond any physical force.”

à Ambrosiastra (“Immortal Star”)

 

Excerpt from Chapter 35 of The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)

                Homer, from whose poems of the Iliad and Odyssey we have taken the chief part of our chapters of the Trojan war and the return of the Grecians, is almost as mythical a personage as the heroes he celebrates. The traditionary story is that he was a wandering minstrel, blind and old, who travelled from place to place singing his lays to the music of his harp, in the courts of princes or the cottages of peasants, and dependent upon the voluntary offerings of his hearers for support. Byron calls him “the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” and a well-known epigram, alluding to the uncertainty of the fact of his birthplace, says:

“Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,

Through which the living Homer begged his bread.”

These seven were Smyrna, Scio, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Argos, and Athens.

                Modern scholars have doubted whether the Homeric poems are the work of any single mind. This arises from the difficulty of believing that poems of such length could have been committed to writing at so early an age as that usually assigned to these, an age earlier than the date of any remaining inscriptions or coins, and when no materials capable of containing such long productions were yet introduced into use. On the other hand it is asked how poems of such length could have been handed down from age to age by means of the memory alone. This is answered by the statement that there was a professional body of men, called Rhapsodists, who recited the poems of others, and whose business it was to commit to memory and rehearse for pay the national and patriotic legends.

                The prevailing opinion of the learned, at this time, seems to be that the framework and much of the structure of the poems belong to Homer, but that there are numerous interpolations and additions by other hands.

                The date assigned to Homer, on the authority of Herodotus, is 850 BC.

 

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

By John Keats (1795-1821)

                Editor’s Note: The Chapman here referred to is George Chapman (1559-1634), a British classical scholar, translator, and poet. His was the first complete English translation of the works attributed to Homer – the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns.

 

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise —

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

 

“To Homer”

By John Keats (1795-1821)

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind; -- but then the veil was rent,

For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live,

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,

And precipices show untrodden green,

There is a budding morrow in midnight,

There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell

To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

The Apotheosis of Homer, a marble relief by Archelaus of Priene, dating from the 3rd century BCE, now in the British Museum. It shows Homer’s postmortal assumption into the divine realm as an immortal demigod. (Photo Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Omero, sovrano poeta.” (Dante)

“Homer, the sovereign poet.”

 

Excerpt from The Age of Fable (Chapter 1) by Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)

                The Muses were the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They presided over song, and prompted the memory. They were nine in number, to each of whom was assigned the presidence over some particular department of literature, art, or science. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Clio of history, Euterpe of lyric poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Terpsichore of choral dance and song, Erato of love poetry, Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of astronomy, Thalia of comedy.

 

Homeric Hymn #25: “To the Muses and Apollo”

Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1914)

                I will begin with the Muses and Apollo and Zeus. For it is through the Muses and Apollo that there are singers upon the Earth and players upon the lyre; but kings are from Zeus. Happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his lips.

                Hail, children of Zeus! Give honor to my song! And now I will remember you and another song also.

 

Orphic Hymn #75: “To the Muses”

Translated by Thomas Taylor (1758-1835)

Daughters of Jove, dire-sounding and divine,

Renowned Pierian, sweetly speaking Nine;

To those whose breasts your sacred furies fire

Much-formed, the objects of supreme desire:

Sources of blameless virtue to mankind,

Who form to excellence the youthful mind;

Who nurse the soul, and give her to descry

The paths of right with Reason's steady eye.

Commanding queens who lead to sacred light

The intellect refined from Error's night;

And to mankind each holy rite disclose,

For mystic knowledge from your nature flows.

Clio, and Erato, who charms the sight,

With thee Euterpe ministering delight:

Thalia flourishing, Polyhymnia famed,

Melpomene from skill in music named:

Terpsichore, Urania heavenly bright,

With thee who gavest me to behold the light.

Come, venerable, various, powers divine,

With favoring aspect on your mystics shine;

Bring glorious, ardent, lovely, famed desire,

And warm my bosom with your sacred fire.

 

Excerpt from “Table Talk”

By William Cowper (1731-1800)

Ages elapsed ere Homer’s lamp appeared,

And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard.

To carry nature lengths unknown before,

To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.

Thus genius rose and set at ordered times,

And shot a dayspring into distant climes,

Ennobling every region that he chose;

He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose,

And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past,

Emerged all splendor in our isle at last.

Thus lovely Halcyons dive into the main,

Then show far off their shining plumes again.

 

Sonnet #19: “On His Blindness”

By John Milton (1608-1674)

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts: who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”