The Poetry of R.E. Slater

"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]

Monday, October 31, 2016

Alexander Pope - An Essay on Man: Epistle I

An Essay on Man: Epistle I

Related Poem Content Details

BY ALEXANDER POPE

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;

Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,

Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,

Correct old time, and regulate the sun;

Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,

To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;

Or tread the mazy round his follow'rs trod,

And quitting sense call imitating God;

As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,

And turn their heads to imitate the sun.

Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—

Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!

Superior beings, when of late they saw

A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,

Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,

And showed a Newton as we shew an Ape.

Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,

Describe or fix one movement of his mind?

Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,

Explain his own beginning, or his end?

Alas what wonder! Man's superior part

Uncheck'd may rise, and climb from art to art;

But when his own great work is but begun,

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.

Trace science then, with modesty thy guide;

First strip off all her equipage of pride;

Deduct what is but vanity, or dress,

Or learning's luxury, or idleness;

Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,

Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;

Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts

Of all our Vices have created Arts;

Then see how little the remaining sum,

Which serv'd the past, and must the times to come!

II.

Two principles in human nature reign;

Self-love, to urge, and reason, to restrain;

Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call,

Each works its end, to move or govern all:

And to their proper operation still,

Ascribe all good; to their improper, ill.

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;

Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.

Man, but for that, no action could attend,

And but for this, were active to no end:

Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,

To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;

Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,

Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

Most strength the moving principle requires;

Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires.

Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,

Form'd but to check, delib'rate, and advise.

Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;

Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie:

That sees immediate good by present sense;

Reason, the future and the consequence.

Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,

At best more watchful this, but that more strong.

The action of the stronger to suspend,

Reason still use, to reason still attend.

Attention, habit and experience gains;

Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.

Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight,

More studious to divide than to unite,

And grace and virtue, sense and reason split,

With all the rash dexterity of wit:

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,

Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.

Self-love and reason to one end aspire,

Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire;

But greedy that its object would devour,

This taste the honey, and not wound the flow'r:

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,

Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

III.

Modes of self-love the passions we may call:

'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all:

But since not every good we can divide,

And reason bids us for our own provide;

Passions, though selfish, if their means be fair,

List under reason, and deserve her care;

Those, that imparted, court a nobler aim,

Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name.

In lazy apathy let Stoics boast

Their virtue fix'd, 'tis fix'd as in a frost;

Contracted all, retiring to the breast;

But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:

The rising tempest puts in act the soul,

Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,

Reason the card, but passion is the gale;

Nor God alone in the still calm we find,

He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.

Passions, like elements, though born to fight,

Yet, mix'd and soften'd, in his work unite:

These 'tis enough to temper and employ;

But what composes man, can man destroy?

Suffice that reason keep to nature's road,

Subject, compound them, follow her and God.

Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,

Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain,

These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,

Make and maintain the balance of the mind:

The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife

Gives all the strength and colour of our life.

Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes,

And when in act they cease, in prospect, rise:

Present to grasp, and future still to find,

The whole employ of body and of mind.

All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;

On diff'rent senses diff'rent objects strike;

Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame,

As strong or weak, the organs of the frame;

And hence one master passion in the breast,

Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,

Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:

So, cast and mingled with his very frame,

The mind's disease, its ruling passion came;

Each vital humour which should feed the whole,

Soon flows to this, in body and in soul.

Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,

As the mind opens, and its functions spread,

Imagination plies her dang'rous art,

And pours it all upon the peccant part.

Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;

Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;

Reason itself but gives it edge and pow'r;

As Heav'n's blest beam turns vinegar more sour.

We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway,

In this weak queen some fav'rite still obey:

Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,

What can she more than tell us we are fools?

Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend,

A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!

Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade

The choice we make, or justify it made;

Proud of an easy conquest all along,

She but removes weak passions for the strong:

So, when small humours gather to a gout,

The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.

Yes, nature's road must ever be preferr'd;

Reason is here no guide, but still a guard:

'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,

And treat this passion more as friend than foe:

A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends,

And sev'ral men impels to sev'ral ends.

Like varying winds, by other passions toss'd,

This drives them constant to a certain coast.

Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please,

Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease;

Through life 'tis followed, ev'n at life's expense;

The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,

The monk's humility, the hero's pride,

All, all alike, find reason on their side.

Th' eternal art educing good from ill,

Grafts on this passion our best principle:

'Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd,

Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd;

The dross cements what else were too refin'd,

And in one interest body acts with mind.

As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,

On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear;

The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,

Wild nature's vigor working at the root.

What crops of wit and honesty appear

From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!

See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;

Ev'n av'rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;

Lust, through some certain strainers well refin'd,

Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;

Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,

Is emulation in the learn'd or brave;

Nor virtue, male or female, can we name,

But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.

Thus nature gives us (let it check our pride)

The virtue nearest to our vice allied:

Reason the byass turns to good from ill,

And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will.

The fiery soul abhorr'd in Catiline,

In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:

The same ambition can destroy or save,

And make a patriot as it makes a knave.

IV.

This light and darkness in our chaos join'd,

What shall divide? The God within the mind.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce,

In man they join to some mysterious use;

Though each by turns the other's bound invade,

As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,

And oft so mix, the diff'rence is too nice

Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice.

Fools! who from hence into the notion fall,

That vice or virtue there is none at all.

If white and black blend, soften, and unite

A thousand ways, is there no black or white?

Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;

'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:

Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;

In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where:

No creature owns it in the first degree,

But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he!

Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,

Or never feel the rage, or never own;

What happier natures shrink at with affright,

The hard inhabitant contends is right.

VI.

Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be,

Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree;

The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;

And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.

'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill,

For, vice or virtue, self directs it still;

Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal;

But heav'n's great view is one, and that the whole:

That counterworks each folly and caprice;

That disappoints th' effect of ev'ry vice;

That, happy frailties to all ranks applied,

Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,

Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,

To kings presumption, and to crowds belief,

That, virtue's ends from vanity can raise,

Which seeks no int'rest, no reward but praise;

And build on wants, and on defects of mind,

The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.

Heav'n forming each on other to depend,

A master, or a servant, or a friend,

Bids each on other for assistance call,

'Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.

Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally

The common int'rest, or endear the tie:

To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,

Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;

Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,

Those joys, those loves, those int'rests to resign;

Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,

To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf,

Not one will change his neighbour with himself.

The learn'd is happy nature to explore,

The fool is happy that he knows no more;

The rich is happy in the plenty giv'n,

The poor contents him with the care of heav'n.

See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,

The sot a hero, lunatic a king;

The starving chemist in his golden views

Supremely blest, the poet in his Muse.

See some strange comfort ev'ry state attend,

And pride bestow'd on all, a common friend;

See some fit passion ev'ry age supply,

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,

Pleas'd with a rattle, tickl'd with a straw:

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite:

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,

And beads and pray'r books are the toys of age:

Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before;

'Till tir'd he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er!

Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays

Those painted clouds that beautify our days;

Each want of happiness by hope supplied,

And each vacuity of sense by Pride:

These build as fast as knowledge can destroy;

In folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy;

One prospect lost, another still we gain;

And not a vanity is giv'n in vain;

Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine,

The scale to measure others' wants by thine.

See! and confess, one comfort still must rise,

'Tis this: Though man's a fool, yet God is wise.

What Does the Poem Mean?

Wikipedia - An Essay on Man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_Man

An Essay on Man is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1733-1734. It is an effort to rationalize or rather "vindicate the ways of God to man" (l.16), a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will "justify the ways of God to men" (1.26). It is concerned with the natural order God has decreed for man. Because man cannot know God's purposes, he cannot complain about his position in the Great Chain of Being (ll.33-34) and must accept that "Whatever IS, is RIGHT" (l.292), a theme that was satirized by Voltaire in Candide (1759). More than any other work, it popularized optimistic philosophy throughout England and the rest of Europe.

Pope's Essay on Man and Moral Epistles were designed to be the parts of a system of ethics which he wanted to express in poetry. Moral Epistles has been known under various other names including Ethic Epistles and Moral Essays.

On its publication, An Essay on Man received great admiration throughout Europe. Voltaire called it "the most beautiful, the most useful, the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language". In 1756 Rousseau wrote to Voltaire admiring the poem and saying that it "softens my ills and brings me patience". Kant was fond of the poem and would recite long passages from it to his students.

Later however, Voltaire renounced his admiration for Pope's and Leibniz's optimism and even wrote a novel, Candide, as a satire on their philosophy of ethics. Rousseau also critiqued the work, questioning "Pope's uncritical assumption that there must be an unbroken chain of being all the way from inanimate matter up to God."

The essay, written in heroic couplets, comprises four epistles. Pope began work on it in 1729, and had finished the first three by 1731. They appeared in early 1733, with the fourth epistle published the following year. The poem was originally published anonymously; Pope did not admit authorship until 1735.

Pope reveals in his introductory statement, "The Design," that An Essay on Man was originally conceived as part of a longer philosophical poem, with four separate books. What we have today would comprise the first book. The second was to be a set of epistles on human reason, arts and sciences, human talent, as well as the use of learning, science, and wit "together with a satire against the misapplications of them." The third book would discuss politics, and the fourth book "private ethics" or "practical morality." Often quoted is the following passage, the first verse paragraph of the second book, which neatly summarizes some of the religious and humanistic tenets of the poem:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much;

Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;

Still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd;

Created half to rise and half to fall;

Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all,

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;

The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,

Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,

Correct old time, and regulate the sun;

Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,

To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;

Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,

And quitting sense call imitating God;

As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,

And turn their heads to imitate the sun.

Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—

Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!

Pope says that man has learnt about Nature and God's creation by using science; science has given man power but man intoxicated by this power thinks that he is "imitating God". Pope uses the word "fool" to show how little he (man) knows in spite of the progress made by science.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Alexander Pope's Essay on Man: An Introduction

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/pope/man.html

David Cody, Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College

The Essay on Man is a philosophical poem, written, characteristically, in heroic couplets, and published between 1732 and 1734. Pope intended it as the centerpiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form: it is in fact a fragment of a larger work which Pope planned but did not live to complete. It is an attempt to justify, as Milton had attempted to vindicate, the ways of God to Man, and a warning that man himself is not, as, in his pride, he seems to believe, the center of all things. Though not explicitly Christian, the Essay makes the implicit assumption that man is fallen and unregenerate, and that he must seek his own salvation.

The "Essay" consists of four epistles, addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, and derived, to some extent, from some of Bolingbroke's own fragmentary philosophical writings, as well as from ideas expressed by the deistic third Earl of Shaftsbury. Pope sets out to demonstrate that no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable, and disturbingly full of evil the Universe may appear to be, it does function in a rational fashion, according to natural laws; and is, in fact, considered as a whole, a perfect work of God. It appears imperfect to us only because our perceptions are limited by our feeble moral and intellectual capacity. His conclusion is that we must learn to accept our position in the Great Chain of Being — a "middle state," below that of the angels but above that of the beasts — in which we can, at least potentially, lead happy and virtuous lives.

Epistle I concerns itself with the nature of man and with his place in the universe; Epistle II, with man as an individual; Epistle III, with man in relation to human society, to the political and social hierarchies; and Epistle IV, with man's pursuit of happiness in this world. An Essay on Man was a controversial work in Pope's day, praised by some and criticized by others, primarily because it appeared to contemporary critics that its emphasis, in spite of its themes, was primarily poetic and not, strictly speaking, philosophical in any really coherent sense: Dr. Johnson, never one to mince words, and possessed, in any case, of views upon the subject which differed materially from those which Pope had set forth, noted dryly (in what is surely one of the most back-handed literary compliments of all time) that "Never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised." It is a subtler work, however, than perhaps Johnson realized: G. Wilson Knight has made the perceptive comment that the poem is not a "static scheme" but a "living organism," (like Twickenham) and that it must be understood as such.

Considered as a whole, the Essay on Man is an affirmative poem of faith: life seems chaotic and patternless to man when he is in the midst of it, but is in fact a coherent portion of a divinely ordered plan. In Pope's world God exists, and he is benificent: his universe is an ordered place. The limited intellect of man can perceive only a tiny portion of this order, and can experience only partial truths, and hence must rely on hope, which leads to faith. Man must be cognizant of his rather insignificant position in the grand scheme of things: those things which he covets most — riches, power, fame — prove to be worthless in the greater context of which he is only dimly aware. In his place, it is man's duty to strive to be good, even if he is doomed, because of his inherent frailty, to fail in his attempt. Do you find Pope's argument convincing? In what ways can we relate the Essay on Man to works like Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (text), Tennyson's In Memoriam and Eliot's The Wasteland?

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Langston Hughes - Black Poems of Harlem

Harlem Poet Langston Hughes

Island

by Langston Hughes

Wave of sorrow,

Do not drown me now;

I see the island

Still ahead somehow.

I see the island

And its sands are fair;

Wave of sorrow,

Take me there.

Island by Langston Hughes (Poetry Reading)

Lonesome Place

by Langston Hughes

I got to leave this town.

It’s a lonesome place.

Got to leave this town cause

It’s a lonesome place.

A po’, po’ boy can’t

Find a friendly face.

Goin’ down to de river

Flowin’ deep an’ slow.

Goin’ down to de river

Deep an’ slow-

Cause there ain’t no worries

Where de waters go.

I’m weary, weary,

Weary, as I can be.

Weary, weary,

Weary as can be.

This life’s so weary,

‘S’ bout to overcome me.

Sea Calm

by Langston Hughes

How still,

How strangely still

The water is today,

It is not good

For water

To be so still that way.

Feet o' Jesus

by Langston Hughes

At the feet o' Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea.

Lordy, let yo' mercy

Come driftin' down on me.

At the feet o' Jesus

At yo' feet I stand.

O, ma little Jesus,

Please reach out yo' hand.

Thanksgiving Time

by Langston Hughes

When the night winds whistle through the trees and blow the crisp brown leaves a-crackling down,

When the autumn moon is big and yellow-orange and round,
When old Jack Frost is sparkling on the ground,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the pantry jars are full of mince-meat and the shelves are laden with sweet spices for a cake,
When the butcher man sends up a turkey nice and fat to bake,
When the stores are crammed with everything ingenious cooks can make,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the gales of coming winter outside your window howl,
When the air is sharp and cheery so it drives away your scowl,
When one's appetite craves turkey and will have no other fowl,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

Analysis of the

Trumpet Player - Poem by Langston Hughes

Trumpet Player

by Langston Hughes

The Negro

With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs

The negro
with the trumpet at his lips
has a head of vibrant hair
tamed down,
patent-leathered now
until it gleams
like jet-
were jet a crown

the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire
the rhythm
from the trumpet at his lips
is ecstasy
distilled from old desire-

Desire
that is longing for the moon
where the moonlight's but a spotlight
in his eyes,
desire
that is longing for the sea
where the sea's a bar-glass
sucker size

The Negro
with the trumpet at his lips
whose jacket
Has a fine one-button roll,
does not know
upon what riff the music slips

It's hypodermic needle
to his soul
but softly
as the tune comes from his throat
trouble
mellows to a golden note

Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance

My People
by Langston Hughes

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

The Historical Context of the Harlem Renaissance

Madam And The Rent Man

by Langston Hughes

The rent man knocked.

He said, Howdy-do?
I said, What
Can I do for you?
He said, You know
Your rent is due.

I said, Listen,
Before I'd pay
I'd go to Hades
And rot away!

The sink is broke,
The water don't run,
And you ain't done a thing
You promised to've done.

Back window's cracked,
Kitchen floor squeaks,
There's rats in the cellar,
And the attic leaks.

He said, Madam,
It's not up to me.
I'm just the agent,
Don't you see?

I said, Naturally,
You pass the buck.
If it's money you want
You're out of luck.

He said, Madam,
I ain't pleased!
I said, Neither am I.
So we agrees!

I Continue to Dream

by Langston Hughes

I take my dreams and make of them a bronze vase

and a round fountain with a beautiful statue in its center.
And a song with a broken heart and I ask you:
Do you understand my dreams?
Sometimes you say you do,
And sometimes you say you don't.
Either way it doesn't matter.
I continue to dream.

I Continue to Dream by Langston Hughes

Justice

by Langston Hughes

That Justice is a blind goddess

Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Justice by Langston Hughes

5 Poems by Langston Hughes

I, Too

by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America,

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

and be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Mini bio of Langston Hughes

Biography of Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes' grand uncle, John Mercer Langston, was the first black congressman elected from Virginia in 1888. Born James Mercer Langston Hughes February 1, 1902, both of his parents were of mixed race. His mother Carrie (Caroline) Mercer Langston was a school teacher. His father, James Nathaniel Hughes, left the family when Langston was a child.

After his parents separated, Langston was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson, in Lawrence, Kansas. She impressed racial pride in the young Langston. When she died he went to live with family friends James and Mary Reed. During this time his mother had been seeking employment. He reunited with his mother after she re-married in Lincoln, Illinois.

He attended Columbia, but left left because of racial prejudice. Hughes then worked odd jobs and earned a B.A. From Lincoln University in 1929. His political views had developed left of center, but Arnold Rampersad writes that during WWII his views were more aligned with the center. Still, in 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy "forced him to...testify officially about his politics." But, the disgrace was soon conferred on the discredited McCarthy.

Langston Hughes was an influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's and 30's. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and established a theater troupe in Los Angeles. In addition to poetry he wrote short stories, plays, operas, novels, childrens' books and 2 autobiographies.

In the 1950's and 60's Hughes' fell out of favor with younger black writers who considered his views dated.

Langston Hughes died May 22, 1967 from complications from prostrate cancer.

-----

Biography - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes

Biography - Poem Hunter

http://www.poemhunter.com/langston-hughes/biography/

Biography - Poetry Foundation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/langston-hughes

Langston Hughes's Works

Poetry Collections

The Weary Blues, Knopf, 1926

Fine Clothes to the Jew, Knopf, 1927

The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931

Dear Lovely Death, 1931

The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, Knopf, 1932

Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play, Golden Stair Press, N.Y., 1932

Let America Be America Again, 1938

Shakespeare in Harlem, Knopf, 1942

Freedom's Plow, 1943

Fields of Wonder, Knopf, 1947

One-Way Ticket, 1949

Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, 1958

Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Hill & Wang, 1961

The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994

Novels and Short Story Collections

Not Without Laughter. Knopf, 1930

The Ways of White Folks. Knopf, 1934

Simple Speaks His Mind. 1950

Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952

Simple Takes a Wife. 1953

Sweet Flypaper of Life, photographs by Roy DeCarava. 1955

Tambourines to Glory 1958

The Best of Simple. 1961

Simple's Uncle Sam. 1965

Something in Common and Other Stories. Hill & Wang, 1963

Short Stories of Langston Hughes. Hill & Wang, 1996

Non-fiction Books

The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940

Famous American Negroes. 1954

I Wonder as I Wander. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1956

A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, with Milton Meltzer. 1956

Famous Negro Heroes of America. 1958

Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. 1962

Major Plays by Hughes

Mule Bone, with Zora Neale Hurston. 1931

Mulatto. 1935 (renamed The Barrier, an opera, in 1950)

Troubled Island, with William Grant Still. 1936

Little Ham. 1936

Emperor of Haiti. 1936

Don't You Want to be Free? 1938

Street Scene, contributed lyrics. 1947

Tambourines to glory. 1956

Simply Heavenly. 1957

Black Nativity. 1961

Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.

Jericho-Jim Crow. 1964

Works for Children

Popo and Fifina, with Arna Bontemps. 1932

The First Book of the Negroes. 1952

The First Book of Jazz. 1954

Marian Anderson: Famous Concert Singer. with Steven C. Tracy 1954

The First Book of Rhythms. 1954

The First Book of the West Indies. 1956

First Book of Africa. 1964

Black Misery. Illustrated by Arouni. 1969, reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1994.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Elizabeth Akers Allen - Rock Me to Sleep

Rock Me to Sleep

by Elizabeth Akers Allen

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart as of yore;

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,

Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears,—

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—

Take them, and give me my childhood again!

I have grown weary of dust and decay,—

Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;

Weary of sowing for others to reap;—

Rock me to sleep, mother – rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,

Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!

Many a summer the grass has grown green,

Blossomed and faded, our faces between:

Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,

Long I tonight for your presence again.

Come from the silence so long and so deep;—

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,

No love like mother-love ever has shone;

No other worship abides and endures,—

Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:

None like a mother can charm away pain

From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.

Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,

Fall on your shoulders again as of old;

Let it drop over my forehead tonight,

Shading my faint eyes away from the light;

For with its sunny-edged shadows once more

Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;

Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long

Since I last listened your lullaby song:

Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem

Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.

Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,

With your light lashes just sweeping my face,

Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

- Elizabeth Akers Allen

Rock Me To Sleep, Mother

Biography of Elizabeth Akers Allen

http://www.poemhunter.com/elizabeth-akers-allen/biography/

Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen (October 9, 1832, Strong, Maine – August 7, 1911, Tuckahoe, New York) was an American author, journalist and poet. Born Elizabeth Anne Chase, she grew up in Farmington, Maine, where she attended Farmington Academy. She began to write at the age of fifteen, under the pen name Florence Percy, and in 1855 published under that name a volume of poems entitled Forest Buds. In 1851 she married Marshall S. M. Taylor, but they were divorced within a few years. In subsequent years she travelled through Europe; in Rome she became acquainted with the feminist Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis. While in Europee she served as a correspondent for the Portland Transcript and the Boston Evening Gazette. She started contributing to the Atlantic Monthly in 1858[1]. She married Paul Akers, a Maine sculptor whom she had met in Rome, in 1860; he died in 1861. In 1865 she married E. M. Allen, of New York. In 1866 a collection of her poems was published in Boston.

Elizabeth Akers Allen's Works:

Forest Buds from the Woods of Maine (1855)
Poems (1866-1869)
Queen Catharine's Rose (1885)
The Silver Bridge (1885)
Two Saints (1888)
The High-Top Sweeting (1891)
The Proud Lady of Stavoven (1897)
The Ballad of the Bronx (1901)
The Sunset Song (1902)

Elizabeth Akers Allen Poems:

Rock Me To Sleep

Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight; Make me a child again, just for tonight! Mother, come back from that echoless shore;

At Last

At last, when all the summer shine That warmed life's early hours is past, Your loving fingers seek for mine

Morning Glories

Oh, dainty daughters of the dawn, most delicate of flowers, How fitly do ye come to deck day's most delicious hours! Evoked by morning's earliest breath, your fragile cups unfold Before the light has cleft the sky, or edged the world with gold.

Little Feet

Two little feet, so small that both may nestle In one caressing hand, - Two tender feet upon the untried border Of life's mysterious land.

In A Garret

THIS realm is sacred to the silent past; Within its drowsy shades are treasures rare Of dust and dreams; the years are long since last

Witch Hazel

The last lone aster in the wood has died, And taken wings, and flown; The sighing oaks, the evergreens' dark pride, And shivering beeches, keep their leaves alone.

Lost Light

My heart is chilled and my pulse is slow, But often and often will memory go, Like a blind child lost in a waste of snow,

Bringing Our Sheaves With Us

The time for toil is past, and night has come, The last and saddest of the harvest-eves; Worn out with labor long and wearisome, Drooping and faint, the reapers hasten home, Each laden with his sheaves.

Until Death

Make me no vows of constancy, dear friend, To love me, though I die, thy whole life long, And love no other till thy days shall end -

Left Behind

It was the autumn of the year; The strawberry-leaves were red and sere; October's airs were fresh and chill, When, pausing on the windy hill,

Snow

Lo, what wonders the day hath brought, Born of the soft and slumbrous snow! Gradual, silent, slowly wrought;

Truth And Beauty

Strange Truth and Beauty are enemies, Treading forever on each other's toes! Strange rhymes are always made of that which is

The Last Landlord

YOU who dread the cares and labors Of the tenant’s annual quest, You who long for peace and rest,

Sea-Birds

O lonesome sea-gull, floating far Over the ocean's icy waste, Aimless and wide thy wanderings are, Forever vainly seeking rest: -

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Rudyard Kipling - Recessional

Isaiah 2.4

.ד וְשָׁפַט בֵּין הַגּוֹיִם, וְהוֹכִיחַ לְעַמִּים רַבִּים; וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים"
"וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת–לֹא-יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל-גּוֹי חֶרֶב, וְלֹא-יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה

"And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Recessional

by Rudyard Kipling (1897)

God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

- Rudyard Kipling

Analysis, by Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recessional_(poem)

"Recessional" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, which he composed for the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

Description

The poem is a prayer. It describes two fates that befall even the most powerful people, armies and nations, and that threatened the British Empire at the time: passing out of existence, and lapsing from Christian faith into profanity. The prayer entreats God to spare "us" (the British Empire) from these fates, "lest we forget" the sacrifice of Christ.

The poem went against the celebratory mood of the time, providing instead a reminder of the transient nature of British Imperial power.[1] In the poem, Kipling argues that boasting and jingoism, faults of which he was often accused, were inappropriate and vain in light of the permanence of God.

Kipling had previously composed his more famous poem "The White Man's Burden" for Victoria's jubilee, but replaced it with "Recessional". "Burden" was published two years later, modified to fit the theme of the Americanexpansion after the Spanish–American War.[2]

In Australia[3] and New Zealand[4] "Recessional" is sung as a hymn on Anzac Day, to the tune "Melita" ("Eternal Father, Strong to Save").

The Anglican Church of Canada adopted "Recessional" as a hymn[5] and a unique musical version of the hymn is included in the 1985 hymnal of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[6]

Lest we forget

Main article: Lest we forget (phrase)

The phrase "lest we forget" forms the refrain of "Recessional." It introduces the reason for the entreaty expressed in the poem: that God might spare the British Empire from oblivion or profanity, "lest we forget" the sacrifice of Christ ("Thine ancient sacrifice").

The phrase later passed into common usage after World War I across the British Commonwealth, especially becoming linked with Remembrance Day observations; it became a plea not to forget past sacrifices, and was often found as the only wording on war memorials,[7] or used as an epitaph.

* * * * * * * * *

Other References

The Kipling Society's Notes - http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_recess1.htm

The Bully Pulpit - What Kipling's Recessional Can Teach Us - https://jrbenjamin.com/2014/02/21/what-kiplings-recessional-can-teach-us/

"Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling

* * * * * * * * *

Biography of Kipling, 1865-1936

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/rudyard-kipling

Rudyard Kipling is one of the best-known of the late Victorian poets and story-tellers. Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907, his unpopular political views caused his work to be neglected shortly after his death. Critics, however, recognize the power of his work. "His unrelenting craftsmanship, his determination to be 'master of the bricks and mortar of his trade,' compels respect, and his genius as a storyteller, and especially as a teller of stories for children," writes William Blackburn in Writers for Children, "will surely prove stronger than the murky and sordid vicissitudes of politics." "Although Kipling's overall career still awaits judicious critical re-evaluation," Blackburn concludes, "the general public—and especially the young public—has long since rendered its own verdict. His status as a writer for children is rightfully secure, and none of his major works has yet gone out of print."

Kipling was born in Bombay, India, at the end of the year 1865. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was principal of the Jeejeebyhoy School of Art, an architect and artist who had come to the colony, writes Charles Cantalupo in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "to encourage, support, and restore native Indian art against the incursions of British business interests." He meant to try, Cantalupo continues, "to preserve, at least in part, and to copy styles of art and architecture which, representing a rich and continuous tradition of thousands of years, were suddenly threatened with extinction." His mother, Alice Macdonald, had connections through her sister's marriage to the artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones with important members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in British arts and letters.

Kipling spent the first years of his life in India, remembering it in later years as almost a paradise. "My first impression," he wrote in his posthumously published autobiographySomething of Myself for My Friends Known and Unknown, "is of daybreak, light and colour and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder." In 1871, however, his parents sent him and his sister Beatrice—called "Trix"—to England, partly to avoid health problems, but also so that the children could begin their schooling. Kipling and his sister were placed with the widow of an old Navy captain named Holloway at a boarding house called Lorne Lodge in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. Kipling and Trix spent the better part of the next six years in that place, which they came to call the "House of Desolation."

The years from 1871 until 1877 became, for Kipling, years of misery. "In addition to feelings of bewilderment and abandonment" from being deserted by his parents, writes Mary A. O'Toole in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Kipling had to suffer bullying by the woman of the house and her son." Kipling may have brought some of this treatment on himself—he was a formidably aggressive and pampered child. He once stamped down a quiet country road shouting: "Out of the way, out of the way, there's an angry Ruddy coming!," reports J. I. M. Stewart in his biography Rudyard Kipling, which led an aunt to reflect that "the wretched disturbances one ill-ordered child can make is a lesson for all time to me." In Something of Myself, however, he recounted punishments that went far beyond correction. "I had never heard of Hell," he wrote, "so I was introduced to it in all its terrors.... Myself I was regularly beaten." On one occasion, after having thrown away a bad report card rather than bring it home, "I was well beaten and sent to school through the streets of Southsea with the placard 'Liar' between my shoulders." At last, Kipling suffered a sort of nervous breakdown. An examination showed that he badly needed glasses—which helped explain his poor performance in school—and his mother returned from India to care for him. "She told me afterwards," Kipling stated in Something of Myself, "that when she first came up to my room to kiss me good-night, I flung up an arm to guard off the cuff that I had been trained to expect."

Kipling did have some happy times during those years. He and his sister spent each December time with his mother's sister, Lady Burne-Jones, at The Grange, a meeting-place frequented by English artisans such as William Morris—or "our Deputy 'Uncle Topsy'" as Kipling called him in Something of Myself. Sir Edward Burne-Jones occasionally entered into the children's play, Kipling recalled: "Once he descended in broad daylight with a tube of 'Mummy Brown' [paint] in his hand, saying that he had discovered it was made of dead Pharaohs and we must bury it accordingly. So we all went out and helped—according to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis, I hope—and—to this day I could drive a spade within a foot of where that tube lies." "But on a certain day—one tried to fend off the thought of it—the delicious dream would end," he concluded, "and one would return to the House of Desolation, and for the next two or three mornings there cry on waking up."

In 1878, Kipling was sent off to school in Devon, in the west of England. The institution was the United Services College, a relatively new school intended to educate the sons of army officers, and Kipling was probably sent there because the headmaster was one Cormell Price, "one of my Deputy-Uncles at The Grange ... 'Uncle Crom.'" There Kipling formed three close friends, whom he later immortalized in his collection of stories Stalky Co (1899). "We fought among ourselves 'regular an' faithful as man an' wife,'" Kipling reported in Something of Myself, "but any debt which we owed elsewhere was faithfully paid by all three of us." "I must have been 'nursed' with care by Crom and under his orders," Kipling recalled. "Hence, when he saw I was irretrievably committed to the ink-pot, his order that I should edit the School Paper and have the run of his Library Study.... Heaven forgive me! I thought these privileges were due to my transcendent personal merits."

Since his parents could not afford to send him to one of the major English universities, in 1882 Kipling left the Services College, bound for India to rejoin his family and to begin a career as a journalist. For five years he held the post of assistant editor of the Civil and Military Gazette at Lahore. During those years he also published the stories that becamePlain Tales from the Hills, works based on British lives in the resort town of Simla, andDepartmental Ditties, his first major collection of poems. In 1888, the young journalist moved south to join the Allahabad Pioneer, a much larger publication. At the same time, his works had begun to be published in cheap editions intended for sale in railroad terminals, and he began to earn a strong popular following with collections such as The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales,The Story of the Gadsbys, Soldiers Three,Under the Deodars, and "Wee Willie Winkie" and Other Child Stories. In March 1889 Kipling left India to return to England, determined to pursue his future as a writer there.

The young writer's reputation soared after he settled in London. "Kipling's official biographer, C. E. Carrington," declares Cantalupo, "calls 1890 'Rudyard Kipling's year. There had been nothing like his sudden rise to fame since Byron.'" "His poems and stories," writes O'Toole, "elicited strong reactions of love and hate from the start—almost none of his advocates and detractors were temperate in praise or in blame. Ordinary readers liked the rhythms, the cockney speech, and the imperialist sentiments of his poems and short stories; critics generally damned the works for the same reasons." Many of his works were originally published in periodicals and later collected in various editions as Barrack-Room Ballads; famous poems such as "The Ballad of East and West,""Danny Deever," "Tommy," and "The Road to Mandalay" date from this time.

Kipling's literary life in London brought him to the attention of many people. One of them was a young American publisher named Wolcott Balestier, who became friends with Kipling and persuaded him to work on a collaborative novel. The result, writes O'Toole, entitled The Naulahka, "reads more like one of Kipling's travel books than like a novel" and "seems rather hastily and opportunistically concocted." It was not a success. Balestier himself did not live to see the book published—he died on December 6, 1891—but he influenced Kipling strongly in another way. Kipling married Balestier's sister, Caroline, in January, 1892, and the couple settled near their family home in Brattleboro, Vermont.

The Kiplings lived in America for several years, in a house they built for themselves and called "Naulahka." Kipling developed a close friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, then Under Secretary of the Navy, and often discussed politics and culture with him. "I liked him from the first," Kipling recalled in Something of Myself, "and largely believed in him.... My own idea of him was that he was a much bigger man than his people understood or, at that time, knew how to use, and that he and they might have been better off had he been born twenty years later." Both of Kipling's daughters were born in Vermont—Josephine late in 1892, and Elsie in 1894—as was one of the classic works of juvenile literature: The Jungle Books, which are ranked among Kipling's best works. The adventures of Mowgli, the foundling child raised by wolves in the Seeonee Hills of India, are "the cornerstones of Kipling's reputation as a children's writer," declares Blackburn, "and still among the most popular of all his works." The Mowgli stories and other, unrelated works from the collection—such as "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and "The White Seal"—have often been filmed and adapted into other media.

In Something of Myself, Kipling traced the origins of these stories to a book he had read when he was young "about a lion-hunter in South Africa who fell among lions who were all Freemasons, and with them entered into a confederacy against some wicked baboons." Martin Seymour-Smith, writing in Rudyard Kipling: A Biography, identifies another of the major sources as "the Jataka tales of India. Some of these fables go back as early as the fourth century BC and incorporate material of even earlier eras. One version,Jatakamala, was composed in about 200 AD by the poet Aryasura. They are Buddhist birth-stories—Jatakamala means 'Garland of Birth Stories'—which the nineteenth-century scholar Rhys Davids described as 'the most important collection of ancient folk-lore extant.' Each of the 550 stories tells of the Buddha in some previous incarnation, and each is a story of the past occasioned by some incident in the present.... Some of the beast fables resemble Aesop's, but the Jataka tales are more deliberately brutal. They teach not merely that men should be more tender towards animals, but the equivalence of all life."

The Kiplings left Vermont in 1896 after a fierce quarrel with Beatty Balestier, Kipling's surviving brother-in-law. The writer's retiring nature and unwillingness to be interviewed made him unpopular with the American press, and he was savagely ridiculed when the facts of the case became public. Rather than remain in America, Kipling and his wife returned to England, settling for a time in Rottingdean, Sussex, near the home of Kipling's parents. The writer soon published another novel, drawing on his knowledge of New England life: "Captains Courageous," the story of Harvey Cheney, a spoiled young man who is washed overboard while on his way to Europe and is rescued by fishermen. Cheney spends the summer learning about human nature and self-discipline. "After the ship has docked in Gloucester and Harvey's parents have come to take him home," explains O'Toole, "his father, a self-made man, is pleased to see that his son has grown from a snobbish boy to a self-reliant young man who has learned how to make his own way through hard work and to judge people by their own merits rather than by their bank balances."

The Kiplings returned to America on several occasions, but this practice ended in 1899 when the whole family came down with pneumonia and Josephine, his eldest daughter, died from it. She had been, writes Seymour-Smith, "by all accounts ... unusually lively, witty and enchanting," and her loss was a great blow to them. Kipling sought solace in his work. In 1901 he published what many critics believe is his finest novel: Kim, the story of an orphaned Irish boy who grows up in the streets of Lahore, is educated at the expense of his father's old Army regiment, and enters into "the Great Game," the "cold war" of espionage and counter-espionage on the borders of India between Great Britain and Russia in the late nineteenth century. In many ways, Kipling suggested in Something of Myself, the book was a collaboration between himself and his father: "He would take no sort of credit for any of his suggestions, memories or confirmations," the writer recalled, but "there was a good deal of beauty in it, and not a little wisdom; the best in both sorts being owed to my Father." "The glory of Kim," declares O'Toole, "lies not in its plot nor in its characters but in its evocation of the complex Indian scene. The great diversity of the land—its castes; its sects; its geographical, linguistic, and religious divisions; its numberless superstitions; its kaleidoscopic sights, sounds, colors, and smells—are brilliantly and lovingly evoked."

In 1902 the Kiplings settled in their permanent home, a seventeenth-century house called "Bateman's" in East Sussex. "In the years following the move," O'Toole explains, "Kipling for the most part turned away from the types of stories he had written early in his career and explored new subjects and techniques." One example of this experimentation, completed before the Kiplings occupied Bateman's, was the collection called the Just So Stories, perhaps Kipling's best-remembered and best-loved work. The stories, written for his own children and intended to be read aloud, deal with the beginnings of things: "How the Camel Got His Hump,""The Elephant's Child," "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo,""The Cat That Walked by Himself," and many others. In these works Kipling painted rich, vivid word-pictures that honor and at the same time parody the language of traditional Eastern stories such as the Jataka tales and the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. "Kipling loved language (and children) too much to fall into the vulgar error that the resilience and beauty of the English language must be beaten into something dull and uniform to be appropriate for young readers," Blackburn declares. "In no other collection of children's stories," writes Elisabeth R. Choi in her foreword to the 1978 Crown edition of the Just So Stories, "is there such fanciful and playful language."

The area around Bateman's, rich in English history, inspired Kipling's last works for children, Puck of Pook's Hill and its sequel, Rewards and Fairies. The main sources of their inspiration, Kipling explained in Something of Myself, came from artifacts discovered in a well they were drilling on the property: "When we stopped at twenty-five feet, we had found a Jacobean tobacco-pipe, a worn Cromwellian latten spoon and, at the bottom of all, the bronze cheek of a Roman horse-bit." At the bottom of a drained pond, they "dredged two intact Elizabethan 'sealed quarts' ... all pearly with the patina of centuries. Its deepest mud yielded us a perfectly polished Neolithic axe-head with but one chip on its still venomous edge." From these artifacts—and a suggestion made by a cousin, the ruins of an ancient forge, and the playing of his children—Kipling constructed a series of related stories of how Dan and Una come to meet Puck, the last remaining Old Thing in England, and from him learn the history of their land.

Kipling wrote many other works during the periods that he produced his children's classics. He was actively involved in the Boer War in South Africa as a war correspondent, and in 1917 he was assigned the post of 'Honorary Literary Advisor' to the Imperial War Graves Commission—the same year that his son John, who had been missing in action for two years, was confirmed dead. In his last years, explains O'Toole, he became even more withdrawn and bitter, losing much of his audience because of his unpopular political views—such as compulsory military service—and a "cruelty and desire for vengeance [in his writings] that his detractors detested." Modern critical opinions, O'Toole continues, "are contradictory because Kipling was a man of contradictions. He had enormous sympathy for the lower classes ... yet distrusted all forms of democratic government." He declined awards offered him by his own government, yet accepted others from foreign nations. He finally succumbed to a painful illness early in 1936. "He remains an intriguing personality and writer," O'Toole explains, and "for all his limitations," declares Blackburn, "he was a gifted and courageous and honest man."

Additional insight on Kipling's life, career, and views can be gleaned from the three volumes of The Letters of Rudyard Kipling. The volumes contain selected surviving letters written by Kipling between 1872 and 1910; it is believed that both Kipling and his wife destroyed many of Kipling's other letters. Kipling's chief correspondent was Edmonia Hill, who was his counselor and confidante beginning during his days as a journalist in India. Reviewers note that all of the letters reflect Kipling's distinctive literary style. Jonathan Keates in the Observer notes, "this gathering of survivors shows that Kipling, with his gift for the resonant, throat-grabbing phrase and his obsessive interest in watching and listening, could never write a dud letter." John Bayley points out in the Times Literary Supplement: "[Kipling] wrote his letters, as he did his stories and early sketches, in an amalgam of Wardour Street and schoolboyese, with biblical overtones, often transposed into a sort of Anglo-Indian syntax. . . . Kipling is inimitable: at his innocently aesthetic worst, he can be deeply embarrassing; and the letters, like the stories, contain both sorts." Writing in the Observer, Amit Chaudhuri remarks that the third volume of letters reveals "the contractions of a unique writer; a loving father and husband who was also deeply interested in the asocial, predominantly male pursuit of Empire; a conservative who succumbed to the romance of the new technology [the automobile]; an apologist for England for whom England was, in a fundamental and positive way, a 'foreign country.'"

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Poems of Loss - Life with Father

Amazon link

Shifting the Sun

by Diana Der-Hovanessian

When your father dies, say the Irish,

you lose your umbrella against bad weather.

May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,

you sink a foot deeper into the earth.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,

you run out of excuses.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,

you become your own father.

May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,

he comes back as the thunder.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,

he takes your childhood with him.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,

you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,

your sun shifts forever.

And you walk in his light.

- Diana Der-Hovanessian

In Our Hearts

by Rose M. De Leon

We thought of you with love today,

But that is nothing new.
We thought about you yesterday.
And days before that too.
We think of you in silence.
We often speak your name.
Now all we have is memories.
And your picture in a frame.
Your memory is our keepsake.
With which we'll never part.
God has you in his keeping.
We have you in our heart.

- Rose M. De Leon

Not Enough Time

by Kelly Roper

The time we had, Dad,
Wasn't nearly enough
To pack in an entire
Lifetime of love.

There are so many questions
That I need answers to,
But now that you're gone
There's no way to ask you.

But there are still photos
To remember you by,
Each time I look at them,
I still want to cry.

They say grief is easier
to bear as time goes by,
But the doesn't stop me
from wondering why?

Why my dear, sweet dad
Was taken so soon,
When he was my guiding star,
My sun and my moon.

There are no answers
To a question like this,
So I'll cherish your memory,
And mourn the years we'll miss.

- Kelly Roper

Daddy’s Little Girl

by Punkin

If I had my life to do over,
I’d have chosen you to be my dad
once more.
Even if it meant losing you again,
It’s worth all the tears in the
world.
You were my sunshine when skies
were gray.
I loved you and honored you;
You took all my tears away.
I was happy to be with you,
Proud to be your little girl.
Sometimes we would argue,
But to me you meant the world.
Your love was always pure;
You treated me as your own.
Your time seemed all too short and
I feel so alone.
What can I take from this?
My heart is completely crushed.
But nothing loved is ever lost –
And you are loved so much.

- Punkin

Ev Vykin - Oh, Bliss of Our Life!

Oh, Bliss of Our Life!

by Ev Vykin

Oh, Bliss of our life we live and see,

Caressed by hand each flower and tree,

Where sun of heaven warms the soul,

Where wistful winds so softly blow,

O'er meadows and lawn on grass we dance,

A canvas of color not painted by chance,

Oh land of ours, our heaven on earth,

The soulful visions each year in rebirth,

This our bliss of the essence of life,

This our bless of the essence of life,

Where I can be me and truly feel free,

In serenity and tranquil peace -

Just me...and ....flower...and.... tree.

Ev Vykin

June 17, 2016

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

Cyndi McCoy - Cyndi's Poem

Cyndi’s Poem

by Cyndi McCoy & R.E. Slater

I don't know if this means

that God didn't hear our prayers for healing,

I don't know if

our prayers were from pure hearts,

I don't know if this means

contrary to evidence we'll keep believing,

I don't know if

science has discovered what miracles are,

I don't know why

our hearts determine to keep seeking,

I don't know if

God or man dealt us these cards,

I don't know if

the answers will be revealing,

I don’t know if

we will only ever understand it in its parts,

but I do know

I'm unsatisfied with this feeling,

perhaps darkness is revealing

the truth we thought we knew all along,

that hidden deep down is seething

a brokenness I cannot explain nor could,

a brokenness deeply felt and yearning

passed to all with a beating heart churning,

hearts broken every one

awaiting light but receiving none,

awaiting healing while still believing

awaiting miracles to bind the bleeding,

binding me to the God I love

binding me to ikonic fellowship,

sharing brokenness with the healing

breathing I in God and God in us.

- Cyndi McCoy

italicized lines by R.E. Slater

June 14, 2016

*A Pyro-Theology project

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications