THE POET’S DREM
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
On a poet’s lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to loom
The lake reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!
বুধবার, ২১ এপ্রিল, ২০১০
THE INVITATION
THE INVITATION
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Best and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn spring
Though the winter wandering,
Found, it seems the halcyon Morn
To hoar February;
Bending frum Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kiss’d the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams he free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May.
Strew’d flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom bhou smiles, dear.
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
Radiant Sister of the Day
Awake! Arise! And come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at out feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Best and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn spring
Though the winter wandering,
Found, it seems the halcyon Morn
To hoar February;
Bending frum Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kiss’d the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams he free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May.
Strew’d flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom bhou smiles, dear.
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
Radiant Sister of the Day
Awake! Arise! And come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at out feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.
LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR
LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I arise from drams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And spirit I my feet
Has led me- who knows how?
To thy chamber window sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale
My cheek is cold and white alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
O! Press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.
Done
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I arise from drams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And spirit I my feet
Has led me- who knows how?
To thy chamber window sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale
My cheek is cold and white alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
O! Press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.
Done
THE RIDER AT THE GATE
THE RIDER AT THE GATE
John Masefield
A windy night was blowing on Rome,
The cressets guttered on Caesar’s home,
The fish-boats, moored at the bridge, were breaking
The rush of the river to yellow from.
The hinges whine to the shutters shaking,
When clip-clop-clep came a horse hoof raking.
The stones of the rode at Caesar’s gate:
The spear butts jarred at the guard’s awaking.
“Who goes there?” said the guard at the gate.
“What is the news, that you ride so late?”
News most pressing, that must be spoken
To Caesar alone, and that cannot wall.”
The Caesar sleeps: you must show a token
That the news and whence do you come ?
For no light cause may his sleep be broken.”
“Out of the dark of the sands I come.
From the dark of death , with news for Rome.
A word so fell that it must be uttered
Though it strike the soul of the Caesar dumb.”
Caesar turned in his bed and muttered.
With a struggle for breath the lamp flame guttered:
Calpurnia heard her husband moan:
“The house is falling.
The beaten men come into their own.”
“Speak your word,” said the guard at the gate;
“Yes but bear it to Caesar straight;
Say, “ you murderer’s knives are honing.
Your killer’s gang is lying in wait.”
“Out of the wind that is blowing and moaning,
Through the city palace and the country loaning,
I cry For world’s sake, Caesar, beware,
And take this warning as my atoning.
“Beware of the Court of the palace stair,
Of the downcast friend who speaks so fair,
Keep from the senate, for Death is going
On many men’s feet to meet you there.
“I who am dead, have ways of knowing
Of the crop of death that the quick are sowing
I, who was Pompey, cry it aloud
From the dark of death from the wind blowing,
, who was Pompey, once was proud,
Now I lie in the sand without a shroud;
I cry to Caesar out of my pain;
Caesar, beware your death is vowed.
The light grew grey on the window-pane
The windcocks swung in a burst of rain,
The window of Caesar flung unshuttered,
The horse-hoofs died into wind again,
Caesar turned in his bed and muttered,
With a struggled for breath the lamp-flame guttered!
Calpurnia heard her husband moan;
“The house is falling
The beaten men come into their own.”
John Masefield
A windy night was blowing on Rome,
The cressets guttered on Caesar’s home,
The fish-boats, moored at the bridge, were breaking
The rush of the river to yellow from.
The hinges whine to the shutters shaking,
When clip-clop-clep came a horse hoof raking.
The stones of the rode at Caesar’s gate:
The spear butts jarred at the guard’s awaking.
“Who goes there?” said the guard at the gate.
“What is the news, that you ride so late?”
News most pressing, that must be spoken
To Caesar alone, and that cannot wall.”
The Caesar sleeps: you must show a token
That the news and whence do you come ?
For no light cause may his sleep be broken.”
“Out of the dark of the sands I come.
From the dark of death , with news for Rome.
A word so fell that it must be uttered
Though it strike the soul of the Caesar dumb.”
Caesar turned in his bed and muttered.
With a struggle for breath the lamp flame guttered:
Calpurnia heard her husband moan:
“The house is falling.
The beaten men come into their own.”
“Speak your word,” said the guard at the gate;
“Yes but bear it to Caesar straight;
Say, “ you murderer’s knives are honing.
Your killer’s gang is lying in wait.”
“Out of the wind that is blowing and moaning,
Through the city palace and the country loaning,
I cry For world’s sake, Caesar, beware,
And take this warning as my atoning.
“Beware of the Court of the palace stair,
Of the downcast friend who speaks so fair,
Keep from the senate, for Death is going
On many men’s feet to meet you there.
“I who am dead, have ways of knowing
Of the crop of death that the quick are sowing
I, who was Pompey, cry it aloud
From the dark of death from the wind blowing,
, who was Pompey, once was proud,
Now I lie in the sand without a shroud;
I cry to Caesar out of my pain;
Caesar, beware your death is vowed.
The light grew grey on the window-pane
The windcocks swung in a burst of rain,
The window of Caesar flung unshuttered,
The horse-hoofs died into wind again,
Caesar turned in his bed and muttered,
With a struggled for breath the lamp-flame guttered!
Calpurnia heard her husband moan;
“The house is falling
The beaten men come into their own.”
LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR
LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I arise from drams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And spirit I my feet
Has led me- who knows how?
To thy chamber window sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale
My cheek is cold and white alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
O! Press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I arise from drams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dreams of thee,
And spirit I my feet
Has led me- who knows how?
To thy chamber window sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale
My cheek is cold and white alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
O! Press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.
THE PORTER AND THE THREE GIRLS OF BAGHDAD
THE PORTER AND THE THREE GIRLS OF BAGHDAD
N. J. DAWOOD
Once upon a time there lived in the city of Baghdad a young bachelor who was by trade a porter.
One day, as he sat in the marker-place leaning idly against his basket, a young woman, dressed in rare silks and cloaked in a gold-embroidered mantle of Mosul brocade, stopped before him and gently raised her veil. Beneath it there showed dark eyes with long lashes and lineaments of perfect beauty.
“Life up your basket, porter,” she said in a sweet voice, “and follow me.”
At once the porter took up his basket and followed her, thinking to himself; “ This is indeed a blessed day!” Until she stopped at the door of a house and knocked. The door was opened by a Christian, who gave her, in return for a piece of gold, a measure of olives and two casks of wine. These she put into the basket and said to the porter, “Follow me.”
“By Allah,” thought the porter, “this is surely my lucky day!”
He took up his basket and followed her until she stopped at a fruiterer’s, where she bought Syrian apples an Othmani quinces, Peaches from and Sultani citrons, sweet-scented myrtle and henna flowers, chamomile, anemones, violets, sweet-briar and pomegranate-blossom.
All these she put into the basket and again said to the porter, “Follow me.”
She stopped at a butcher’s stall and said to him “cut me ten pounds of meat.” She wrapped the meat in a large banana-leaf and putting it into the basket, ordered the porter to follow her. She next made her way to a grocer’s shop, where she bought pistachios, nuts and raisins, and then to a confectioner’s where she chose a platter of dainty sweetmeats stuffed with almonds and flavored with musk; lemon cakes, pastry, crescents. Zainab’s combs and honey tarts. And all these she placed into the porter’s basket.
“Had you told me,” observed the porter, “ I would have brought a mule to carry all these things!”
The young woman smiled at the porter’s remark and bidding him bold his tongue, stopped at a perfume-seller’s and bought tem different essences, rose-water, willow water and musk-rose dew, tow loaves of sugar, a sprinkling bottle, frankincense, aloe-wood, ambergris and candles of Alexandrine followed her until she came to a magnificent, lofty house facing a great courtyard. Its doors were of ebony plated with gold.
N. J. DAWOOD
Once upon a time there lived in the city of Baghdad a young bachelor who was by trade a porter.
One day, as he sat in the marker-place leaning idly against his basket, a young woman, dressed in rare silks and cloaked in a gold-embroidered mantle of Mosul brocade, stopped before him and gently raised her veil. Beneath it there showed dark eyes with long lashes and lineaments of perfect beauty.
“Life up your basket, porter,” she said in a sweet voice, “and follow me.”
At once the porter took up his basket and followed her, thinking to himself; “ This is indeed a blessed day!” Until she stopped at the door of a house and knocked. The door was opened by a Christian, who gave her, in return for a piece of gold, a measure of olives and two casks of wine. These she put into the basket and said to the porter, “Follow me.”
“By Allah,” thought the porter, “this is surely my lucky day!”
He took up his basket and followed her until she stopped at a fruiterer’s, where she bought Syrian apples an Othmani quinces, Peaches from and Sultani citrons, sweet-scented myrtle and henna flowers, chamomile, anemones, violets, sweet-briar and pomegranate-blossom.
All these she put into the basket and again said to the porter, “Follow me.”
She stopped at a butcher’s stall and said to him “cut me ten pounds of meat.” She wrapped the meat in a large banana-leaf and putting it into the basket, ordered the porter to follow her. She next made her way to a grocer’s shop, where she bought pistachios, nuts and raisins, and then to a confectioner’s where she chose a platter of dainty sweetmeats stuffed with almonds and flavored with musk; lemon cakes, pastry, crescents. Zainab’s combs and honey tarts. And all these she placed into the porter’s basket.
“Had you told me,” observed the porter, “ I would have brought a mule to carry all these things!”
The young woman smiled at the porter’s remark and bidding him bold his tongue, stopped at a perfume-seller’s and bought tem different essences, rose-water, willow water and musk-rose dew, tow loaves of sugar, a sprinkling bottle, frankincense, aloe-wood, ambergris and candles of Alexandrine followed her until she came to a magnificent, lofty house facing a great courtyard. Its doors were of ebony plated with gold.
A HOMAGE TO PRESIDET ROOSEVELT
A HOMAGE TO PRESIDET ROOSEVELT
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
My friendship with the great men to whose work and fame we pay our tribute today began and ripened during this war. I had met him but only for a few minutes after the close of the last war and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September 1939, he telegraphed inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters at any time I felt inclined. Havein obtained the permission of the Prime Minister. I did so Knowing President Roosevelt’s keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs and about the various actions including especially the action of the pate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.
When I become prime Minister and the war broke out in all its hideous fury when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and to me most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him. These messages showed on falling off in his accustomed clear vision and vigor upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which of course was greatly increased after the United States entry into war comprises to and for between us, over 1,700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages and the majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of Heads of Governments only after official solutions have not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our none meetings – at Tehran, two at Quebec and last of all at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact; during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House or at his home at Hyde Park or on his retreat in the Blue Mountains which he called Shangri-la.
I conceived and admiration for him as a statesmen a man of affairs and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright inspiring character and outlook and a personal regard-affection I must say for him beyond my power to express today. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but added to these were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is indeed a loss a biter loss to humanity that those heart-beats are stilled for ever.
President Roosevelt’s physical afflictions lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of herd ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, of will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife whose high ideals matched in with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out today in all fullness.
There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience then most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all the power such precautionary military preparations as peacetime opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment’s doubt as the quarrel opened upon which side his sympathies lay. The fall of France and what seemed to most people outside this inland the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony, although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940-41, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and above all, of the Londoners, kindled fires American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell’s victories- all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him-the apprehension widespread in the United Stares that we should e invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. it was in February that the president sent to England the late Mr. Wendell Willkie, who although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt as he did on many important points, Mr. Willkie brought a letter from Mr. Roosevelt, which the president had written in his own hand and this letter contained the famous limes of Longfellow;
“…………………..Sail on O ship of State!
Sail in, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”
At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called lend- Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and for all the purposes of the war-effort to make us as it were a much more numerous community. In that antumn I met the president for the first time during the war at Argentina in Newfoundland, and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter and which will I trust long remain a guide fir both our peoples and for other peoples of the world.
All this time in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing g their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washngton, japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United Statrtes and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointment, but always with a broadening measure of success, I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding on the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Tehran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see.
But at Yalta I noticed that the president was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him, but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a far-way look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the president is to sign, may be, a hundred or two State papers with his own hand everyday, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him “ he had finished his mail.” That portion of his day’s work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers sailors and airmen, who side by side with ours are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his! He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toil. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him.
In the days of peace he had broadened and stabilized the foundations of American life and union. In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left had she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right. On the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan and all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.
But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a luster to this power and pomp and warlike might, a luster which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task its appointed end. For us, it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
My friendship with the great men to whose work and fame we pay our tribute today began and ripened during this war. I had met him but only for a few minutes after the close of the last war and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September 1939, he telegraphed inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters at any time I felt inclined. Havein obtained the permission of the Prime Minister. I did so Knowing President Roosevelt’s keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs and about the various actions including especially the action of the pate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.
When I become prime Minister and the war broke out in all its hideous fury when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and to me most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him. These messages showed on falling off in his accustomed clear vision and vigor upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which of course was greatly increased after the United States entry into war comprises to and for between us, over 1,700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages and the majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of Heads of Governments only after official solutions have not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our none meetings – at Tehran, two at Quebec and last of all at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact; during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House or at his home at Hyde Park or on his retreat in the Blue Mountains which he called Shangri-la.
I conceived and admiration for him as a statesmen a man of affairs and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright inspiring character and outlook and a personal regard-affection I must say for him beyond my power to express today. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but added to these were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is indeed a loss a biter loss to humanity that those heart-beats are stilled for ever.
President Roosevelt’s physical afflictions lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of herd ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, of will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife whose high ideals matched in with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out today in all fullness.
There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience then most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all the power such precautionary military preparations as peacetime opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment’s doubt as the quarrel opened upon which side his sympathies lay. The fall of France and what seemed to most people outside this inland the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony, although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940-41, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and above all, of the Londoners, kindled fires American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell’s victories- all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him-the apprehension widespread in the United Stares that we should e invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. it was in February that the president sent to England the late Mr. Wendell Willkie, who although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt as he did on many important points, Mr. Willkie brought a letter from Mr. Roosevelt, which the president had written in his own hand and this letter contained the famous limes of Longfellow;
“…………………..Sail on O ship of State!
Sail in, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”
At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called lend- Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and for all the purposes of the war-effort to make us as it were a much more numerous community. In that antumn I met the president for the first time during the war at Argentina in Newfoundland, and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter and which will I trust long remain a guide fir both our peoples and for other peoples of the world.
All this time in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing g their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washngton, japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United Statrtes and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointment, but always with a broadening measure of success, I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding on the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Tehran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see.
But at Yalta I noticed that the president was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him, but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a far-way look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the president is to sign, may be, a hundred or two State papers with his own hand everyday, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him “ he had finished his mail.” That portion of his day’s work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers sailors and airmen, who side by side with ours are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his! He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toil. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him.
In the days of peace he had broadened and stabilized the foundations of American life and union. In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left had she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right. On the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan and all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.
But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a luster to this power and pomp and warlike might, a luster which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task its appointed end. For us, it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.
PRECOCIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
PRECOCIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
UEVFENT YEVTUSHENKO
In 1944 I was living alone in an empty apartment in a small quiet Moscow street. Chetvertaya Meshchanskaya.
My parents were divorced. My father was somewhere in Kazakhstan with his new wife and their two children. I seldom received letters from him.
My mother was at the front. She had given up her work as a geologist to become a singer and was giving concerts for the troops.
My education was left to the street. The street taught me to swear, smoke, spit elegantly through my teeth and to keep my fists up, always ready for a fight-a habit I have kept.
I realized that what mattered in the struggle for existence was to overcome my fear of those who were stronger.
The ruler of our street. Chetvertaya Meshchanskaya, was a boy of about sixteen who was nicknamed Red.
Red’s shoulders were incredibly broad for a boy of his age.
Red walked masterfully up and down our street. His legs wide apart and with a slightly rolling gait, like a seaman on the deck of his ship.
From under his peaked cap, always worn back to front his forelock tumbled down in a fiery cascade, and out of his round pockmarked face, green eyes, like a cat’s sparkled with scorn for everything and like a cat’s sparkled with scorn for everything and everyone crossing his path. Two or three lieutenants, in peaked caps back to front lime Red’s trotted at his heels.
Red could stop any boy and say impressively the one word money. His lieutenants would turn out the boy’s pockets and if he resisted they gave him a real beating.
Everyone was afraid of Red. I too was afraid. I knew he carried heavy brass knuckles in his pocket.
I wanted to conquer my fear of Red.
So I wrote a poem about him.
By the next day the whole street knew the piece by heart and relished it with triumphant hatred.
One morning on my way to school I suddenly came upon Red and his lieutenants. His eyes seemed to bore through me, ‘Ah the poet’ he drawled smiling crookedly. So you write verses. Do they rhyme?
Red’s hand darted into his pocket and came out armed with its brass knuckles; it flashed like lightning and struck my head. I fell down streaming with blood and lost consciousness.
This was my first payment as a poet.
I spent several days in bed.
When I went out, with instinctive fear but lost and took to my heels.
I ran all the way home. There I rolled on my bed, biting my pillow and pounding it with my fists in shame and impotent fury at my cowardice.
But then I made up my mind to vanquish it at whatever cost.
I went into training with parallel bars and weights and after very session I would feel my muscles. They were getting harder, but slowly. Then I remembered something I had read in a book about a miraculous Japanese method of wrestling which gave an advantage to the weak over the strong. I sacrificed a week’s ration card for a text book in jujitsu.
For three weeks I hardly left home-I rained with two other boys. Finally I felt I was ready and went out.
Red was sitting on the lawn in our yard, playing Twenty one with his lieutenants. He was absorbed in the game.
Fear was still in me and it ordered me to turn back. But I went up to the players and kicked the cards aside with me fool.
Red looked up, surprised at my impudence after my recent flight.
He got up slowly. You looking for more? He asked menacingly.
As before his hand dived into his pocket for the brass knuckles. But I made a quick jabbing movement and Red howling with pain rolled on the ground. Bnewildered he got up and came at me swinging his head furiously from side to side like a bull.
I caught his wrist and squeezed slowly as I had read in the book until the brass knuckles dropped from his limp fingers. Nursing his hand Red fell down again. He was sobbing and smearing the tears over his pockmarked face with his grimy fist. His lieutenants discreetly withdrew.
Hat day Red ceased to rule our street.
And from that day on I knew certain that there is no need to fear the strong. All our needs is to know the method of overcoming them. There is a special jujitsu for every strong man.
What I also learned that day was that, if I wished to be a poet, I must not only write poems but also know how to stand up for what I have written.
UEVFENT YEVTUSHENKO
In 1944 I was living alone in an empty apartment in a small quiet Moscow street. Chetvertaya Meshchanskaya.
My parents were divorced. My father was somewhere in Kazakhstan with his new wife and their two children. I seldom received letters from him.
My mother was at the front. She had given up her work as a geologist to become a singer and was giving concerts for the troops.
My education was left to the street. The street taught me to swear, smoke, spit elegantly through my teeth and to keep my fists up, always ready for a fight-a habit I have kept.
I realized that what mattered in the struggle for existence was to overcome my fear of those who were stronger.
The ruler of our street. Chetvertaya Meshchanskaya, was a boy of about sixteen who was nicknamed Red.
Red’s shoulders were incredibly broad for a boy of his age.
Red walked masterfully up and down our street. His legs wide apart and with a slightly rolling gait, like a seaman on the deck of his ship.
From under his peaked cap, always worn back to front his forelock tumbled down in a fiery cascade, and out of his round pockmarked face, green eyes, like a cat’s sparkled with scorn for everything and like a cat’s sparkled with scorn for everything and everyone crossing his path. Two or three lieutenants, in peaked caps back to front lime Red’s trotted at his heels.
Red could stop any boy and say impressively the one word money. His lieutenants would turn out the boy’s pockets and if he resisted they gave him a real beating.
Everyone was afraid of Red. I too was afraid. I knew he carried heavy brass knuckles in his pocket.
I wanted to conquer my fear of Red.
So I wrote a poem about him.
By the next day the whole street knew the piece by heart and relished it with triumphant hatred.
One morning on my way to school I suddenly came upon Red and his lieutenants. His eyes seemed to bore through me, ‘Ah the poet’ he drawled smiling crookedly. So you write verses. Do they rhyme?
Red’s hand darted into his pocket and came out armed with its brass knuckles; it flashed like lightning and struck my head. I fell down streaming with blood and lost consciousness.
This was my first payment as a poet.
I spent several days in bed.
When I went out, with instinctive fear but lost and took to my heels.
I ran all the way home. There I rolled on my bed, biting my pillow and pounding it with my fists in shame and impotent fury at my cowardice.
But then I made up my mind to vanquish it at whatever cost.
I went into training with parallel bars and weights and after very session I would feel my muscles. They were getting harder, but slowly. Then I remembered something I had read in a book about a miraculous Japanese method of wrestling which gave an advantage to the weak over the strong. I sacrificed a week’s ration card for a text book in jujitsu.
For three weeks I hardly left home-I rained with two other boys. Finally I felt I was ready and went out.
Red was sitting on the lawn in our yard, playing Twenty one with his lieutenants. He was absorbed in the game.
Fear was still in me and it ordered me to turn back. But I went up to the players and kicked the cards aside with me fool.
Red looked up, surprised at my impudence after my recent flight.
He got up slowly. You looking for more? He asked menacingly.
As before his hand dived into his pocket for the brass knuckles. But I made a quick jabbing movement and Red howling with pain rolled on the ground. Bnewildered he got up and came at me swinging his head furiously from side to side like a bull.
I caught his wrist and squeezed slowly as I had read in the book until the brass knuckles dropped from his limp fingers. Nursing his hand Red fell down again. He was sobbing and smearing the tears over his pockmarked face with his grimy fist. His lieutenants discreetly withdrew.
Hat day Red ceased to rule our street.
And from that day on I knew certain that there is no need to fear the strong. All our needs is to know the method of overcoming them. There is a special jujitsu for every strong man.
What I also learned that day was that, if I wished to be a poet, I must not only write poems but also know how to stand up for what I have written.
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
SIDNY WILLIUM PORTER
ONE DOLLER AND EIGHTY- SEVEN SENTS. That is all, And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one two at a time by bulldogging the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it, which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $ 8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description but it certainly had that word in the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name Mr. James Dillingham Young.
The Dillingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was shrunk to $ 30 per week. Now when the income was shrunk to $ 20 the letters of Dillingham looked blurred as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. but whenever Mr. James Dillingham young came home and reached his flat above he was called Jim and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham young, already introduced to you ad Della. Which is all very good?
Della finish her cry attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fencer in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas day and she had only $ 1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with his result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $ 1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many happy hours she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling- something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $ 8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della being slender had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood for the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty second. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham young’s in which they both tool a mighty pride. One was Jims gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft? Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate her, majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had king solemn been the janitor, with all his treasure piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear of two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket: on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: Mum. Sofronie. Hair Goods of all kinds. One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, painting, Madame large, too white, chilly hardly looked the sofronie.
Will you buy my hair, asked Della?
I buy hair, said Madame. Take your hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.
Down rippled the brown cascade.
Twenty dollars, said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.
Give it to me quick, said Della.
Oh and next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design. Properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation-as all good things should do. It was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it. She knew that it must be Jim’s. its was like him Quietness and value the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leathers strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love which is always a tremendous task, dear friends a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close lying curls that made her like wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
If Jim doesn’t kill me, she said to herself. Before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do- oh! What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob cabin in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered;
Please God, make him think I am still pretty; The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious, poor fellow, he was only twenty-two and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her, it was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of his sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression of his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
Jim darling, she cried, don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again-you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Marry Christmas! Jim and let’s be happy, you don’t know what a nice- what a beautiful nice gift I’ve got for you.
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labour.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. Don’t you like me just as well anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?
Jim looked about the room curiously.
You say your hair is gone? He said, with an air almost of idiocy.
You needn’t look for it, said Della. It’s sold, I tell you- sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. May be the hairs of my head were numbered, she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat’s pocket and threw it upon the table.
Don’t make any mistake. Della he said, about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave of a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.
White fingers and nimble tore at the strange and paper. And then an ecstatic of joy; and then alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay the combs- the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims – just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with Jim eyes and a smile and say; my hair grows so fast, Jim!
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, oh, oh!
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present she held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent sprite.
Isn’t it a dandy Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch; I want to see how it likes on it.
Instead of obeying Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
Della, said he, let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.
The magi, as you knew, were wise men wonderfully wise men-who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were on doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
SIDNY WILLIUM PORTER
ONE DOLLER AND EIGHTY- SEVEN SENTS. That is all, And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one two at a time by bulldogging the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it, which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $ 8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description but it certainly had that word in the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name Mr. James Dillingham Young.
The Dillingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was shrunk to $ 30 per week. Now when the income was shrunk to $ 20 the letters of Dillingham looked blurred as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. but whenever Mr. James Dillingham young came home and reached his flat above he was called Jim and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham young, already introduced to you ad Della. Which is all very good?
Della finish her cry attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fencer in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas day and she had only $ 1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with his result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $ 1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many happy hours she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling- something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $ 8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della being slender had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood for the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty second. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham young’s in which they both tool a mighty pride. One was Jims gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft? Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate her, majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had king solemn been the janitor, with all his treasure piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear of two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket: on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: Mum. Sofronie. Hair Goods of all kinds. One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, painting, Madame large, too white, chilly hardly looked the sofronie.
Will you buy my hair, asked Della?
I buy hair, said Madame. Take your hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.
Down rippled the brown cascade.
Twenty dollars, said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.
Give it to me quick, said Della.
Oh and next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design. Properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation-as all good things should do. It was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it. She knew that it must be Jim’s. its was like him Quietness and value the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leathers strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love which is always a tremendous task, dear friends a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close lying curls that made her like wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
If Jim doesn’t kill me, she said to herself. Before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do- oh! What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob cabin in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered;
Please God, make him think I am still pretty; The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious, poor fellow, he was only twenty-two and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her, it was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of his sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression of his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
Jim darling, she cried, don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again-you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Marry Christmas! Jim and let’s be happy, you don’t know what a nice- what a beautiful nice gift I’ve got for you.
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labour.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. Don’t you like me just as well anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?
Jim looked about the room curiously.
You say your hair is gone? He said, with an air almost of idiocy.
You needn’t look for it, said Della. It’s sold, I tell you- sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. May be the hairs of my head were numbered, she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat’s pocket and threw it upon the table.
Don’t make any mistake. Della he said, about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave of a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.
White fingers and nimble tore at the strange and paper. And then an ecstatic of joy; and then alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay the combs- the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims – just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with Jim eyes and a smile and say; my hair grows so fast, Jim!
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, oh, oh!
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present she held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent sprite.
Isn’t it a dandy Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch; I want to see how it likes on it.
Instead of obeying Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
Della, said he, let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.
The magi, as you knew, were wise men wonderfully wise men-who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were on doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
READING FOR PLEASURE
READING FOR PLEASURE
L.A.G.Strong
To my mind the only sensible reason for reading anything is because we enjoy it or hope to enjoy it. Of course, pleasure covers a whole variety of feelings and shades of feeling. But it is my strangest belief about reading that one should read only what one likes, and because one likes it. I am taking, of course, of our private reading. When we are studying special subjects. Or working for examinations, we obviously have to read in other circumstances.
It may seem odd to insist that one should only read because one like it; but people read for such a queer variety of reasons. There are people who read a book not because they enjoy the book, but because they want to be able to say that they have read it. They want to be in the swim. Ten to one when they read a book for those reasons, they only skim through it, because all they really want do is to be able to talk as if they had read it. There are people who set themselves down to read a book because they think it will do them good. They make a duty of it a kind of penance; sometimes they go so far as to set themselves too many pages at a time. If it is some kind if technical book which they are reading in order to improve their knowledge well and good. But if it is a novel or a poem, or any part of what we call “English Literature” then the person who is reading it in this way is wasting his or her time.
You can not take a good book as if it were medicine. It is rude to the book and very silly from our own point of view, by approaching it in that way, you make sure of losing anything it might have to give you. You only begin to get good from a book when your sprit and the book’s sprit come together. A book is like a living person. You must meet it, is as a friend and actively like it, if any good is to pass between you.
A reason why people at school read books is to please their teacher. The teacher has said that this, that, or the other is a good book and that it is a sign of good taste to enjoy it. So a number of boys and girls, anxious to please their teacher get the book and read it. Two or three of them may genuinely like it, for its own sake, and be grateful to the teacher for putting it in their way. But many will not honestly like it, or will persuade themselves that they like it. And that does a great deal of harm. The people who cannot like the book run the risk of two things happening to them: either they are put off the idea of the book–let us suppose the book was David Copperfield–either they are put off the idea of classical novels, or they take a dislike to Dickens and decide firmly never to waste their time on anything of the sort again: or they get guilty conscience about the whole thing. They feel that they do not like what they ought to like and that therefore there is something wrong with them.
They are quite mistaken of course. There is nothing wrong with them. The mistake has all been in the teacher’s side. What has happened is that they have been shoved up against a book before they were ready for it. It is like giving a young child food only suitable for an adult. Result–indigestion violent stomach-ache and a rooted dislike of that article of food for evermore.
Still, I am not sure that even that is not better than the fate of the people who manage to persuade themselves that they enjoy the book. What happens to them is truly terrible. Once they get into the way of this kind of thing, they do not know what they think. Their real feelings, their real tastes are all Stoppard down under this sense of duty, which tells them that whatever Mr. Thingamabob or Miss Whatshername recommends to them is good, and that therefore, of course, they like it.
That has happened to a very great umber of men and women of my acquaintance. They do not know what is good; they know only what is supposed to be good. They do not know what they like: they know only what they ought to like. If you show them a book or a picture, if you play them a piece of music or put a record on the gramophone, you see them desperately trying to recognize it if it is music and looking quickly to see the author’s name if it is a book, because, until they have seen the label, they do not know whether they ought to like it or not. Give them something without a label and they are lost. They have long been without any power they ever had to judge a thing on its merits.
Now for a question on which people quarrel violently. Does it do any good to advice people to read certain books? What is the effect produced when a teacher or anybody else says. You ought to read Vanity Fair or the Old Curiosity shop”. Or whatever the name of the book may be? Does it make the average person want to read the book of does it put him or her right off?
The answer will depend in the first place, upon the person who give the advice and in the second place upon the person to whom the advice is given. It is not a subject upon which one can lay down the law. One way or another; and I cannot pretend to do more than give my own beliefs.
I do however; remember very clearly my own experiences and my own reading from a very early age. You may, or may not, be like me –but I confess that in the matter of reading at any rate, I have always been a bit contrary, I have always preferred to go my own way.
When I was a very small boy my ankles were weak and, I was slow in learning to walk. As a result, I learned to read sooner than most children. My grandmother used to read a great deal to me- school stories, all very virtuous were the hero and bad lad was terribly bad, and come to an edifying end in the last chapter but one. From these stories we came to Eric or Little by Little and St. Winfred’s which were similar in moral tone but much better written.
As I grew older, and chose my own reading. I rushed to comic papers and penny bloods. The youth of today can have no idea what a wonderful period that was for penny –bloods …….. It was the golden age of thrillers, and I read them all, I have got some still in my bookcase. Only a few, but I treasure them.
Some good people, when they saw me reading these in the train on my way to school, would shake their heads, and say they wondered my presents allow it. But my father a man of great sympathy and good sense took a wise and tolerant view. He argued that, if I had any sense, I would grow out of this type of reading; if I had not, it did not matter what I read, as I should be a fool anyway.
Beside he argued if he forbade me to read these things I should want to read them all the more, because they would have the charm of being illegal. He was proved right on that point. Once my mother and grandmother, horrified by a particularly lurid picture on the cover of one of my Claude Duval books, told me to tear it up. I could not board in my grandmother’s summer house, where it stayed for two or three years, and received many secret and guilty reading it would never have had otherwise; for my father was right in the other point too, I had grown out of my taste for highwaymen and gone o to other books. But this forbidden book lasted linger than all the rest, because it was forbidden.
I have never regretted my penny- dreadful period. Indeed, I owed my jock Sheppard library the discovery of one good writer at least. That was Harrison Ainsworth, whose novel about Jack Sheppard I found in my boarding school library during my first few days there and jumped to it with a homesick thrill. I liked it, and proceeded to read all the other Harrison Ainsworth I could fond.
Beside penny –bloods, I read other stories of adventure; and as I grew a little older, I begin to realize that they were better written than the penny –bloods. They were not less exciting; they were more exiting. Which was read to us at school, was better value than Claude Duval? Sherlock homes were batter value than Sexton Black, more exiting; satisfying. I could believe than in him better; the people he met were more like real people. Then my favorite magazine, The Captain, begin to print school stories by a new writer called P.G Warehouse; and they were better than the adventure of Tom Merry of Harry Wharton and Co. they were funnier and they were more like real school, then when I was getting better from measles, my father read me some of W.W Jacobs’s stories. I laughed till I nearly fell out of bed and from that day always read everything by Jacobs that I could fond.
One day, at school, an older boy said to me, if you like Jacobs, you’d like dickens. I was very suspicious but I tried one at last; and then I read ten of Dickens all in a row.
At my first school, we read Shakespeare plays with a teacher who made them very interesting indeed. The first time I came to London on a visit with my father in 1907, I gave him on peace till he took me to see Sir Herbert. Tree in the Merchant of Venice, the play we were reading at the time, later, when the Benson company came to Plymouth, I went every night for a whole week, reading the play by day and seeing it in the evening. After that I got hold of all the plays I could lay my hands on by the other playwrights of Shakespeare’s time. I read all sorts and conditions of things as I do today for one reason and one reason only: because I like them.
There were poems that I liked too and when I say liked I mean liked. That same English teacher I mentioned just now used to read poetry to us and tactful about it she did not ram things down our throats or insist that we must like what she liked. She encouraged us to discuss the poems and say if we liked them or disliked them.
I was young enough not to have any prejudice against poetry. Very few people have, if on one puts them off it either by forcing it on them, or making them learn it by heart before they want to, or if they do not hear older boys and girls laughing and suggesting that it is sissy or highbrow to enjoy poetry. I do not see why anyone should read poetry who does not like it. Thank Heaven; we are none of us under any obligation to read anything. But a good many people will not give poetry a fair try, or let themselves enjoy it. I took it as it came, when I was a boy and I have had pleasure and good from it ever since…..
The books and plays and poem to which I was introduce by this schoolmistress I like in exactly the same way as I used ton like the penny bloods; that is to say. I enjoy reading them or heading them read, because they interested me. I read them for pleasure. At that school owing to the sense and understanding of this schoolmistress there was no nonsense about its being priggish or sissy to like good books. We only knew a book was good because we liked it. We did not know, for instance, that David Copperfield was an English classic. We only knew that one day the schoolmistress brought a copy into class, and made us start reading aloud about David going to church on Sunday morning, and about his visit to the upturned boat at Yarmouth, in which the peggottys lived. These things delighted us and made us laugh and so we thought that David Copperfield was a good book and enjoyed it, in just the same way as we were enjoying P. G. Wodehouse’s school stories in the Captain.
And that beyond all possible doubt in the way to go at your reading; to enjoy it, and to read because you enjoy it, and not to read anything that bores you, because that makes it even less likely that you will enjoy it later on, it is first of all, a question of age, of the stage in one’s growing up which one has reached. My friends and I used to read the Dick Turpins and Jack Sheppard because we were in a stage when violent and bloodthirsty adventures were all we wanted. Later on, when we had grown out of that stage, these stories on longer satisfied us. We had growing out of them, just as we had earlier grown out of stories about teddy bears and fairies and Jemima Puddliduck. Nearly everyone has a touch of blood thirstiness in his make up witness the thrillers and detective stories that are written for grown up readers. But they will not do for our only article of diet unless for one reason or another, our development has stopped and we remain at the mental age when such things are all we want. Normally, no one wants to feed all the time off one dish only. It gets monotonous and we want a change.
But – and this is where the opposite school of thought comes in. the formidable number of teachers and others who hold a different opinion but. Say these teacher the hard fact is that as you have admitted a moment ago, quite a number of people never grow out of the penny dreadful, gangster thriller stage of reading and cannot read anything else
You are assuming one of these people said to me, you are assuming that everyone has naturally good taste and will pass on from on this shot of reading to other sorts as long as he’s not interferes with. It isn’t true because a great many won’t ever find out that there are other short of reading. They know that they like, and they stick to it, unless at some stage in their growth preferable early, someone takes them by the scruff of the neck and compels them to read good books, there they stop.
Well it all depends on the view you take of teaching and what it should be. Personally, I dislike from my soul this assumption in Cultural matters that we have a right to take anyone by the scruff of the neck and compel him to read anything he doesn’t want to, I believe and maintain that no sane person reads except for pleasure. If people wish to stay at an elementary stage in reading, let them. I do not see why anybody should not read what he likes, nor why anybody should read what he does not like. I believe that all a teacher may legitimately do is to try to show him how much more pleasure he might get from a wider range of reading.
The real point about reading good books, well written books, and true books is that, once you are able to enjoy them, they give you more pleasure than the books that are less good, less well written and less true. The only reason I ever read a book in my spare time that is to say is because I expect pleasure from it. If I like it, I go on, if it bores me, I stop. No one can bully me into liking what I do not like and I should never try to bully anyone else into liking what he did not like.
L.A.G.Strong
To my mind the only sensible reason for reading anything is because we enjoy it or hope to enjoy it. Of course, pleasure covers a whole variety of feelings and shades of feeling. But it is my strangest belief about reading that one should read only what one likes, and because one likes it. I am taking, of course, of our private reading. When we are studying special subjects. Or working for examinations, we obviously have to read in other circumstances.
It may seem odd to insist that one should only read because one like it; but people read for such a queer variety of reasons. There are people who read a book not because they enjoy the book, but because they want to be able to say that they have read it. They want to be in the swim. Ten to one when they read a book for those reasons, they only skim through it, because all they really want do is to be able to talk as if they had read it. There are people who set themselves down to read a book because they think it will do them good. They make a duty of it a kind of penance; sometimes they go so far as to set themselves too many pages at a time. If it is some kind if technical book which they are reading in order to improve their knowledge well and good. But if it is a novel or a poem, or any part of what we call “English Literature” then the person who is reading it in this way is wasting his or her time.
You can not take a good book as if it were medicine. It is rude to the book and very silly from our own point of view, by approaching it in that way, you make sure of losing anything it might have to give you. You only begin to get good from a book when your sprit and the book’s sprit come together. A book is like a living person. You must meet it, is as a friend and actively like it, if any good is to pass between you.
A reason why people at school read books is to please their teacher. The teacher has said that this, that, or the other is a good book and that it is a sign of good taste to enjoy it. So a number of boys and girls, anxious to please their teacher get the book and read it. Two or three of them may genuinely like it, for its own sake, and be grateful to the teacher for putting it in their way. But many will not honestly like it, or will persuade themselves that they like it. And that does a great deal of harm. The people who cannot like the book run the risk of two things happening to them: either they are put off the idea of the book–let us suppose the book was David Copperfield–either they are put off the idea of classical novels, or they take a dislike to Dickens and decide firmly never to waste their time on anything of the sort again: or they get guilty conscience about the whole thing. They feel that they do not like what they ought to like and that therefore there is something wrong with them.
They are quite mistaken of course. There is nothing wrong with them. The mistake has all been in the teacher’s side. What has happened is that they have been shoved up against a book before they were ready for it. It is like giving a young child food only suitable for an adult. Result–indigestion violent stomach-ache and a rooted dislike of that article of food for evermore.
Still, I am not sure that even that is not better than the fate of the people who manage to persuade themselves that they enjoy the book. What happens to them is truly terrible. Once they get into the way of this kind of thing, they do not know what they think. Their real feelings, their real tastes are all Stoppard down under this sense of duty, which tells them that whatever Mr. Thingamabob or Miss Whatshername recommends to them is good, and that therefore, of course, they like it.
That has happened to a very great umber of men and women of my acquaintance. They do not know what is good; they know only what is supposed to be good. They do not know what they like: they know only what they ought to like. If you show them a book or a picture, if you play them a piece of music or put a record on the gramophone, you see them desperately trying to recognize it if it is music and looking quickly to see the author’s name if it is a book, because, until they have seen the label, they do not know whether they ought to like it or not. Give them something without a label and they are lost. They have long been without any power they ever had to judge a thing on its merits.
Now for a question on which people quarrel violently. Does it do any good to advice people to read certain books? What is the effect produced when a teacher or anybody else says. You ought to read Vanity Fair or the Old Curiosity shop”. Or whatever the name of the book may be? Does it make the average person want to read the book of does it put him or her right off?
The answer will depend in the first place, upon the person who give the advice and in the second place upon the person to whom the advice is given. It is not a subject upon which one can lay down the law. One way or another; and I cannot pretend to do more than give my own beliefs.
I do however; remember very clearly my own experiences and my own reading from a very early age. You may, or may not, be like me –but I confess that in the matter of reading at any rate, I have always been a bit contrary, I have always preferred to go my own way.
When I was a very small boy my ankles were weak and, I was slow in learning to walk. As a result, I learned to read sooner than most children. My grandmother used to read a great deal to me- school stories, all very virtuous were the hero and bad lad was terribly bad, and come to an edifying end in the last chapter but one. From these stories we came to Eric or Little by Little and St. Winfred’s which were similar in moral tone but much better written.
As I grew older, and chose my own reading. I rushed to comic papers and penny bloods. The youth of today can have no idea what a wonderful period that was for penny –bloods …….. It was the golden age of thrillers, and I read them all, I have got some still in my bookcase. Only a few, but I treasure them.
Some good people, when they saw me reading these in the train on my way to school, would shake their heads, and say they wondered my presents allow it. But my father a man of great sympathy and good sense took a wise and tolerant view. He argued that, if I had any sense, I would grow out of this type of reading; if I had not, it did not matter what I read, as I should be a fool anyway.
Beside he argued if he forbade me to read these things I should want to read them all the more, because they would have the charm of being illegal. He was proved right on that point. Once my mother and grandmother, horrified by a particularly lurid picture on the cover of one of my Claude Duval books, told me to tear it up. I could not board in my grandmother’s summer house, where it stayed for two or three years, and received many secret and guilty reading it would never have had otherwise; for my father was right in the other point too, I had grown out of my taste for highwaymen and gone o to other books. But this forbidden book lasted linger than all the rest, because it was forbidden.
I have never regretted my penny- dreadful period. Indeed, I owed my jock Sheppard library the discovery of one good writer at least. That was Harrison Ainsworth, whose novel about Jack Sheppard I found in my boarding school library during my first few days there and jumped to it with a homesick thrill. I liked it, and proceeded to read all the other Harrison Ainsworth I could fond.
Beside penny –bloods, I read other stories of adventure; and as I grew a little older, I begin to realize that they were better written than the penny –bloods. They were not less exciting; they were more exiting. Which was read to us at school, was better value than Claude Duval? Sherlock homes were batter value than Sexton Black, more exiting; satisfying. I could believe than in him better; the people he met were more like real people. Then my favorite magazine, The Captain, begin to print school stories by a new writer called P.G Warehouse; and they were better than the adventure of Tom Merry of Harry Wharton and Co. they were funnier and they were more like real school, then when I was getting better from measles, my father read me some of W.W Jacobs’s stories. I laughed till I nearly fell out of bed and from that day always read everything by Jacobs that I could fond.
One day, at school, an older boy said to me, if you like Jacobs, you’d like dickens. I was very suspicious but I tried one at last; and then I read ten of Dickens all in a row.
At my first school, we read Shakespeare plays with a teacher who made them very interesting indeed. The first time I came to London on a visit with my father in 1907, I gave him on peace till he took me to see Sir Herbert. Tree in the Merchant of Venice, the play we were reading at the time, later, when the Benson company came to Plymouth, I went every night for a whole week, reading the play by day and seeing it in the evening. After that I got hold of all the plays I could lay my hands on by the other playwrights of Shakespeare’s time. I read all sorts and conditions of things as I do today for one reason and one reason only: because I like them.
There were poems that I liked too and when I say liked I mean liked. That same English teacher I mentioned just now used to read poetry to us and tactful about it she did not ram things down our throats or insist that we must like what she liked. She encouraged us to discuss the poems and say if we liked them or disliked them.
I was young enough not to have any prejudice against poetry. Very few people have, if on one puts them off it either by forcing it on them, or making them learn it by heart before they want to, or if they do not hear older boys and girls laughing and suggesting that it is sissy or highbrow to enjoy poetry. I do not see why anyone should read poetry who does not like it. Thank Heaven; we are none of us under any obligation to read anything. But a good many people will not give poetry a fair try, or let themselves enjoy it. I took it as it came, when I was a boy and I have had pleasure and good from it ever since…..
The books and plays and poem to which I was introduce by this schoolmistress I like in exactly the same way as I used ton like the penny bloods; that is to say. I enjoy reading them or heading them read, because they interested me. I read them for pleasure. At that school owing to the sense and understanding of this schoolmistress there was no nonsense about its being priggish or sissy to like good books. We only knew a book was good because we liked it. We did not know, for instance, that David Copperfield was an English classic. We only knew that one day the schoolmistress brought a copy into class, and made us start reading aloud about David going to church on Sunday morning, and about his visit to the upturned boat at Yarmouth, in which the peggottys lived. These things delighted us and made us laugh and so we thought that David Copperfield was a good book and enjoyed it, in just the same way as we were enjoying P. G. Wodehouse’s school stories in the Captain.
And that beyond all possible doubt in the way to go at your reading; to enjoy it, and to read because you enjoy it, and not to read anything that bores you, because that makes it even less likely that you will enjoy it later on, it is first of all, a question of age, of the stage in one’s growing up which one has reached. My friends and I used to read the Dick Turpins and Jack Sheppard because we were in a stage when violent and bloodthirsty adventures were all we wanted. Later on, when we had grown out of that stage, these stories on longer satisfied us. We had growing out of them, just as we had earlier grown out of stories about teddy bears and fairies and Jemima Puddliduck. Nearly everyone has a touch of blood thirstiness in his make up witness the thrillers and detective stories that are written for grown up readers. But they will not do for our only article of diet unless for one reason or another, our development has stopped and we remain at the mental age when such things are all we want. Normally, no one wants to feed all the time off one dish only. It gets monotonous and we want a change.
But – and this is where the opposite school of thought comes in. the formidable number of teachers and others who hold a different opinion but. Say these teacher the hard fact is that as you have admitted a moment ago, quite a number of people never grow out of the penny dreadful, gangster thriller stage of reading and cannot read anything else
You are assuming one of these people said to me, you are assuming that everyone has naturally good taste and will pass on from on this shot of reading to other sorts as long as he’s not interferes with. It isn’t true because a great many won’t ever find out that there are other short of reading. They know that they like, and they stick to it, unless at some stage in their growth preferable early, someone takes them by the scruff of the neck and compels them to read good books, there they stop.
Well it all depends on the view you take of teaching and what it should be. Personally, I dislike from my soul this assumption in Cultural matters that we have a right to take anyone by the scruff of the neck and compel him to read anything he doesn’t want to, I believe and maintain that no sane person reads except for pleasure. If people wish to stay at an elementary stage in reading, let them. I do not see why anybody should not read what he likes, nor why anybody should read what he does not like. I believe that all a teacher may legitimately do is to try to show him how much more pleasure he might get from a wider range of reading.
The real point about reading good books, well written books, and true books is that, once you are able to enjoy them, they give you more pleasure than the books that are less good, less well written and less true. The only reason I ever read a book in my spare time that is to say is because I expect pleasure from it. If I like it, I go on, if it bores me, I stop. No one can bully me into liking what I do not like and I should never try to bully anyone else into liking what he did not like.
A MOTHER IN MANVILLE
A MOTHER IN MANVILLE
Majorie kinnan Rawlings
The orphanage is high in the Carolina Mountains. Some time in winter the snowdrifts are so deep that the institution is cut off from the village below, from the entire world. Fog hides the mountain peaks, the snow swirls down the valleys and a wind blows so bitterly that the orphanage boys who take the milk twice daily to the baby cottage reach the door with fingers stiff in an agony of numbness.
Or when we carry trays from the cookhouse for the ones that are sick, Jerry said, we get our faces frostbit, because we can’t put our hands over them. I have a glove, he added. Some of the boys don’t have any.
He like the late spring, he said. The rhododendron was in bloom: a carpet of colors across the mountain-sides, soft as the may winds that stirred the hemlocks. He called it labor.
Its pretty when the labor blooms, he said some of its pink and some of its white.
I was there in mountain, I wanted quite, isolation to so some troublesome writing, I wanted mountain air to blow out the malaria from too long a time in the sub-tropics, I was homesick, too for the flaming of maples in October, and for corn shocks and pumpkins and black walnut trees and the lift of hills, I found them all, living in a cabin that belonged to the orphanage, half a mile beyond the orphanage farm. When I took the cabin, I asked for a boy of man to come and chop wood for the fireplace. The first few days were warm, I found what wood I needed about the cabin. No one came and I forgot the order.
I looked up from my typewriter one late afternoon a little boy startled. A boy stood at the door, and my pointer dog, my companion, was at his side and had not barked to warn me. The boy probably twelve years old, but undersized. He wore overalls and a torn shirt and was barefooted.
He said, “I can chop some wood today”.
I said,” but I have a boy coming from the orphanage”.
“I’m the boy”
You? “You are small.”
Size doesn’t mater chopping wood.” he said.
“some of the big boys don’t chop good. I’ve been chopping wood at the orphanage a long time.”
I visualized mangled and inadequate branches for my fires, I was well into my work and not inclined to conversation, I was a little blunt.
Very well, there’s the axe. Go ahead and see what you can do.
I went back to work, closing the door. At first the sound of the boy dragging brush annoyed me. Then he began to chop. The blows were rhythmic and steady, and shortly, I had forgotten him, the sound no more of an interruption then a consistent rain, I suppose an hour and a half passed, for when I stopped and stretched, and heard the boy’s steps on the cabin stoop, the sun was dropping behind the farthest mountain and the valleys were purple with something deeper than the asters.
The boy said,” I have to go to supper now; I can come again tomorrow evening.”
I said, I’ll pay you now for what you’ve done.” Thinking I should probably have to insist on an older boy, ten cents an hour?
“Anything is all right.”
We went together back of the cabin. An astonishing amount of solid wood had been cut. There were cherry logs and heavy roots of rhododendron and blocks from the waste pine and oak left from the building of the cabin.
“But you’ve done as much as a man.” I said. This is a splendid pile.
I looked at him, actually, for the first time. His hair was the color of the corn shocks, and his eyes, very direct, were like the mountain sky when rain is pending- gray, with a showing of that miraculous blue. As I spoke a light came over him as through the sating sun had touched him with the same suffused glory with which it touched the mountains. I gave him a quarter.
‘You may come tomorrow,’ I said, ‘and thank you very much.”
He looked at me, and at the coin, and seemed to want ton speak, but could not, and turned away.
I’ll split the kindling tomorrow, “he said over his thin ragged shoulder, you’ll need kindling and medium wood and logs and backlogs.
At daylight I was half awakened by the spend of chopping. Again it was so even in texture that I went back to sleep. When I left my bed in the cool morning, the boy had come and gone, and a stack of kindling was neat against the cabin wall. he came again after school in the afternoon and worked until time to return to the orphanage. His name was Jerry; he was twelve years old, and he had been at the orphanage since he was four, I could picture him at four, with the same grave, gray –blue eyes and the same independence? No the word that comes to me is “integrity”.
The word means something very special to me, and the quality for which I use it is a rare one. My father had it- there is another of whom I am almost sure-but almost no man of my acquaintance possesses it with the clarity, the simplicity of a mountain stream. But the boy Jerry had it, it is bedded on courage, but it is more then brave. It is honest, but it is more then honesty. The axe –handle broke one day. Jerry said, the woodshop at the orphanage would repair it. I brought money to pay for the job and he refused it.
I’ll pay for it, he said. I broke it, I brought the axe down careless.”
But no one hits accurately every time”. I told him. The fault was in the wood of his own carelessness. He was a free-will agent and he chose to do careful work, and if he failed he took the responsibility with subterfuge.
And he did for me the unnecessary thing, the gracious thing that we find done only by the great of heart. Things on training can teach for they are done on the instant. With on predicated experience. He found a cubbyhole beside the fireplace that I had not noticed, there of his own accord, he put kindling and medium wood, so that I might always have dry fire material ready in case of sudden wet weather. A stone was loose in the rough walk to the cabin, he dug a deeper hole and steadied it, although he came, himself, by a short –cut over the bank, I found that when I tried to return his thoughtfulness with such things as candy and apples, he was wordless. “Thank you “ was perhaps an expression for which he had no use, for his courtesy was instinctive, he only looked at the gift and at me, and a curtain lifted, so that I saw seep into the clear well of his eyes and gratitude was there, and affection, soft over the firm granite of his character .
He made a simple excuse to come and sit with me. I could no more have turned him away than if he had been physically hungry, I suggested once that the best time for us to visit was just before supper, when I left off my writing. After that, he waited always until my typewriter had been some time quite. One day I worked until nearly dark, I went outside the cabin, having forgotten him. I saw him going up over the hill in the twilight toward the orphanage. When I sat down on my stoop, a place was warm from his body where he had been sitting.
He became intimate, of course, with my pointer, Pat. There is a strange communication between a boy and a dog. Perhaps they possess the same singleness of spirit, the same kind od wisdom. It is difficult to explain, but it exists. When I want across the state for a week-end I left the dog in Jerry’s charge. I gave him the dog whistle and the key to the cabin, and left sufficient food. He was to come two or three times a day and let out the dog and feed and exercises him. I should return Sunday night and jerry would, take out he dog for the last time Sunday afternoon and then leave the key under as agreed hiding place.
My return was belated and the fog filled the mountain passes so treacherously that I dared not drive at night, the fog held the next morning, and it was Monday noon before I reached the cabin. The dog had been fed and cared for that morning. Jerry came early in the afternoon, anxious.
The superintendent said, nobody would drive in the fog, “he said, I came just before bedtime last night and you hadn’t come. So I brought pat some of breakfast this morning. I wouldn’t have let anything happened to him.”
I was sure of that, I didn’t worry “.
When I heard about the fog, I thought you’d know”.
He was needed for work at the orphanage and he had to return at once, I gave him a dollar in payment and he looked at it and went away. But that night he came in the darkness and knocked at the door.
“Come in jerry,” I said. “If you’re allowed to be away this late.”
I told, may be a story, he said, I told them I thought you would want to see me,. That’s true, I assured him and I saw his relief, I want to hear about how you managed with the dog.”
He sat by the fire with me, with no other light, and told me of their two days together. The dog lay close to him and found a comfort there that I did not have for him. And it seemed to me that being with my dog, and caring for him, had brought the boy and me, too, too, together so that he left that he belonged to me as well as to the animal.
“He stayed right with me,” he told me, except when he ran in the laurel, he likes the laurel. I took him up over the hill and we both ran fast. There was a place where the grass was high and I lay down in it and hid, I could hear pat hunting for me. He found my trail and he barked, when he found me, he acted crazy and he ran around and around m din circles.”
We watched the flames.
That’s an apple log, he said. It burns the pretties of any wood.
Were very close.
He was not suddenly impelled to speak of things he had not spoken of before, nor had I cared to ask him.
You look a little bit like my mother, he said, especially in the dark by the fire.”
But you are only four, Jerry when you come here. You have remembered how she looked all these years.
My mother lives in Manville, he said.
For a moment, finding that he had a mother shocked me as greatly as anything in my life has ever done, and I did not know way it disturbed me then I understood my distress. I was filled with a passionate resentment that any woman should go away and leave her son. a fresh anger added itself. A son like this one! The orphanage was a wholesome place, the executives were kind, good people, the food was more than adequate, the boys were healthy a ragged shirt was no hardship or the doing of clean labor. Granted, perhaps, that the boy fell no lack, what about the mother? At four he would have looked the same as now. Nothing I thought, nothing in life could change those eyes. His quality must be apparent to an idiot, a fool, I burned with question I could not ask, in any I was afraid there would be pain.
Have you seen her, Jerry –lately?
I see her every summer. She sends for me.
I wanted to cry out. Why are you not with her? How can she let you go away again?
He said, she comes up here from Manville whenever she can. She doesn’t have a job now.
His face shone in the firelight.
She wanted to give me a puppy, but they can’t let anyone boy keep a puppy. You remember the suit I had in last Sunday? He was plainly proud. She sent me that for Christmas! The Christmas before that – he drew a long breath, savoring the memory – she sent me a pair of skates.”
Roller skates?
My mind was busy, making picture of her, tiring to understand her. She had not, then entirely to deserted ot forgotten him. But why, then –I thought.” but I must not condemn her without knowing.”
Roller skates. I let the other boys use them. There’s always borrowing them. But there’s careful of them.”
I’m going to take the dollar you gave me for taking care of pat, he said, and buy her a pair of gloves.”
I could only say, that will be nice. Do you know her size.”
I think it’s eight and a half? He asked.
No, I wear a smaller size a six.
Oh! Then I guess her hands are bigger than yours.”
I hate her, poverty or no, there was other food than bread, and the soul could starve as quickly as the body. He was taking his dollar to buy gloves for her big stupid hands, and she loves away from him, in Manville, and contented herself with sending him skates.
She likes white gloves, he said, do you think I can get them for a dollar?
I think so, I said.
I decided that I should not leave the mountains without seeing her and knowing for myself why she had done this thing.
The human mind scatters its interests as though made of thistle –down, and every wind stirs and moves it, I finished my work. It did not please me and I gave my thoughts to another field. I should need some Mexican, material.
I made arrangements to close my Florida place Mexico immediately, and dong the writing there, if conditions were favorable. Then Alaska with my brother. After that, heaven knew, what or where,.
I did not take time to go to Manville to see Jerry’s mother, nor even to talk with the orphanage officials about her. I was a trifle abstracted about the boy because of my work and plans. And after my first fury at her – we did mot speak of her again – his having a mother, any sort at all, all no far away, in Manville, relieved me of the ache I had about him, he did not question the anomalous relation. He was not lonely; it was none of my concern.
He came every day and cut my wood and did small helpful favors and stayed to talk. The days had become cold and often I let him come inside the cabin. He would lie on the floor in front of the fire with one arm across the pointer and they would both doze and wait quietly for me. Other days they ran with a common ecstasy through the laurel, and since the asters were now gone, he brought me back vermilion maple leaves and chestnut boughs dripping with imperial yellow, I was ready to go.
I said to him, you have been my good friend, jerry, I shall often think of you and miss you, pat will miss you too, I am leaving tomorrow.”
He did not answer. When he went away, I remember that a new moon hung over the mountains and I watched him go in silence up the hill. I expected him the next day, but he did nit come. The details of packing my personal belongings, loading me car, arranging the bed over the seat, where the dog would ride, occupied me until late in the day, I closed the cabin and started the car, noticing that the sun was in the west and I should do well to be out of the mountains by nightfall. Io stopped by the orphanage and left the cabin key and money for my light bill with Miss Clark.
And will you call jerry for me to say good-bye to him?
I don’t know where he is, she said, I’m afraid he’s not well. He didn’t eat his dinner this noon. One of boys saw him going over the hill in to the laurel. He was supposed to fire the boiler this afternoon. It’s not like him. He’s unusually reliable.’
I was almost relieved, for I knew I should never see him again and it would be easier not to say good-bye to him.
I said, I wanted to talk with you about his mother- why he’s here – but I’m in more of hurry than I expected to be. Its out of the question for me to see her now. But here’s some money I’d like to leave with you to buy things for him at Christmas and on his birthday. It will be better than for me to try to send him things. I could easily duplicate- skates for instance. “
She blinked her honest spinster’s eyes.
There’s not much use for skates here, she said. Her stupidity annoyed me.
What I mean, I said, is that I don’t want to duplicate things his mother sends him, I might have chosen skates if didn’t know she had already given them to him.
“I don’t understand,” she said, he has no mother. He has no skates.
Majorie kinnan Rawlings
The orphanage is high in the Carolina Mountains. Some time in winter the snowdrifts are so deep that the institution is cut off from the village below, from the entire world. Fog hides the mountain peaks, the snow swirls down the valleys and a wind blows so bitterly that the orphanage boys who take the milk twice daily to the baby cottage reach the door with fingers stiff in an agony of numbness.
Or when we carry trays from the cookhouse for the ones that are sick, Jerry said, we get our faces frostbit, because we can’t put our hands over them. I have a glove, he added. Some of the boys don’t have any.
He like the late spring, he said. The rhododendron was in bloom: a carpet of colors across the mountain-sides, soft as the may winds that stirred the hemlocks. He called it labor.
Its pretty when the labor blooms, he said some of its pink and some of its white.
I was there in mountain, I wanted quite, isolation to so some troublesome writing, I wanted mountain air to blow out the malaria from too long a time in the sub-tropics, I was homesick, too for the flaming of maples in October, and for corn shocks and pumpkins and black walnut trees and the lift of hills, I found them all, living in a cabin that belonged to the orphanage, half a mile beyond the orphanage farm. When I took the cabin, I asked for a boy of man to come and chop wood for the fireplace. The first few days were warm, I found what wood I needed about the cabin. No one came and I forgot the order.
I looked up from my typewriter one late afternoon a little boy startled. A boy stood at the door, and my pointer dog, my companion, was at his side and had not barked to warn me. The boy probably twelve years old, but undersized. He wore overalls and a torn shirt and was barefooted.
He said, “I can chop some wood today”.
I said,” but I have a boy coming from the orphanage”.
“I’m the boy”
You? “You are small.”
Size doesn’t mater chopping wood.” he said.
“some of the big boys don’t chop good. I’ve been chopping wood at the orphanage a long time.”
I visualized mangled and inadequate branches for my fires, I was well into my work and not inclined to conversation, I was a little blunt.
Very well, there’s the axe. Go ahead and see what you can do.
I went back to work, closing the door. At first the sound of the boy dragging brush annoyed me. Then he began to chop. The blows were rhythmic and steady, and shortly, I had forgotten him, the sound no more of an interruption then a consistent rain, I suppose an hour and a half passed, for when I stopped and stretched, and heard the boy’s steps on the cabin stoop, the sun was dropping behind the farthest mountain and the valleys were purple with something deeper than the asters.
The boy said,” I have to go to supper now; I can come again tomorrow evening.”
I said, I’ll pay you now for what you’ve done.” Thinking I should probably have to insist on an older boy, ten cents an hour?
“Anything is all right.”
We went together back of the cabin. An astonishing amount of solid wood had been cut. There were cherry logs and heavy roots of rhododendron and blocks from the waste pine and oak left from the building of the cabin.
“But you’ve done as much as a man.” I said. This is a splendid pile.
I looked at him, actually, for the first time. His hair was the color of the corn shocks, and his eyes, very direct, were like the mountain sky when rain is pending- gray, with a showing of that miraculous blue. As I spoke a light came over him as through the sating sun had touched him with the same suffused glory with which it touched the mountains. I gave him a quarter.
‘You may come tomorrow,’ I said, ‘and thank you very much.”
He looked at me, and at the coin, and seemed to want ton speak, but could not, and turned away.
I’ll split the kindling tomorrow, “he said over his thin ragged shoulder, you’ll need kindling and medium wood and logs and backlogs.
At daylight I was half awakened by the spend of chopping. Again it was so even in texture that I went back to sleep. When I left my bed in the cool morning, the boy had come and gone, and a stack of kindling was neat against the cabin wall. he came again after school in the afternoon and worked until time to return to the orphanage. His name was Jerry; he was twelve years old, and he had been at the orphanage since he was four, I could picture him at four, with the same grave, gray –blue eyes and the same independence? No the word that comes to me is “integrity”.
The word means something very special to me, and the quality for which I use it is a rare one. My father had it- there is another of whom I am almost sure-but almost no man of my acquaintance possesses it with the clarity, the simplicity of a mountain stream. But the boy Jerry had it, it is bedded on courage, but it is more then brave. It is honest, but it is more then honesty. The axe –handle broke one day. Jerry said, the woodshop at the orphanage would repair it. I brought money to pay for the job and he refused it.
I’ll pay for it, he said. I broke it, I brought the axe down careless.”
But no one hits accurately every time”. I told him. The fault was in the wood of his own carelessness. He was a free-will agent and he chose to do careful work, and if he failed he took the responsibility with subterfuge.
And he did for me the unnecessary thing, the gracious thing that we find done only by the great of heart. Things on training can teach for they are done on the instant. With on predicated experience. He found a cubbyhole beside the fireplace that I had not noticed, there of his own accord, he put kindling and medium wood, so that I might always have dry fire material ready in case of sudden wet weather. A stone was loose in the rough walk to the cabin, he dug a deeper hole and steadied it, although he came, himself, by a short –cut over the bank, I found that when I tried to return his thoughtfulness with such things as candy and apples, he was wordless. “Thank you “ was perhaps an expression for which he had no use, for his courtesy was instinctive, he only looked at the gift and at me, and a curtain lifted, so that I saw seep into the clear well of his eyes and gratitude was there, and affection, soft over the firm granite of his character .
He made a simple excuse to come and sit with me. I could no more have turned him away than if he had been physically hungry, I suggested once that the best time for us to visit was just before supper, when I left off my writing. After that, he waited always until my typewriter had been some time quite. One day I worked until nearly dark, I went outside the cabin, having forgotten him. I saw him going up over the hill in the twilight toward the orphanage. When I sat down on my stoop, a place was warm from his body where he had been sitting.
He became intimate, of course, with my pointer, Pat. There is a strange communication between a boy and a dog. Perhaps they possess the same singleness of spirit, the same kind od wisdom. It is difficult to explain, but it exists. When I want across the state for a week-end I left the dog in Jerry’s charge. I gave him the dog whistle and the key to the cabin, and left sufficient food. He was to come two or three times a day and let out the dog and feed and exercises him. I should return Sunday night and jerry would, take out he dog for the last time Sunday afternoon and then leave the key under as agreed hiding place.
My return was belated and the fog filled the mountain passes so treacherously that I dared not drive at night, the fog held the next morning, and it was Monday noon before I reached the cabin. The dog had been fed and cared for that morning. Jerry came early in the afternoon, anxious.
The superintendent said, nobody would drive in the fog, “he said, I came just before bedtime last night and you hadn’t come. So I brought pat some of breakfast this morning. I wouldn’t have let anything happened to him.”
I was sure of that, I didn’t worry “.
When I heard about the fog, I thought you’d know”.
He was needed for work at the orphanage and he had to return at once, I gave him a dollar in payment and he looked at it and went away. But that night he came in the darkness and knocked at the door.
“Come in jerry,” I said. “If you’re allowed to be away this late.”
I told, may be a story, he said, I told them I thought you would want to see me,. That’s true, I assured him and I saw his relief, I want to hear about how you managed with the dog.”
He sat by the fire with me, with no other light, and told me of their two days together. The dog lay close to him and found a comfort there that I did not have for him. And it seemed to me that being with my dog, and caring for him, had brought the boy and me, too, too, together so that he left that he belonged to me as well as to the animal.
“He stayed right with me,” he told me, except when he ran in the laurel, he likes the laurel. I took him up over the hill and we both ran fast. There was a place where the grass was high and I lay down in it and hid, I could hear pat hunting for me. He found my trail and he barked, when he found me, he acted crazy and he ran around and around m din circles.”
We watched the flames.
That’s an apple log, he said. It burns the pretties of any wood.
Were very close.
He was not suddenly impelled to speak of things he had not spoken of before, nor had I cared to ask him.
You look a little bit like my mother, he said, especially in the dark by the fire.”
But you are only four, Jerry when you come here. You have remembered how she looked all these years.
My mother lives in Manville, he said.
For a moment, finding that he had a mother shocked me as greatly as anything in my life has ever done, and I did not know way it disturbed me then I understood my distress. I was filled with a passionate resentment that any woman should go away and leave her son. a fresh anger added itself. A son like this one! The orphanage was a wholesome place, the executives were kind, good people, the food was more than adequate, the boys were healthy a ragged shirt was no hardship or the doing of clean labor. Granted, perhaps, that the boy fell no lack, what about the mother? At four he would have looked the same as now. Nothing I thought, nothing in life could change those eyes. His quality must be apparent to an idiot, a fool, I burned with question I could not ask, in any I was afraid there would be pain.
Have you seen her, Jerry –lately?
I see her every summer. She sends for me.
I wanted to cry out. Why are you not with her? How can she let you go away again?
He said, she comes up here from Manville whenever she can. She doesn’t have a job now.
His face shone in the firelight.
She wanted to give me a puppy, but they can’t let anyone boy keep a puppy. You remember the suit I had in last Sunday? He was plainly proud. She sent me that for Christmas! The Christmas before that – he drew a long breath, savoring the memory – she sent me a pair of skates.”
Roller skates?
My mind was busy, making picture of her, tiring to understand her. She had not, then entirely to deserted ot forgotten him. But why, then –I thought.” but I must not condemn her without knowing.”
Roller skates. I let the other boys use them. There’s always borrowing them. But there’s careful of them.”
I’m going to take the dollar you gave me for taking care of pat, he said, and buy her a pair of gloves.”
I could only say, that will be nice. Do you know her size.”
I think it’s eight and a half? He asked.
No, I wear a smaller size a six.
Oh! Then I guess her hands are bigger than yours.”
I hate her, poverty or no, there was other food than bread, and the soul could starve as quickly as the body. He was taking his dollar to buy gloves for her big stupid hands, and she loves away from him, in Manville, and contented herself with sending him skates.
She likes white gloves, he said, do you think I can get them for a dollar?
I think so, I said.
I decided that I should not leave the mountains without seeing her and knowing for myself why she had done this thing.
The human mind scatters its interests as though made of thistle –down, and every wind stirs and moves it, I finished my work. It did not please me and I gave my thoughts to another field. I should need some Mexican, material.
I made arrangements to close my Florida place Mexico immediately, and dong the writing there, if conditions were favorable. Then Alaska with my brother. After that, heaven knew, what or where,.
I did not take time to go to Manville to see Jerry’s mother, nor even to talk with the orphanage officials about her. I was a trifle abstracted about the boy because of my work and plans. And after my first fury at her – we did mot speak of her again – his having a mother, any sort at all, all no far away, in Manville, relieved me of the ache I had about him, he did not question the anomalous relation. He was not lonely; it was none of my concern.
He came every day and cut my wood and did small helpful favors and stayed to talk. The days had become cold and often I let him come inside the cabin. He would lie on the floor in front of the fire with one arm across the pointer and they would both doze and wait quietly for me. Other days they ran with a common ecstasy through the laurel, and since the asters were now gone, he brought me back vermilion maple leaves and chestnut boughs dripping with imperial yellow, I was ready to go.
I said to him, you have been my good friend, jerry, I shall often think of you and miss you, pat will miss you too, I am leaving tomorrow.”
He did not answer. When he went away, I remember that a new moon hung over the mountains and I watched him go in silence up the hill. I expected him the next day, but he did nit come. The details of packing my personal belongings, loading me car, arranging the bed over the seat, where the dog would ride, occupied me until late in the day, I closed the cabin and started the car, noticing that the sun was in the west and I should do well to be out of the mountains by nightfall. Io stopped by the orphanage and left the cabin key and money for my light bill with Miss Clark.
And will you call jerry for me to say good-bye to him?
I don’t know where he is, she said, I’m afraid he’s not well. He didn’t eat his dinner this noon. One of boys saw him going over the hill in to the laurel. He was supposed to fire the boiler this afternoon. It’s not like him. He’s unusually reliable.’
I was almost relieved, for I knew I should never see him again and it would be easier not to say good-bye to him.
I said, I wanted to talk with you about his mother- why he’s here – but I’m in more of hurry than I expected to be. Its out of the question for me to see her now. But here’s some money I’d like to leave with you to buy things for him at Christmas and on his birthday. It will be better than for me to try to send him things. I could easily duplicate- skates for instance. “
She blinked her honest spinster’s eyes.
There’s not much use for skates here, she said. Her stupidity annoyed me.
What I mean, I said, is that I don’t want to duplicate things his mother sends him, I might have chosen skates if didn’t know she had already given them to him.
“I don’t understand,” she said, he has no mother. He has no skates.
THE LUNCHEON
THE LUNCHEON
W. somerset Maughm
I caught sight of her at the play and in answer to her beckoning I went over during the interval and sat down beside her. It was long since I had last seen her and if some one had not mentioned her name I hardly think I would have recognition her, she addressed me brightly.
Well its many years since we first met. How time does fly! We’re none of us getting any younger. Do you remember the first time I saw you? You asked me to luncheon.
Did I remember?
It was twenty years ago and I was living in Paris. I had a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarters overlooking a cemetery and I was eating barely enough money to keep body and soul together, she had read a book of mine and I had written to me about it. I answered thinking her, and presently I received from her another latter saying that she was passing through Paris and would like to have a chat with him; but her time was limited and the only free moment she had was o the following Thursday she was spending the morning at the Luxembourg and would I gave her a little luncheon at Foyot’s is a restaurant at which the French senators eat and it was so far beyond my means that I had never even thought of going there but I was flattered and I was too young to have learned to say no to a woman. I had eighty francs to last me the rest of the month and a modest luncheon should not cost me more than fifteen. If I could out coffee for the next two weeks, I could manage enough.
I answered that I would meet my friend, by correspondence, at Foyot’s on Thursday at half past twelve. She was not so young as I expected and in appearance imposing rather than attractive. She was in face a woman of forty and she gave me the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose, she was talk about me I was prepared to be an attentive listener.
I was startled when the bill of fare was brought, for the prices were a great deal higher than I had anticipated. But she reassured me.
“I never eat anything for luncheon”, she said.
“Oh, don’t say that,” I answered generously.
“I never eat more than one thing. I think people eat far too much nowadays, a little fish , perhaps, I wonder if they have any salmon.”
Well, it was early in the year for salmon and it was not on the bill of far, but I asked the waiter if there was any, yes, a beautiful salmon had just come in, it was the first they had had. I ordered it for my guest. The waiter asked her if she would have something while it was being cooked.
“no , she answered, I never eat more than one thing, unless you had a little caviar. I never mind caviar.
My heart sank a little. I know I could not afford caviar. But I could not very well tell her that I told the waiter by all means to bring caviar. For myself I chose the cheapest disk on the menu and that was a mutton chop.
Madame wants to know if you have any of those giant asparagus,”I ask the writer”.
I tried with all my might to will him to say ‘no’. A happy smile spread over his board, priest-like face, and he assured me that they had some so large, so splendid so tender, that I was a marvel.
I am not in the least hungry,”my guest sighed, but if you insist I don’t mind having some asparagus.”
I ordered them.
Aren’t you going to have any?
“No I never eat asparagus “
I know there are people who don’t like them. Face is you ruin your palate by all the meat you eat.
We wait for the asparagus to be cooked. Panic seized me. I was not a question now how much money I should have left overt for the rest of the month but whether I had enough to pay the bill. It would be burred from my guest, I could not bring myself to so that, I knew exactly how much I had and if the bill come to more I made up my mind that I would put my hand I my pocket and with that with a dramatic cry start up and say it had been picked. Of course it would be awkward, if she had not money enough either to pay the bill. Then the only thing would be to leave my watch and say I would come back and pay later.
The asparagus appeared, they were enormous succulent and appetizing the smell of the melted butter tickled my nostrils as the nostrils of Jehovah were tickled by the burnt offerings of the virtuous Semites I watch the abandoned woman thrust them down her throat in large voluptuous mouthfuls and in my polite way I discoursed on the condition of the drama in the blackens, at last she finished.
“Coffee” I said.
Yes, just an ice-cream and coffee. She answered.
I was past caring now. So I ordered coffee for myself and an ice-cream and coffee for her.
You know, there’s one thing I thoroughly believe in, “he said, as she ate the ice-cream.
One should always get up from a meal feeling one could eat a little mere.”
Are you still hungry? I asked faintly.
Oh no I’m not hungry; you see I don’t eat luncheon. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and the dinner, but I never eat more than one thing for luncheon. I was speaking for you.
“Ho, I see.”
Then a terrible thing happened. while we are waiting for a coffee, the head waiter, with an ingratiating smile on his false face, came up to us bearing a large basket full of huge peaches. They had the blush of an innocent girl; they had a rich tone of an Italian landscape. But surely peaches were not in season then. Lord knew that they cost. I knew too-a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation, absentmindedly took one.
You see you’ve filled your stomach with a lot of meat- my one miserable little chop – and you can’t eat any more .but I have just had a snack and I shall enjoy a peach.
The bill came and when I paid it I found that I had only enough for a quite inadequate tip. Her eyes rested for an instant on the three francs I left for the waiter and I know that she through me mean. But when I walked out of the restaurant I had the whole month before me and a penny in my pocket.
“Follow my example, she said as we shook hands, and never eat more than one thing for luncheon.”
I’ll do better than that”, I retorted. I’ll eat nothing for dinner tonight.”
“Humorist,” she cried gaily, jumping into a cab.” You’re quite a humorist.”
But I had my revenge at last I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency. Today she weight twenty-one stone.
W. somerset Maughm
I caught sight of her at the play and in answer to her beckoning I went over during the interval and sat down beside her. It was long since I had last seen her and if some one had not mentioned her name I hardly think I would have recognition her, she addressed me brightly.
Well its many years since we first met. How time does fly! We’re none of us getting any younger. Do you remember the first time I saw you? You asked me to luncheon.
Did I remember?
It was twenty years ago and I was living in Paris. I had a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarters overlooking a cemetery and I was eating barely enough money to keep body and soul together, she had read a book of mine and I had written to me about it. I answered thinking her, and presently I received from her another latter saying that she was passing through Paris and would like to have a chat with him; but her time was limited and the only free moment she had was o the following Thursday she was spending the morning at the Luxembourg and would I gave her a little luncheon at Foyot’s is a restaurant at which the French senators eat and it was so far beyond my means that I had never even thought of going there but I was flattered and I was too young to have learned to say no to a woman. I had eighty francs to last me the rest of the month and a modest luncheon should not cost me more than fifteen. If I could out coffee for the next two weeks, I could manage enough.
I answered that I would meet my friend, by correspondence, at Foyot’s on Thursday at half past twelve. She was not so young as I expected and in appearance imposing rather than attractive. She was in face a woman of forty and she gave me the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose, she was talk about me I was prepared to be an attentive listener.
I was startled when the bill of fare was brought, for the prices were a great deal higher than I had anticipated. But she reassured me.
“I never eat anything for luncheon”, she said.
“Oh, don’t say that,” I answered generously.
“I never eat more than one thing. I think people eat far too much nowadays, a little fish , perhaps, I wonder if they have any salmon.”
Well, it was early in the year for salmon and it was not on the bill of far, but I asked the waiter if there was any, yes, a beautiful salmon had just come in, it was the first they had had. I ordered it for my guest. The waiter asked her if she would have something while it was being cooked.
“no , she answered, I never eat more than one thing, unless you had a little caviar. I never mind caviar.
My heart sank a little. I know I could not afford caviar. But I could not very well tell her that I told the waiter by all means to bring caviar. For myself I chose the cheapest disk on the menu and that was a mutton chop.
Madame wants to know if you have any of those giant asparagus,”I ask the writer”.
I tried with all my might to will him to say ‘no’. A happy smile spread over his board, priest-like face, and he assured me that they had some so large, so splendid so tender, that I was a marvel.
I am not in the least hungry,”my guest sighed, but if you insist I don’t mind having some asparagus.”
I ordered them.
Aren’t you going to have any?
“No I never eat asparagus “
I know there are people who don’t like them. Face is you ruin your palate by all the meat you eat.
We wait for the asparagus to be cooked. Panic seized me. I was not a question now how much money I should have left overt for the rest of the month but whether I had enough to pay the bill. It would be burred from my guest, I could not bring myself to so that, I knew exactly how much I had and if the bill come to more I made up my mind that I would put my hand I my pocket and with that with a dramatic cry start up and say it had been picked. Of course it would be awkward, if she had not money enough either to pay the bill. Then the only thing would be to leave my watch and say I would come back and pay later.
The asparagus appeared, they were enormous succulent and appetizing the smell of the melted butter tickled my nostrils as the nostrils of Jehovah were tickled by the burnt offerings of the virtuous Semites I watch the abandoned woman thrust them down her throat in large voluptuous mouthfuls and in my polite way I discoursed on the condition of the drama in the blackens, at last she finished.
“Coffee” I said.
Yes, just an ice-cream and coffee. She answered.
I was past caring now. So I ordered coffee for myself and an ice-cream and coffee for her.
You know, there’s one thing I thoroughly believe in, “he said, as she ate the ice-cream.
One should always get up from a meal feeling one could eat a little mere.”
Are you still hungry? I asked faintly.
Oh no I’m not hungry; you see I don’t eat luncheon. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and the dinner, but I never eat more than one thing for luncheon. I was speaking for you.
“Ho, I see.”
Then a terrible thing happened. while we are waiting for a coffee, the head waiter, with an ingratiating smile on his false face, came up to us bearing a large basket full of huge peaches. They had the blush of an innocent girl; they had a rich tone of an Italian landscape. But surely peaches were not in season then. Lord knew that they cost. I knew too-a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation, absentmindedly took one.
You see you’ve filled your stomach with a lot of meat- my one miserable little chop – and you can’t eat any more .but I have just had a snack and I shall enjoy a peach.
The bill came and when I paid it I found that I had only enough for a quite inadequate tip. Her eyes rested for an instant on the three francs I left for the waiter and I know that she through me mean. But when I walked out of the restaurant I had the whole month before me and a penny in my pocket.
“Follow my example, she said as we shook hands, and never eat more than one thing for luncheon.”
I’ll do better than that”, I retorted. I’ll eat nothing for dinner tonight.”
“Humorist,” she cried gaily, jumping into a cab.” You’re quite a humorist.”
But I had my revenge at last I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency. Today she weight twenty-one stone.
THE ANCIENT MARINER
THE ANCIENT MARINER
S. T. COLERIDGE
The marriage ceremony was over and the guests were all going to the feast. The old grey-bearded sailor sat on a stone outside the church and watched the people walking past home. He had a strange, mad look in his eyes, and suddenly he stopped one of the guests.
There was a ship ………… the old sailor began, and he spoke so strangely that the guest stood still and listened to him. The feast began; the guest could hear the music and the laughter, but for some reason he could not move to join the others. He had to stay and listen to the bright-eyed sailor’s story.
The old man told him about his last journey on the sea. They had sail away to the south, he said, until they arrived in cold gray seas. Even the sea was frozen, and the ice was all around them, in those days there were no steamships and the big white sails of their ship opened wide as the strong wind blew them quickly through the ice waters. The weather was very cold and there were no birds or animals in that snow-covered country, but one day the sailors saw an albatross flying towards the ship, the albatross is a big sea bird, and it brings good luck to sailors, so the men were pleased to see it. They gave it food and water and it become very tame, it comes to the ship every day when the sailors called it.
“But one day I shot the albatross!” the old sailor told the marriage gust . it was a terrible thing to do and everyone said I had kill the bird which made the winds blew. I had brought bad luck to the crew.
And they were right. The ship sailed out of the ice waters into another sea, where the sun shone hotly overhead. The wind dropped. Day after day they stayed in that silent sea. There were no wind to fill the sails, and the ship rested unmoving. “As idle as a painted shop upon a painted ocean”. The heat was terrible. There was not a breath of wind, or a cloud in the sky to guard them from the burning sun. Their supply of drinking water was finished, and they could not drink the salty sera water, there was water everywhere around them, but they had not a drop to drink.
The other sailors were very angry with the old man who had shot the albatross. They blamed him for their sufferings and their thirst. They cursed him, and hung the dead albatross round his neck as a punishment.
The next few days were terrible. The sailor’s throats were so dry that they could not speak. Their eyes hurt with looking across the bright, glassy sea, watching all day long far a ship to come to help them.
Suddenly the old sailor saw a ship coming towards them.
“a sail ! a sail !ha cried and the other saw it, too and cried aloud in joy but the ship come slowly nearer, and the men were filled with fear.
This was no ordinary ship: it was not real at all , it seemed like the shadow of a ship, and they could see the shape of the sun quite clearly through the sails. It come nearer and they saw that it had no crew there were only two people on board: one was a woman with bright red lips and a dead white skin and her companion was death himself. They had come to take away the suffering sailors, to carry their souls to the land of death. The old sailor watched, and saw his companions fall down dead, one after another, and the terrible ship of death sails away again with their souls .
He was the only man alive.
“Alone, Alone all, all alone.
Alone on a wide, wide sea.”
For seven days he tried to pray, but he could not break the sailors’ course, he could not sleep, all day and all night he had to look upon the bodies of his dead companions laying round him.
But at last God took pity on him. One day the sailor was watching the water –snakes swimming round the ship. There color were so beautiful and he was filled with such a strong wonder that he felt a great love for them and blessed them from his heart , at once the albatross fell from his neck into the sea’s and the old man fell into a deep sleep. When he woke up it was raining. His thirsty lips were wet and his throat felt fresh and cold again. He thought he heard music all around him, and two voices in the air. One voice said:
Is this the man who killed the harmless albatross?
And the other voice answered: he has been punished enough.”
A soft wind came and blew the ship gently back to harbors, the old man was weak and ill after all his sufferings and he was nearly dead by the time he got back home.
And that is all “, the old sailor finished his story , I was saved because I had shown a true love for all living things, even for water- snacks . Some tines I fell I must tell my terrible story again and teach others the importance of the lesson I learned:
“Prayed best who love best
All things both great and small:
For the dear God who loved us.
He made and loved all.”
I find peace and happiness again as soon as I have told my story and taught people that they must love all things on earth.
And the old sailor, his strange bright eyes and long grey beard went away, leaving the marriage guest alone.
S. T. COLERIDGE
The marriage ceremony was over and the guests were all going to the feast. The old grey-bearded sailor sat on a stone outside the church and watched the people walking past home. He had a strange, mad look in his eyes, and suddenly he stopped one of the guests.
There was a ship ………… the old sailor began, and he spoke so strangely that the guest stood still and listened to him. The feast began; the guest could hear the music and the laughter, but for some reason he could not move to join the others. He had to stay and listen to the bright-eyed sailor’s story.
The old man told him about his last journey on the sea. They had sail away to the south, he said, until they arrived in cold gray seas. Even the sea was frozen, and the ice was all around them, in those days there were no steamships and the big white sails of their ship opened wide as the strong wind blew them quickly through the ice waters. The weather was very cold and there were no birds or animals in that snow-covered country, but one day the sailors saw an albatross flying towards the ship, the albatross is a big sea bird, and it brings good luck to sailors, so the men were pleased to see it. They gave it food and water and it become very tame, it comes to the ship every day when the sailors called it.
“But one day I shot the albatross!” the old sailor told the marriage gust . it was a terrible thing to do and everyone said I had kill the bird which made the winds blew. I had brought bad luck to the crew.
And they were right. The ship sailed out of the ice waters into another sea, where the sun shone hotly overhead. The wind dropped. Day after day they stayed in that silent sea. There were no wind to fill the sails, and the ship rested unmoving. “As idle as a painted shop upon a painted ocean”. The heat was terrible. There was not a breath of wind, or a cloud in the sky to guard them from the burning sun. Their supply of drinking water was finished, and they could not drink the salty sera water, there was water everywhere around them, but they had not a drop to drink.
The other sailors were very angry with the old man who had shot the albatross. They blamed him for their sufferings and their thirst. They cursed him, and hung the dead albatross round his neck as a punishment.
The next few days were terrible. The sailor’s throats were so dry that they could not speak. Their eyes hurt with looking across the bright, glassy sea, watching all day long far a ship to come to help them.
Suddenly the old sailor saw a ship coming towards them.
“a sail ! a sail !ha cried and the other saw it, too and cried aloud in joy but the ship come slowly nearer, and the men were filled with fear.
This was no ordinary ship: it was not real at all , it seemed like the shadow of a ship, and they could see the shape of the sun quite clearly through the sails. It come nearer and they saw that it had no crew there were only two people on board: one was a woman with bright red lips and a dead white skin and her companion was death himself. They had come to take away the suffering sailors, to carry their souls to the land of death. The old sailor watched, and saw his companions fall down dead, one after another, and the terrible ship of death sails away again with their souls .
He was the only man alive.
“Alone, Alone all, all alone.
Alone on a wide, wide sea.”
For seven days he tried to pray, but he could not break the sailors’ course, he could not sleep, all day and all night he had to look upon the bodies of his dead companions laying round him.
But at last God took pity on him. One day the sailor was watching the water –snakes swimming round the ship. There color were so beautiful and he was filled with such a strong wonder that he felt a great love for them and blessed them from his heart , at once the albatross fell from his neck into the sea’s and the old man fell into a deep sleep. When he woke up it was raining. His thirsty lips were wet and his throat felt fresh and cold again. He thought he heard music all around him, and two voices in the air. One voice said:
Is this the man who killed the harmless albatross?
And the other voice answered: he has been punished enough.”
A soft wind came and blew the ship gently back to harbors, the old man was weak and ill after all his sufferings and he was nearly dead by the time he got back home.
And that is all “, the old sailor finished his story , I was saved because I had shown a true love for all living things, even for water- snacks . Some tines I fell I must tell my terrible story again and teach others the importance of the lesson I learned:
“Prayed best who love best
All things both great and small:
For the dear God who loved us.
He made and loved all.”
I find peace and happiness again as soon as I have told my story and taught people that they must love all things on earth.
And the old sailor, his strange bright eyes and long grey beard went away, leaving the marriage guest alone.
ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN PROFANED
ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN PROFANED
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling to falsely disdain’d
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,-
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the narrow?
The devotion to something a far
From the sphere of our sorrow.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling to falsely disdain’d
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,-
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the narrow?
The devotion to something a far
From the sphere of our sorrow.
TH FLIGHT OF LOVE
TH FLIGHT OF LOVE
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
When the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow’s glory is shed,
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Love accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute-
No song but sad dirges.
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
When hearts have one mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! Who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradly, your home, and your bier?
Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the raven on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky,
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
When the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow’s glory is shed,
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Love accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute-
No song but sad dirges.
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
When hearts have one mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! Who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradly, your home, and your bier?
Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the raven on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky,
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
I FEAR THY KISSES, GENTLE MAIDEN
I FEAR THY KISSES, GENTLE MAIDEN
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.
TO THE NIGHT
TO THE NIGHT
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Swiftly walk o’er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone day light,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
When make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy from in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out
Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came and eried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child sleep, the filmy-eved,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? – And I replied,
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-
Sleep will come when thou art filed;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Swiftly walk o’er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone day light,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
When make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy from in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out
Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came and eried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child sleep, the filmy-eved,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? – And I replied,
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-
Sleep will come when thou art filed;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
INVOCATION
INVOCATION
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
Tis since thou art fled away.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain,
Spirit false! Thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not;
As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.
Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings and thou wilt stay.
I live all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves and winds and storms,
Everything almost
Which is nature’s and may be
Untained by man’s misery.
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? But thou dost possess
The things I seek not love them less.
I love Love-though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
Bout above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee-
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
Tis since thou art fled away.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain,
Spirit false! Thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not;
As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.
Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings and thou wilt stay.
I live all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves and winds and storms,
Everything almost
Which is nature’s and may be
Untained by man’s misery.
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? But thou dost possess
The things I seek not love them less.
I love Love-though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
Bout above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee-
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.
THE RECOLLECTION
THE RECOLLECTION
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, memory and write its praise!
Up- to thy wonted work! Com trace
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow,
We wander’s to the Pine forest!
That skirts the Ocean’s foam;
The highest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seem’d as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter’d from above the sun
A light of Paradise,
A light of Paradise.
We passed amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,
And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ovean woods may be
How calm it was the silence ther
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew with its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew,
There seem’d from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,-
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;-
And still I felt the center of the magic circle there
Was one fair form that fill’s with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seem’s as twere a little sky
Gulf’d in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay?
More boundless than the depth of night
And pure than the day-
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud,
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen
Were imaged by the water’s love
Of that fair forest green;
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth exprest;
Until an envious wind crept by
Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the minds too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in shelley’s mind
Than calm n waters seen.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, memory and write its praise!
Up- to thy wonted work! Com trace
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow,
We wander’s to the Pine forest!
That skirts the Ocean’s foam;
The highest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seem’d as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter’d from above the sun
A light of Paradise,
A light of Paradise.
We passed amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,
And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ovean woods may be
How calm it was the silence ther
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew with its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew,
There seem’d from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,-
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;-
And still I felt the center of the magic circle there
Was one fair form that fill’s with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seem’s as twere a little sky
Gulf’d in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay?
More boundless than the depth of night
And pure than the day-
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighboring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud,
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen
Were imaged by the water’s love
Of that fair forest green;
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth exprest;
Until an envious wind crept by
Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the minds too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in shelley’s mind
Than calm n waters seen.
TO A LADY, WITH A GUTTAR
TO A LADY, WITH A GUTTAR
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Ariel to Miranda;- Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee,
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And too intense, is turn’d to pain,
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness; for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own,
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o’er the trackless sea,
Flitting on your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent moon
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell?
Than deserted Ariel.
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot,
This is al remembered not;
And now alas! The poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave;
From you he only dares to crave;
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.
The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all the harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep,
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind swept Apennine;
And dreaming some of autumn past,
And some of spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree,-
O that such our death may be!-
Died in sleep and felt on pain,
To live in happier form again;
From which, beneath heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved Guitar;
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamored tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learned all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening and it knew
That seldom heard mysterious sound,
Which driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless on its way,-
All this it knows but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day;
But sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For our beloved Jane alone.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
Ariel to Miranda;- Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee,
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And too intense, is turn’d to pain,
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness; for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own,
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o’er the trackless sea,
Flitting on your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent moon
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell?
Than deserted Ariel.
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot,
This is al remembered not;
And now alas! The poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave;
From you he only dares to crave;
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.
The artist who this idol wrought,
To echo all the harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep,
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind swept Apennine;
And dreaming some of autumn past,
And some of spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree,-
O that such our death may be!-
Died in sleep and felt on pain,
To live in happier form again;
From which, beneath heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved Guitar;
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skilfully
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamored tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learned all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening and it knew
That seldom heard mysterious sound,
Which driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless on its way,-
All this it knows but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before,
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day;
But sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For our beloved Jane alone.
DREM OF THE UNKNOWN
DREM OF THE UNKNOWN
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I dream’d that as I wander’d by the way
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours let my steps astray,
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the
But kiss’d and then fled as thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind flowers and violets,
Daisies those pearl’d Arcturi of the Earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender blue bells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets-
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth-
Its mother’s face with heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cow bind and the moonlight colour’d may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day?
And wild rose, and ivy serpentine
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black and streak’d with gold,
Fairer than any waken’d eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag flowers purple, prank with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water lilies broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge?
Whit moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
Where mingled or opposed the like array
Kept these imprison’d children of the Hours
Within my hand –and then elate and gay,
I hasten’d the spot whence I had come
That I might there present it - ! to whom?
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I dream’d that as I wander’d by the way
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours let my steps astray,
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the
But kiss’d and then fled as thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind flowers and violets,
Daisies those pearl’d Arcturi of the Earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender blue bells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets-
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth-
Its mother’s face with heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cow bind and the moonlight colour’d may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day?
And wild rose, and ivy serpentine
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black and streak’d with gold,
Fairer than any waken’d eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag flowers purple, prank with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water lilies broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge?
Whit moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
Where mingled or opposed the like array
Kept these imprison’d children of the Hours
Within my hand –and then elate and gay,
I hasten’d the spot whence I had come
That I might there present it - ! to whom?
THE CLOUD
THE CLOUD
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one.
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast.
As she dances about the sun,
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and bowls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me.
Lured y the love of the genii that move,
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills and the crags and the hills.
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile.
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath.
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above.
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon.
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn,
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,-
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane fire and snow.
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million coloured bow;
The sphere fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and water,
And the nursling of the Sky,
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build u the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
PERCY BUSSHE SHELLY
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one.
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast.
As she dances about the sun,
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and bowls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me.
Lured y the love of the genii that move,
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills and the crags and the hills.
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile.
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath.
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above.
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon.
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn,
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,-
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane fire and snow.
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million coloured bow;
The sphere fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and water,
And the nursling of the Sky,
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build u the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
DEATH
DEATH
JOHN DONNE
DEATH, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost over throw
Die not, poor death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From Rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go-
Rest of their bones and souls delivery!
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke, why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!
JOHN DONNE
DEATH, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost over throw
Die not, poor death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From Rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go-
Rest of their bones and souls delivery!
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke, why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!
ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY –THREE
ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY –THREE
JOHN MILTON
HOW soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth
Stol’n on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood an arriv’d so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely happy spirits endu’th
Yet, be it less of more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure ev’n
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me and the will of heav’n.
All is, if have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.
THE ISLES OF GREECE
LORD BYRON
THE isles of Greece! The isles of Greece
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet.
But all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute.
Have fund the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires Islands of the Blest;
The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on Persians grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below
And men n nations;-all were his!
He counted them at break of day-
And when the sun set, where were they?
And where are they? And were art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine.
Degenerate into hands like mine?
Tis something, in the death of fame,
Though link’d among a fetter’d race,
To feel at least a patriot’s shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush- for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o’er days more blest?
Must we but blush?- Our fathers bled.
Earth! Render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!
What silent still? And silent all?
Ah! no;- the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall,
And answer, Let one living head,
But one arise,-we come we come!
Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain- in vain; strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio’s vine!
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
You have the pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine;
He served –but our masters then
Were still at least, our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom’s best and bravest friend
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh? That the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chins as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli’s rock and Parga’s shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there perhaps some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for freedom to the franks-
They have a king, who buys and sells,
In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine1
Our virgins dance beneath the shade-
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves,
Place me on Sunim’s marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There swan like let me sing and die;
And land of slaves shall ne’er be mine-
Dash down you cup of Samian wine!
JOHN MILTON
HOW soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth
Stol’n on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood an arriv’d so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely happy spirits endu’th
Yet, be it less of more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure ev’n
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me and the will of heav’n.
All is, if have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.
THE ISLES OF GREECE
LORD BYRON
THE isles of Greece! The isles of Greece
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet.
But all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute.
Have fund the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires Islands of the Blest;
The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on Persians grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below
And men n nations;-all were his!
He counted them at break of day-
And when the sun set, where were they?
And where are they? And were art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine.
Degenerate into hands like mine?
Tis something, in the death of fame,
Though link’d among a fetter’d race,
To feel at least a patriot’s shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush- for Greece a tear.
Must we but weep o’er days more blest?
Must we but blush?- Our fathers bled.
Earth! Render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!
What silent still? And silent all?
Ah! no;- the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall,
And answer, Let one living head,
But one arise,-we come we come!
Tis but the living who are dumb.
In vain- in vain; strike other chords;
Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio’s vine!
How answers each bold Bacchanal!
You have the pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine;
He served –but our masters then
Were still at least, our countrymen.
The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom’s best and bravest friend
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh? That the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chins as his were sure to bind.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli’s rock and Parga’s shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there perhaps some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.
Trust not for freedom to the franks-
They have a king, who buys and sells,
In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of courage dwells;
But Turkish force and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield however broad.
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine1
Our virgins dance beneath the shade-
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves,
Place me on Sunim’s marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There swan like let me sing and die;
And land of slaves shall ne’er be mine-
Dash down you cup of Samian wine!
POEM_ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER
JOHN KEATS
MUCH have I travell’d 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-brow’d 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
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
JOHN KEATS
MUCH have I travell’d 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-brow’d 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
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
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