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)

Juno & the 4th of July

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues:

As the U.S.A. celebrates its 240^th birthday on Monday, July 4^th, astronomers and space enthusiasts all over the world will be celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the Viking I probe’s landing on Mars (7/4/1976) AND the arrival of NASA’s Juno probe at Jupiter. Juno, named after the wife of Jupiter in Roman mythology, will examine the giant planet’s atmosphere and inner structure, as well as take photos of Jupiter and its manifold moons. The four largest moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) were discovered by Galileo in 1609 using his famous telescope. All of them, except for Io, probably harbor subsurface oceans of liquid water, which would be prime hunting grounds for life beyond our world. J

To celebrate Juno’s arrival at Jupiter, and planetary exploration in general, here are a couple of poems featuring the planet Jupiter, along with two ancient snippets of verse about Juno (a/k/a Hera in Greek mythology).

“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.

“Wanderers”

By Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Wide are the meadows of night,

And daisies are shining there,

Tossing their lovely dews,

Lustrous and fair;

And through these sweet fields go,

Wanderers amid the stars --

Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune,

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.

‘Tired in their silver, they move,

And circling, whisper and say,

“Fair are the blossoming meads of delight

Through which we stray.”

Editor’s Note:

          The annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are recurring themes throughout world literature. The Orphic poets – a guild of ancient Greek philosopher-bards named after their legendary founder, Orpheus – celebrated the changing of the seasons, the wonders of the natural world, and their lofty ideals in poetic chants, several dozen of which were preserved in written form after centuries of oral transmission. In the poetic forms of their prescientific age (ca. 1000-500 BCE), the Orphic poets chose to personify the forces of Nature, the celestial orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain how and why the natural world and the human social order function in the ways that they do.

          The Homeric school of poetry, founded perhaps by Homer himself (fl. ca. 8th century BCE), and carried forward by his disciples and successors for many generations, also produced poems that celebrated heroic deeds and the mysterious forces of Nature, many of which were personified as divine or semidivine beings. In both of the following poems, we can learn how the ancient Greek philosopher-bards perceived Hera/Juno, not as a jealous, vindictive person (as in literal interpretations of Greek mythology), but as a benevolent, life-giving aspect of Nature that contributed to the well-being of all life on Earth.

Orphic Hymn #15: “To Juno”

O Royal Juno of majestic mien,

Aerial-formed, divine, Jove’s blessed queen,

Throned in the bosom of caerulean air,

The race of mortals is thy constant care.

The cooling gales thy power alone inspires,

Which nourish life, which every life desires.

Mother of clouds and winds, from thee alone

Producing all things, mortal life is known:

All natures share thy temperament divine,

And universal sway alone is thine.

With sounding blasts of wind, the swelling sea

And rolling rivers roar, when shook by thee.

Come, blessed, divine, famed, almighty queen,

With aspect kind, rejoicing and serene.

Homeric Hymn #12: “To Hera” (a/k/a Juno)

I sing of golden-throned Hera whom Rhea bore. Queen of the immortals is she, surpassing all in beauty: she is the sister and the wife of loud-thundering Zeus, —the glorious one whom all the blessed throughout high Olympus reverence and honor even as Zeus who delights in thunder.

Happy 4^th of July weekend! J

Rob

Happy Summer Solstice! :)

Dear Family, Friends, & Colleagues:

Next Monday, June 20^th, is the Summer Solstice – the longest day and shortest night of the year. This June, it also features the Full Honey Moon, so called because this particular Full Moon is the southernmost Full Moon of the year and can take on a honey-gold appearance because of the summer haze that hugs the horizon on warm nights. The Summer Solstice is a traditional astronomical holiday that celebrates the long days and short nights of summertime with bonfires, dancing, feasting, and singing under the stars. In areas north of 50 degrees latitude, the night sky never becomes completely dark at the Summer Solstice, resulting in a faint twilight glow that lingers all through the night.

In European folklore, it was believed that the Summer Solstice was when all the Fair Folk (elves, faeries, dryads, etc.) held midnight revels to celebrate the high point of the year. (This belief is reflected in Shakespeare’s comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) So in this edition of Quotemail, we have some poems about things that one might expect to see on the night of the Summer Solstice – Fair Folk, fireflies, the Full Moon, and all the starry host!

“Escape at Bedtime”

By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

The lights from the parlor and kitchen shone out

Through the blinds and the windows and bars;

And high overhead and all moving about,

There were thousands of millions of stars.

There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,

Nor of people in church or the Park,

As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,

And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,

And the star of the sailor, and Mars,

These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall

Would be half full of water and stars.

They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,

And they soon had me packed into bed;

But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,

And the stars going round in my head.

“The Moon”

By Robert Louis Stevenson

The Moon has a face like the clock in the hall;

She shines on thieves on the garden wall,

On streets and fields and harbor quays,

And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,

The howling dog by the door of the house,

The bat that lies in bed at noon,

All love to be out by the light of the Moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day

Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;

And flowers and children close their eyes

Till up in the morning the Sun shall arise.

“The Firefly”

By Evaleen Stein (1863-1923)

Flash and flicker and fly away,
Trailing light as you flutter far,
Are you a lamp for the faeries, say?
Or a flake of fire from a falling star?

“Faery Rings”

By Evaleen Stein

[This poem explains how people before the Space Age explained the origin of “crop circles.” Truly, there’s nothing new under the sun! – RHC] :)

Softly in the gloaming
Flitting through the vale,
Faery folk are roaming
Over hill and dale.

Pixies in the hollow,
Elves upon the height,
Let us follow, follow
Through the paling light.

Follow, all unbidden,
To the grassy glade
Wrapped around and hidden
In the forest shade.

Hark the elfin tinkle
Of their little lutes!
Mark the golden twinkle
Of their faery flutes!

See them dancing, dancing,
While the silver moon
Tips their swiftly glancing
Little silver shoon!

Tripping, tripping lightly,
Where their footprints fall,
Look! the grass is brightly
Growing green and tall!

Springing close, unbroken,
In a faery ring,
For tomorrow’s token
Of their frolicking!

As has become traditional at the Summer Solstice, I’d like to dedicate this fortnight’s Quotemail to all my friends at the Center for Children’s Books at the University of Illinois. Please visit them @ http://ccb.lis.illinois.edu/ to learn more about their programs and publications highlighting the best new literature for children and young adults.

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone! :)

Rob

P.S. My Flag Day Quotemail wasn’t sent out on schedule due to technical difficulties with Microsoft Outlook. However, you can read it in its entirety on my blog @ http://rhcfortnightlyquotemail.blogspot.com.