Friday Five (Vol. 29) – Barbaric Yawp edition

— 1 —

Yesterday I exchanged a few comments with someone I’d never met before who blogs at Thread of Thoughts. She had kindly commented on something I wrote yesterday and I returned the favor by visiting her blog. I know nothing about her other than what she has written so far, but I’m impressed with how well she’s presented her thoughts to this point. On “Life is too short to be busy…” she posted a media file of a song she recorded of her playing guitar and singing. It fit the mood I was in yesterday. I enjoyed it. And I commented on it. We exchanged a few comments back and forth about how I have been wanting to learn to play before I pick up my guitar, long sitting in the corner of my room, when she said

You don’t have to wait to learn before you pick up and play.

And she’s right of course. And this brought to mind a song that has long been one of my favorites. The lyrics are below, followed by one of four italicized stanzas from Robert Herrick’s poem To the Virgins, to make much of Time. If you’re wondering where you’ve encountered it before (if you have), it was used in this scene from the movie Dead Poet’s Society.

So to that young blogress (and to anyone else no matter your age) I say Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero. Seize the day, counting as little as possible on tomorrow.

And remember the words of that immortal sage, Winnie the Pooh: You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes. In other words, don’t wait to learn before you pick up and play.

Whether persons or goals, it is up to you to take the initiative. Or as Mr. Keating said in that movie, “Sound your barbaric yawp.” It’s never too soon to begin. It’s never too late to start.

— 2 —

I know a girl who was schooled in Manhattan
She reads dusty books and learns phrases in Latin
She is an author, or maybe a poet
A genius but it’s just this world doesn’t know it
She works on her novel most every day
If you laugh she will say…

Chorus:

Seize the day, seize whatever you can
‘Cause life slips away just like hourglass sand
Seize the day, pray for grace from God’s hand
Then nothing will stand in your way
Seize the day

*****

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

— 3 —

Well I know a doctor, a fine young physician
Left his six-figure job for a mission position
He’s healing the sick in an African clinic
He works in the dirt and writes home to the cynics
He says “We work through the night so most every day
As we watch the sun rise we can say…”

Chorus

*****

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

— 4 —

Well I know a man who’s been doing some thinking
He’s as bitter and cold as the whiskey he’s drinking
He’s talking ‘bout fear, about chances not taken
If you listen to him you can hear his heart breaking
He says “One day you’re a boy and the next day you’re dead
I wish way back when someone had said…”

Chorus

*****

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

— 5 —

Well one thing I’ve noticed, wherever I wander
Everyone’s got a dream he can follow or squander
You can do what you will with the days you are given
I’m trying to spend mine on the business of living
So I’m singing my songs off of any old stage
You can laugh if you want, I’ll still say…

Chorus

*****

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Seek Flowers of Heaven

While collecting thoughts and ideas for my last blogpost some were eventually cut for lack of space. But I really enjoyed this one and wanted to share it here.

When I was thinking of ways in which to begin writing about the events of last week I did what I usually do: reached for a book or two from my shelves. A book chosen this time around was Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse compiled by Joseph Pearce (Ignatius Press. 2005). After leafing through several I thought this poem by St. Robert Southwell (1561-1595) was very moving and appropriate to the subject matter.

Seek Flowers of Heaven

Soar up my soul unto thy rest,
Cast off this loathsome load;
Long is the date of thy exile,
Too long thy strait abode.

Graze not on worldly withered week,
It fitteth not thy taste,
The flowers of everlasting spring
Do grow for they repast.

Their leaves are stained in beauty’s dye,
And blazed with their beams,
Their stalks enameled with delight,
And limbed with glorious gleams.

Life giving juice of living love
Their sugared veins doth fill,
And watered with eternal showers,
They nectared drops distill.

The flowers do spring from fertile soil,
Though from unmanured field,
Most glittering gold in lieu of glebe
These fragrant flowers doth yield;

Whose sovereign scent surpassing sense
So ravisheth the mind,
That worldly weeds needs must he loathe,
That can these flowers find.

A Psalm of Life

A Psalm of Life
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

*****

The above poem was first published in the Knickerbocker Magazine in October 1838. It also appeared in Longfellow’s first published collection Voices in the Night in 1839.

Almost

May it be so on this the Feast of the Holy Family. And on every other day besides…

At Christmas
by Edgar Guest

A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season is here;
Then he’s thinking more of others than he’s thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.

When it’s Christmas man is bigger and is better in his part;
He is keener for the service that is prompted by the heart.
All the petty thoughts and narrow seem to vanish for awhile
And the true reward he’s seeking is the glory of a smile.
Then for others he is toiling and somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas he is almost what God wanted him to be.

If I had to paint a picture of a man I think I’d wait
Till he’d fought his selfish battles and had put aside his hate.
I’d not catch him at his labors when his thoughts are all of pelf,
On the long days and the dreary when he’s striving for himself.
I’d not take him when he’s sneering, when he’s scornful or depressed,
But I’d look for him at Christmas when he’s shining at his best.

Man is ever in a struggle and he’s oft misunderstood;
There are days the worst that’s in him is the master of the good,
But at Christmas kindness rules him and he puts himself aside
And his petty hates are vanquished and his heart is opened wide.
Oh, I don’t know how to say it, but somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas man is almost what God sent him here to be.

“…Till you’ve worn the lobster out.”

Inspired by something I read here. I liked it so much I wanted to add it to my blog. It’s especially poignant for me at this particular time of my life. Aside from the challenges faced by all fathers, it seems a few more are poking their heads up for a look, much like a prairie dog. This afternoon I shared a ride back to the mechanic as a passenger in my own car where I’d taken it yesterday to have some brake work done. A young man named Angelo was my driver (and one of the mechanics) and as we drove by Centennial Mall downtown due north of the state capital he asked me why there were a smattering of tents as well as a large teepee in the clearing. “The teepee is new,” I said. “About half of the tents are gone since the weather hit single digits. I guess they had room for the larger teepee once that happened.”

“But why are they doing this? Is it some sort of contest?” he asked. I briefly explained the Occupy Wall Street movement to him as best I could. How the movement originated, some of its original intents, and the mess it turned into. I walked the straight and narrow, leaving my own opinion out of it as I had no idea where Angelo stood on these matters. When I mentioned the calls by some in the OWS movement to waive and forgive all student loans on the part of the government, he shook his head. “That’s not right at all! I work hard. I make my money. I pay my bills. No one forced them to go to college. Sure if I decide I want to make more money I will have to look at going back to school, but that’s my choice. No one put a gun to their head and told them they had to go to school or take out those loans.”

We talked more. He a mechanic, and me the son of a mechanic; discussing a range of things. “When I get hurt in the shop, I don’t rush to the hospital for a band-aid or aspirin so that someone else can pay for it. I take care of it myself. Kids today are soft. When did that happen?” This led to our discussion in how we’ve both treated deep, clean cuts from the workshop: rubber cement and masking tape. We compared shop/factory-related injuries…both of us having shorn skin off of knuckles when a socket wrench slips under the car hood (though my dad’s instances of this were much more common or severe than my own). But I understood where Angelo was coming from.

We covered more in our twenty minute ride, of doing without when necessary…and making sacrifices, but those were the highlights. We arrived back at the shop where he returned my key and we shook hands, going our separate ways but along the same path. I went back to the office and remembered the Grantland Rice poem I had read a few hours before. My new friend Angelo has little inkling of campus life, or of college coursework or football Saturday (other than what he watches on tv, he said). But I suspect that had he chosen that path in life or had the opportunity, he’d have been a pit bull and “punted out of the rut” successfully.

Strike that. I bet he has.

*****

Alumunus Football
By Grantland Rice

Bill Jones had been the shining star upon his college team,
His tackling was ferocious and his bucking was a dream;
When husky William tucked the ball beneath his brawny arm
They had a special man to ring the ambulance alarm.

Bill had the speed—Bill had the weight—the nerve to never yield;
From goal to goal he whizzed along while fragments strewed the field;
And there had been a standing bet—which no one tried to call—
That he could gain his distance through a ten-foot granite wall.

When he wound up his college course each student’s heart was sore;
They wept to think that Husky Bill would buck the line no more;
Not so with William—in his dreams he saw the field of fame
Where he would buck to glory in the swirl of life’s big game.

Sweet are the dreams of campus life—the world which lies beyond
Gleams ever on our inmost gaze with visions fair and fond;
We see our fondest hopes achieved and on with striving soul
We buck the line and run the ends until we reach the goal.

So, with his sheepskin tucked beneath his brawny arm one day,
Bill put on steam and dashed into the thickest of the fray;
With eyes ablaze, he sprinted where the laureled highway led—
When Bill woke up his scalp hung loose and knots adorned his head.

He tried to run the ends of life—when lo—with vicious toss
A bill-collector tackled him and threw him for a loss;
And when he switched his course again and crashed into the line,
The massive guard named failure did a two-step on his spine.

Bill tried to punt out of the rut—but ere he turned the trick
Rick-tackle competition tumbled through and blocked the kick;
And when he tackled at success in one long vicious bound,
The full-back, disappointment, steered his features in the ground.

But one day when across the field of fame the goal seemed dim,
The wise old coach, experience, came up and said to him:
“Old boy,” spoke he, “the main point now before you win your bout
Is keep on bucking failure till you’ve worn the lobster out.

“Cut out this work around the ends—go in there, low and hard—
Just put your eye upon the goal and start there, yard by yard;
And more than all—when you are thrown—or tumbled with a crack—
Don’t lie there whining—hustle up—and keep on coming back.

“Keep coming back for all they’ve got and take it with a grin
When disappointment trips you up or failure barks your shin;
Keep coming back—and if at last you lose the game of right
Let those who whipped you know at least they, too, have had a fight,

“You’ll find the bread-line hard to buck and fame’s goal far away,
But hit the line and hit it hard across each rushing play;
For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name—
He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.”

*****

Image Source

More excellent poetry of this type may be found at The Nomad. Check it out.

“The truth is seldom welcome…”

As a student of history I’ve often studied war. Not because I’m a war-monger with a thirst for blood or conquest. I do it because, as Victor David Hanson writes “democratic citzenship requires knowledge of war—and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever.” In a long but excellent article on why the study of war is important, Hanson alluded to a poem by Margaret Atwood that I’m inserting in full below. Hanson also writes:

Military history is as often the story of appeasement as of warmongering. The destructive military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler would all have ended early had any of their numerous enemies united when the odds favored them. Western air power stopped Slobodan Milošević’s reign of terror at little cost to NATO forces—but only after a near-decade of inaction and dialogue had made possible the slaughter of tens of thousands. Affluent Western societies have often proved reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things,” observed the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. “The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

Indeed, by ignoring history, the modern age is free to interpret war as a failure of communication, of diplomacy, of talking—as if aggressors don’t know exactly what they’re doing. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, frustrated by the Bush administration’s intransigence in the War on Terror, flew to Syria, hoping to persuade President Assad to stop funding terror in the Middle East. She assumed that Assad’s belligerence resulted from our aloofness and arrogance rather than from his dictatorship’s interest in destroying democracy in Lebanon and Iraq, before such contagious freedom might in fact destroy him. For a therapeutically inclined generation raised on Oprah and Dr. Phil—and not on the letters of William Tecumseh Sherman and William Shirer’s Berlin Diary—problems between states, like those in our personal lives, should be argued about by equally civilized and peaceful rivals, and so solved without resorting to violence.

I would love to explain more fully or cite bits and pieces from Hanson’s article that I think important. Instead I’m going to merely invite you to read it for yourself, as well as Atwood’s poem. Lately there has been much discussion about classical studies spurred by some of the protestors at the Occupy Wall Street. While I’m appalled at the stunningly stupid comments coming from the students complaining that there aren’t any $200,000/year jobs waiting for them once they graduate with their humanities degrees, I’m equally dismayed at the ignorance coming from commentators such as Rush Limbaugh who went on a rant about Classical Studies this week. As I usually do, I agree with about half of what he’s saying because let’s face it: a huge part of the failure of our consumer-driven economy is the consumption of student dollars via loans to consume some pretty crappy classes taught by crappy professors in order to get a crappy degree. As I wrote on a friend’s Facebook post this week: Can we finally kill the education-leads-to-virtue conceit once and for all? The evidence has been around us for decades, but OWS (especially Oakland) should put that falsehood to bed.

I have long feared this type of rhetoric and wondered when it would arrive. Economies driven by endless consuming simply cannot last, and there is so much more to this life than consuming. What about contributing to the advancement of humanity? Where the OWS gang gets it wrong is that their degree is meant to get them to engage in critical thinking, not magically having a high paying job waiting for them the next day. Where is my place in this world? How can I contribute? What can I do to better my situation and of those around me? The classic liberal arts degree should never have been sold to them as the end all to beat all. If it was, a large part of the failure is on the part of the institutions of higher education…something I strongly suspect is the truth. When I got my degrees in History and in Political Science I knew that there were no jobs waiting for me based upon those two degrees alone. But the skills I took from them as far as being able to think, to debate, to write, and to discuss ideas…those were the skills that have served me well in the 21 years I’ve been a member of the post-graduate workforce.

I’m still a student of philosophy, history, and the human condition. I always will be. One should aspire to never cease to learn. It is the study of history that unites us to all of the thoughts and ideas and the consequences of them in order for us to move forward. That’s true progressivism. It’s bad enough that those students don’t understand that, but for Limbaugh and others to say that they should never have the opportunity in those studies is astounding. All of history’s demogogues, on the right and on the left, have feasted upon ignorant masses who are incapable of thinking and forming their own opinion. Sheep are more easily led to the slaughter.

And based upon all of the failures of our politicians, business leaders, heads of churches and in our collegiate sports-crazy realm, I would say we all could do with a heavy crash course in Ethics and the Humanities. As Atwood writes in her poem: The truth is seldom welcome.

Shiloh National Military Park, Tennessee

The Loneliness of the Military Historian
by Margaret Atwood

Confess: it’s my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.
I wear dresses of sensible cut
and unalarming shades of beige,
I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser’s:
no prophetess mane of mine,
complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.
If I roll my eyes and mutter,
if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror
like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,
I do it in private and nobody sees
but the bathroom mirror.

In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.

Instead of this, I tell
what I hope will pass as truth.
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The truth is seldom welcome,
especially at dinner,
though I am good at what I do.
My trade is courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.

In my dreams there is glamour.
The Vikings leave their fields
each year for a few months of killing and plunder,
much as the boys go hunting.
In real life they were farmers.
They come back loaded with splendour.
The Arabs ride against Crusaders
with scimitars that could sever
silk in the air.
A swift cut to the horse’s neck
and a hunk of armour crashes down
like a tower. Fire against metal.
A poet might say: romance against banality.
When awake, I know better.

Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right—
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.
It’s no use pinning all those medals
across the chests of the dead.
Impressive, but I know too much.
Grand exploits merely depress me.

In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men’s bodies and spangled with exploded
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.
(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar
or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)
The word glory figures a lot on gateways.
Of course I pick a flower or two
from each, and press it in the hotel Bible
for a souvenir.
I’m just as human as you.

But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.

________

Margaret Atwood, “The Loneliness of the Military Historian” from Morning in the Burned House. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Walking with God and St. Francis

God Would Kneel Down
by Saint Francis of Assisi

I think God might be a little prejudiced.
For once He asked me to join Him on a walk
through this world,

and we gazed into every heart on this earth,
and I noticed He lingered a bit longer
before any face that was weeping,

and before any eyes that were laughing.

And sometimes when we passed
a soul in worship

God too would kneel down.

I have come to learn:
God adores His creation.

Source: Poet Seers