Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
["The Everly Brothers [Live 1983] ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM" -- Reunion concert on September 23, 1983 in Royal Albert Hall (London)] and ["Everly Brothers, Let it be me" -- live c. 80's]
At the moment I am engaged in (what is for me) a long term project of transcribing two companion volumes of The Poetical Works of Samuel Woodworth (1861), and in the introduction is included the following vivifying and poignant ode dedicated to Woodworth and written for his daughter by fellow American verse writer Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867).
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"Fitz-Greene Halleck rendered a graceful tribute to Woodworth in these beautiful lines, 'To the Poet's Daughter, written in the Album of Miss Harriet Woodworth.'
"'A lady asks the Minstrel's rhyme.
A lady asks? There was a time
When, musical as a play-bell's chime
To wearied boy,
That sound would summon dream sublime,
Of pride and joy.
"'But now the spell hath lost its sway,
Life's first born fancies first decay,
Gone are the plumes and pennons gay
Of young Romance;
There linger but her ruins gray,
And broken lance.
"'Tis a new world -- no more to maid,
Warrior, or bard, is homage paid;
The bay-tree's laurel's, myrtle shades,
Men's thoughts resign;
Heaven placed us here to vote and trade,
Twin tasks divine!
"'Tis youth, 'tis beauty asks; the green
And growing leaves of seventeen
Are round her; and half hid, half seen,
A violet flower,
Nursed by the virtues she hath been
From childhood's hour.
"'Blind passion's picture -- yet for this
We woo the life-long bridal kiss,
And blend our every hope of bliss
With hers we love;
Unmindful of the serpent's hiss
In Eden's grove.
"Beauty -- the fading rainbows pride,
Youth -- 'twas the charm of her who died
At dawn, and by her coffin's side
A grandsire stands,
Age-strengthened, like the oak storm-tried
Of mountain lands.
"'Youth's coffin -- hush the tale it tells;
Be silent, memory's funeral bells!
Lone in one heart, her home, it dwells
Untold till death,
And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O'er buried faith.
"'But what if hers are rank and power,
Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A kingdom's gold her marriage dower,
Broad seas and lands?
What if from bannered hall and tower
A queen commands?
"'A queen? Earth's regal moons have set.
Where perished Marie Antoinette?
Where's Bordeaux's mother? Where the jet-
Black Haytian dame?
And Lusitania's coronet?
And Angouleme[?]
"'Empires to-day are upside down,
The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown,
A brickbat's range;
Give me in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.
"'But she who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these hath brought her;
She is your kinswoman in song --
A Poet's daughter.
"'A Poet's daughter? Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,
Veins of my intellect frame!
Your blood would grow
Proudly to sing that gentlest name
Of aught below.
"'A Poet's daughter -- dearer word
Lip hath not spoke or listener heard,
Fit theme for song of bee and bird
From morn till even,
And wind-harp by the breathing stirred
Of star-lit heaven.
"'My spirit's wings are weak, the fire
Poetic comes but to expire;
Her name needs not my humble lyre
To bid it live;
She hath already from her sire
All bard can give.'"
It's not my custom to post these sort of "home-made" videos, but these two were so touching (and informative as well), I could not resist doing so.
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["Amazing Squirrel Fights off Crows - Protects Dead Friend's Body"] and ["Stray Cat gives a cardiac massage/CPR" -- filmed in Turkey, Kızılsaray district of Antalya]
Later Note. Which reminds me -- does ANYONE recollect the (pre Fascist-Harry Potter era) Animal Rights movement in Seattle (and elsewhere?)
What are they?
"But you say, They are gods. We protest and appeal from yourselves [Rome's pagans] to your knowledge; let that judge us; let that condemn us, if it can deny that all these gods of yours were but men. If even it venture to deny that, it will be confuted by its own books of antiquities, from which it has got its information about them, bearing witness to this day, as they plainly do, both of the cities in which they were born, and the countries in which they have left traces of their exploits, as well as where also they are proved to have been buried. Shall I now, therefore, go over them one by one, so numerous and so various, new and old, barbarian, Grecian, Roman, foreign, captive and adopted, private and common, male and female, rural and urban, naval and military? It were useless even to hunt out all their names: so I may content myself with a compend; and this not for your information, but that you may have what you know brought to your recollection, for undoubtedly you act as if you had forgotten all about them. No one of your gods is earlier than Saturn: from him you trace all your deities, even those of higher rank and better known. What, then, can be proved of the first, will apply to those that follow. So far, then, as books give us information, neither the Greek Diodorus or Thallus, neither Cassius Severus or Cornelius Nepos, nor any writer upon sacred antiquities, have ventured to say that Saturn was any but a man: so far as the question depends on facts, I find none more trustworthy than those -- that in Italy itself we have the country in which, after many expeditions, and after having partaken of Attic hospitalities, Saturn settled, obtaining cordial welcome from Janus, or, as the Salii will have it, Janis. The mountain on which he dwelt was called Saturnius; the city he founded is called Saturnia to this day; last of all, the whole of Italy, after having borne the name of Oenotria, was called Saturnia from him. He first gave you the art of writing, and a stamped coinage, and thence it is he presides over the public treasury. But if Saturn were a man, he had undoubtedly a human origin; and having a human origin, he was not the offspring of heaven and earth. As his parents were unknown, it was not unnatural that he should be spoken of as the son of those elements from which we might all seem to spring. For who does not speak of heaven and earth as father and mother, in a sort of way of veneration and honour? or from the custom which prevails among us of saying that persons of whom we have no knowledge, or who make a sudden appearance, have fallen from the skies? In this way it came about that Saturn, everywhere a sudden and unlooked-for guest, got everywhere the name of the Heaven-born. For even the common folk call persons whose stock is unknown, sons of earth. I say nothing of how men in these rude times were wont to act, when they were impressed by the look of any stranger happening to appear among them, as though it were divine, since even at this day men of culture make gods of those whom, a day or two before, they acknowledged to be dead men by their public mourning for them. Let these notices of Saturn, brief as they are, suffice. It will thus also be proved that Jupiter is as certainly a man, as from a man he sprung; and that one after another the whole swarm is mortal like the primal stock."
~ Tertullian (c.160-c.220 AD), Apology, ch. 10.
Some do and will have despaired that their religion, be it what it is, does not rescue the world from evil. Yet it is not the purpose of religion to save the world as such, at least not on our level of affecting things. Rather religion's role is to save the life, love, and truth within individual souls; regardless of whether or not the person (as it were) carrying that soul lives or dies. Now to save this world will require also science, right reason, and not a little basic morals and common sense. What destroys our given country, society, and the planet more than anything else are irrationality, dishonesty, cowardice, and gross stupidity and which religion can help to correct, but only up to a point.