Hollydaze Quotemail #1: The Phoenix Bird

Above: The resurrection of the phoenix bird, from the Aberdeen Codex (12th century CE).

 

Hello everyone –

This will be the first of three weekly Hollydaze Quotemails for the month of December. To start things off in a blaze of glory, I’d like to share with you a faery tale by Hans Christian Andersen and two poems about one of my favorite fantastic beasts: the phoenix bird!

 

“The Phoenix Bird” (1850)

By Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

(Slightly Modernized by the Editor)

Archived @ https://hca.gilead.org.il/phoenix.html

                In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born. His flight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were driven from Paradise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark into the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird perished in the flames; but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered aloft a new one — the one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable tells that he dwells in Arabia, and that every hundred years, he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.

                The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color, charming in song. When a mother sits by her infant’s cradle, he stands on the pillow, and, with his wings, forms a glory around the infant’s head. He flies through the chamber of content, and brings sunshine into it, and the violets on the humble table smell doubly sweet.

                But the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone. He wings his way in the glimmer of the Northern Lights over the plains of Lapland, and hops among the yellow flowers in the short Greenland summer. Beneath the copper mountains of Fablun, and England’s coal mines, he flies, in the shape of a dusty moth, over the hymnbook that rests on the knees of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf he floats down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindu maid gleams bright when she beholds him.

                The Phoenix bird, do you not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a chattering raven, and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees of wine; over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan’s red beak; on Shakespeare’s shoulder he sat in the guise of Odin’s raven, and whispered in the poet’s ear “Immortality!” and at the minstrels’ feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.

                The Phoenix bird, do you not know him? He sang to you the Marseillaise, and you kissed the pen that fell from his wing; he came in the radiance of Paradise, and perchance you did turn away from him towards the sparrow who sat with tinsel on his wings.

                The Bird of Paradise — renewed each century — born in flame, ending in flame! Your picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of the rich, but you yourself often fly around, lonely and disregarded, a myth — “The Phoenix of Arabia.”

                In Paradise, when you were born in the first rose, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, you received a kiss, and your right name was given you — your name, Poetry.

 

“Sonnet XVI: An Allusion to the Phoenix”

By Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

‘Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round

Of the birds’ kind, the Phoenix is alone,

Which best by you of living things is known;

None like to that, none like to you is found.

Your beauty is the hot and splendorous Sun,

The precious spices be your chaste desire,

Which being kindled by that heavenly fire,

Your life so like the Phoenix's begun;

Yourself thus burned in that sacred flame,

With so rare sweetness all the heavens perfuming,

Again increasing as you are consuming,

Only by dying born the very same;

And, winged by fame, you to the stars ascend,

So you of time shall live beyond the end.

 

“The Phoenix” by George Darley (1795-1846)

O Blest unfabled Incense Tree,

That burns in glorious Araby,

With red scent chalicing the air,

Till earth-life grow Elysian there!

Half buried to her flaming breast

In this bright tree, she makes her nest,

Hundred sunned Phoenix! When she must

Crumble at length to hoary dust!

Her gorgeous deathbed! Her rich pyre

Burnt up with aromatic fire!

Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!

Her birthplace when self-born again!

The mountainless green wilds among,

Here ends she her unechoing song!

With amber tears and odorous sighs

Mourned by the desert where she dies!

Laid like the young fawn mossily

In sun-green vales of Araby,

I woke hard by the Phoenix tree

That with shadeless boughs flamed over me,

And upward called for a dumb cry

With Moon-bread orbs of wonder I

Beheld the immortal Bird on high

Glassing the great Sun in her eye.

Steadfast she gazed upon his fire,

Still her destroyer and her sire!

As if to his her soul of flame

Had flown already whence it came;

Like those that sit and glare so still,

Intense with their death struggle, till

We touch, and curdle at their chill!

But breathing yet while she doth burn

The deathless Daughter of the Sun!

Slowly to crimson embers turn

The beauties of the brightsome one.

O'er the broad nest her silver wings

Shook down their wasteful glitterings;

Her brindled neck high arched in air

Like a small rainbow faded there;

But brighter glowed her plumy crown

Moldering to golden ashes down;

With fume of sweet woods, to the skies,

Pure as a Saint's adoring sighs,

Warm as a prayer in Paradise,

Her life-breath rose in sacrifice!

The while with shrill triumphant tone

Sounding aloud, aloft, alone,

Ceaseless her joyful deathwail she

Sang to departing Araby!

 

Editor’s Note:

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite my readers to visit my recently expanded blog at https://rhcfortnightlyquotemail.blogspot.com, which includes a new feature entitled “Winged Words Windsday” – an ongoing series of edutaining episodes, presented in both poetry and prose. I’ve also launched a new personal Twitter account at https://twitter.com/RHCLambengolmo. Today’s edition of Quotemail is actually a lead-in to next week’s edition of Winged Words Windsday, which will cast the spotlight onto the phoenix bird and its astronomical relationship to the Winter Solstice.

Until next time –

Rob 😊

 

#WingedWordsWindsday: 12/1/2021 -- Celebrate the Holidays with the Evenstar!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 5: December 1, 2021

 

 

Celebrating the Holidays with the Evenstar

 

Editor’s Note

                The planet Venus is shining brightly in the early evening sky, visible as a brilliant starlike object above the southwestern horizon as dusk turns into night. Venus is hard to miss, as it’s the third-brightest object in our sky, after the Sun and Moon. Here are some poems about the planet Venus in its aspect as the Evening Star.

 

“Ëala Ëarendel engla beorhtast,

ofer middan-geard monnum sended.”

“Hail Ëarendel, brightest of angels,

over Middle-Earth to humankind sent.”

à Cynewulf (Old English, 9th Century CE)

 

“To the Planet Venus”

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,

Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer

Thou com’st to man’s abode the spot grew dearer

Night after night? True is it Nature hides

Her treasures less and less. Man now presides

In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;

Science advances with gigantic strides;

But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?

Aught dost thou see, bright Star! of pure and wise

More than in humbler times graced human story;

That makes our hearts more apt to sympathize

With heaven, our souls more fit for future glory,

When Earth shall vanish from our closing eyes,

Ere we lie down in our last dormitory?

 

“To the Evening Star”

By William Blake (1757-1827)

Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,

Now, whilst the Sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the

Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew

On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,

Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,

And then the lion glares through the dun forest:

The fleeces of our flocks are covered with

Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

 

“The Evening Star”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,

Whose panes the sunken Sun incarnadines,

Like a fair lady at her casement, shines

The Evening Star, the star of love and rest!

And then anon she doth herself divest

Of all her radiant garments, and reclines

Behind the somber screen of yonder pines,

With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.

O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!

My Morning and my Evening Star of love!

My best and gentlest lady! even thus,

As that fair planet in the sky above,

Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,

And from thy darkened window fades the light.

 

“February Twilight”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I stood beside a hill

Smooth with new-laid snow,

A single star looked out

From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature

That saw what I could see –

I stood and watched the Evening Star

As long as it watched me.

 

“Evening Star”

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

I saw it from that hidden, silent place

Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in.

It shone through all the sunset’s glories — thin

At first, but with a slowly brightening face.

Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,

Beat on my sight as never it did of old;

The Evening Star — but grown a thousandfold

More haunting in this hush and solitude.

It traced strange pictures on the quivering air —

Half-memories that had always filled my eyes —

Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies

Of some dim life — I never could tell where.

But now I knew that through the cosmic dome

Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.

 

The planet Venus, as photographed by the space probe Mariner 10 in 1974. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain)

#WingedWordsWindsday: 11/24/2021 -- Welcome to Orion, Warrior-Hero of the Night Sky!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 4: November 24, 2021

 

 

Welcome to Orion, the Warrior-Hero of the Night Sky!

Editor’s Note

                The constellation Orion the Hunter is rising in the East by midevening now – one of the most prominent figures portrayed on the sky’s dome by our distant ancestors. Probably modeled on Gilgamesh, the legendary King of Uruk in Mesopotamia (early 3^rd millennium BCE), Orion is one of the most easily recognized constellations, appearing as a giant warrior-hero in the night sky. Here are three classic poems (followed by an article about Gilgamesh) to welcome Orion back into the evening sky.

 

“The Winter Scene: Part II” by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

Out from the silent portal of the hours,

When frosts are come and all the hosts put on.

Their burnished gear to march across the night

And o'er a darkened Earth in splendor shine,

Slowly above the world Orion wheels

His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill

And throbbing like a sea-light through the dusk,

Great Sirius rises in his flashing blue.

Lord of the winter night, august and pure,

Returning year on year untouched by time,

To hearten faith with thine unfaltering fire,

There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,

No ills that love cannot at last repair,

In the victorious progress of the soul.

 

“Stars” by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (1883-1922)

Now in the West the slender Moon lies low,

And now Orion glimmers through the trees,

Clearing the Earth with even pace and slow,

And now the stately-moving Pleiades,

In that soft infinite darkness overhead

Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.

And all the lonelier stars that have their place,

Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,

And planet-dust upon the edge of space,

Look down upon the fretful world, and I

Look up to outer vastness unafraid

And see the stars which sang when Earth was made.

 

“Winter Stars” (1920)

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I went out at night alone;

The young blood flowing beyond the sea

Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings —

I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head

From shadows shaken on the snow,

I saw Orion in the east

Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,

Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,

I watched Orion as a girl

Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,

The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,

All things are changed, save in the east

The faithful beauty of the stars.

 

“Leadership Lessons from Gilgamesh, the World’s First Superhero” by Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Expanded from Cursus Honorum VII: 4 (November 2006)

Read an English translation of the Gilgamesh Epic @ https://www.jasoncolavito.com/epic-of-gilgamesh.html and its epilogue at https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1813.htm.

                The Gilgamesh Epic is the oldest extant epic poem in world literature. Based on a series of Sumerian heroic poems from the late third millennium BCE, the epic was compiled in Mesopotamia during the 18th century BCE in the Akkadian language. The plot of the epic revolves around the adventures of Gilgamesh, an early King of the city-state of Uruk (reigned ca. 27th century BCE). The compilers of the epic wove together a tapestry of heroic tales that had gathered around Gilgamesh into a single action-packed narrative.

                According to the epic, Gilgamesh was the son of the mortal human King Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsumunak. The narrative opens with the story of how King Gilgamesh met the wildman Enkidu and describes how the two heroes be-came steadfast warrior-companions. The poem continues with exciting battle sequences, in which Gilgamesh and Enkidu destroyed the ogre Humbaba in the Cedar Forest of Lebanon and slew the Bull of Heaven when it went rampaging through the streets of Uruk.

                The gods were angered by the slaying of the Bull of Heaven, so they afflicted Enkidu with a fatal illness. Gilgamesh was devastated by his warrior-companion’s death and set off on a quest to find the secret of immortality, lest he suffer the same fate as Enkidu. The King of Uruk passed through many perils as he journeyed to a faraway eastern land, near the gates of the sunrise. There, Gilgamesh met Siduri (an immortal sage and seer), Urshanabi (the boatman who ferried Gilgamesh across the Waters of Death), and finally Utnapishtim (the Mesopotamian equivalent of Noah), who along with his wife had been granted immortality after the great Flood.

                Gilgamesh found and then lost the secret of eternal youth on his way back home to Uruk, but he returned to his native city a wiser man. He had discovered – through finding and loss – that true friendship can change one’s life forever. Gilgamesh had also learned that although death is unavoidable for mortals, we should celebrate life while it lasts and undertake heroic deeds to benefit others. At the end of his long reign as King of Uruk, Gilgamesh died and was buried, and the Divine Council of the gods made him the Prince of the Otherworld, where he was reunited with his beloved family and with his warrior-companion Enkidu. As the Prince of the Otherworld, he meted out justice and mercy to the dead based on the wisdom and understanding that he had gained during his lifetime on Earth.

                Gilgamesh has become a pop culture hero in recent decades, as his epic story (which was lost for over 2000 years) has now been translated into several modern languages. Whatever historical truth may lie behind his legend, Gilgamesh is remembered still today because the leadership lessons that he exemplified are timeless truths that appear again and again throughout world literature. Mortality will come to us all, Gilgamesh would say, but while life lasts, let us spend it in service to others through heroic deeds and teaching wisdom by example. As the Akkadian epic poets wrote of the world’s first superhero, some 4000 years ago:

 

“He who the heart of all matters has proven, let him teach the nation, He who all knowledge possesses, therein shall he school all the people, He shall his wisdom impart and so shall they share it together. Gilgamesh — he was the Master of wisdom, with knowledge of all things, He it was who discovered the secret concealed. Aye, he handed down the tradition relating to things prediluvian, He went on a journey afar, all aweary and worn with his toiling. He engraved on a tablet of stone all the travail.”

à Prologue to the Gilgamesh Epic (Slightly Modernized by the Editor from the 1929 Translation by R. Campbell Thompson)

 

The Editor (costumed as Taliesin, a time-traveling bard from Welsh mythology) performed an original story entitled “The Lost Years of Gilgamesh: Before the Epic” at the iSchool’s annual Storytelling Festival in April 2017. The constellation Orion (at right) was identified in ancient Mesopotamian skylore with Gilgamesh, the world’s first superhero. (Photo Credit: iSchool Staff)

Thanksgiving Week 2021

Hello Everyone –

On this 400^th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth Colony, we remember this historic proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, inviting Americans to celebrate the annual Thanksgiving holiday, despite the ravages of the ongoing Civil War, on Thursday, November 26, 1863. Here is the official invitation, given by President Lincoln several weeks earlier, to cement the national Thanksgiving holiday on the last Thursday in November (where it remained until 1940, when it was moved slightly earlier to the fourth Thursday in November, as proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt and later approved by Congress).

 

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

 

We close this edition of Quotemail with a popular song from President Lincoln’s time, to remind us to be grateful for all the everyday blessings that we enjoy.

 

“Simple Gifts” (1848)

By Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr. (1797-1882)

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.
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

Quotemail will return in 2 weeks, and dispatches will be sent out on each of the first three weekends in December to help spread holiday cheer amid the busyness of the semester’s end. Wishing all our readers a relaxing and enjoyable Fall Break, and a happy holiday season to follow.

Rob 😊