It is from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in the chapter titled Wednesday.
This page has other less-often quoted Thoreau passages: Thoreau Quotes
This thread brought two things to my mind, though they aren’t in quite the same mode as most of the earlier pieces.
First was the last stanza of A.E. Housman’s “Terrence, This is Stupid Stuff” (one of my very favorite poems, so it’s not hard to call it to my mind, I guess):
There as a king reigned in the east:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
And the other is “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” by Wallace Stevens:
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
There’s some strange way that this poem is mixed with the Auden “Funeral” piece (mentioned at least twice above) in my mind – they have the same sort of tone and mood to my ear.
In the clearing stands a Boxer,
and a fighter by his trade
and he carries a reminder,
of every glove that laid him down
and cut him, till he cried out
in his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains.
The second and third stanzas of “The Star Spangled Banner” always get to me.
(The first is good, but so common that it has lost some meaning. The fourth is a bit too religious for me.)
Ce fut un Vaisseau d’or, dont les flancs diaphanes
Révélaient des tresors que les marins profanes,
Dégoût, Haine, et Névrose entre eux ont disputés.
Que reste-t-il de lui dans la tempète brève ?
Qu’est devenu mon coeur, navire déserté ?
Helas ! Il a sombré dans l’abîme du Rêve!..
(She was a ship of gold, whose diaphanous beams
Revealed treasures about which the sailors obscene,
Neurosis, Hatred, and Disgust bickered and yelled.
What is left after the calming of the storm’s screams?
What’s become of my heart, an abandoned ship’s shell?
Alas! it has sunk into the depths of dreams… )
- Émile Nelligan, “Le Vaisseau d’or”
amorsoifante vagadis li nure
tra l’urbo senhoma senama
nun kushas pavime
senmove sentime
mortigis lin knaboj en jhinzoj.
Ho amis li knabojn en jhinzoj!
(starved of a lover he’d merely been wandering
through the dark streets void of love and of people -
now lies on the ground
without fear, without sound
he was killed by young men wearing jeans.
God! How he had loved men in jeans… )
-Gerrit Berveling, “La samseksamanto”
I’ve got a cat named Easter, he says, will you never learn?
You’re just an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird
And I’m looking for a saviour in these dirty streets
Looking for a saviour underneath these dirty sheets
I’ve been raising up my hands, drive another nail in
Got enough guilt to start my own religion
Why do we crucify ourselves?
Every day I crucify myself
And nothing I do is good enough for you (crucify myself)
Every day I crucify myself
My heart is sick of being in chains…
-Tori Amos, “Crucify”
Now I sit with different faces in rented rooms and far-off places
All the people I was kissing, some are here and some are missing
In the 1990s
I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams you’d be sitting somewhere here with me
- Pet Shop Boys, “Being Boring” (which I’ve instructed to be played at my funeral)
And it’s just my luck to have a watch with nothing left to do
But watch the deadly waters glide as we roll north to the Sault
And wonder when they’ll turn again and pitch us to the rail
And whirl off one more youngster in the gale
But I tell these kids a hundred times don’t take the lakes for granted
They go from calm to 100 knots so fast they seem enchanted
But tonight some red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall
Her lover’s gone into a white squall
-Stan Rogers, “White Squall”
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
To make a Northwest Passage to the sea
-Stan Rogers, “Northwest Passage”
Saw my brother just the other day, he was pale and weak, he was fading away
And though we sat and shot the shit there was nothing to say, what can you say?
What can you do in times like this when a backward glance or a stolen kiss
Can make you prince or pauper, make you hit or miss?
If you only knew him when he used to dance
With his slicked-back hair and his poured-on pants
He could really strut his stuff and turn a head or two
Dance, little brother, dance like you used to do…
We’ve got microdiscs and test-tube wombs,
We’ve got nuclear bombs and men on the moon,
But do we have a hope in hell of bringing that boy home?
Dance little brother, dance like you used to do…
-Wyrd Sisters, “Dance, Little Brother”
So blow the bridge down, blow the bridge down
In the dead of the night sink it into the ground
For the sake of the soul of Clayoquot Sound
Take a deep breath and blow the bridge down
-Wyrd Sisters, “Farewell to Clayoquot Sound”
Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy
Who were the ones they could talk about around town as they put you down
And as hard as they could try, they’d hurt to make you cry,
But you never cried to them, just to your soul…
You leave in the morning with everything you own in a little black case
Alone on the platform, the wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away
-Bronski Beat, “Small Town Boy”
About a dead Kitten.This is the final lines of a very short poem
What was warm is stangely cold.
Whence disolve this little breath?
How could such a small body hold
So immence a thing as death?
I’m wattering up just typing it.
e. e. cummings:
it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another’s,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another’s face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
A.E. Housman’s “To An Athlete Dying Young”:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out…
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/housman4.html
Sob!
Also, the “roads go ever ever on” poem at the end of “The Hobbit.”
Choke!
On September 11, on my way home for the day, Minnesota Public Radio played an akathist of thanksgiving. I sobbed listening to it. It was written by an Eastern Orthodox priest shortly before his death in a Siberian labor camp in 1940. Keeping in mind that these were written in the face of horror, that they carry so much hope and appreciation that it is very moving, to me. Translated (and they were sung in English, too):
Slava tebiyeh, bojhe (Glory to you, God).
O Lord, how good it is to be your guest:
The wind-scented mountains erect into the sky
Waters, as mirrors, unconfined,
Reflecting rays of gold, light-footed clouds.
All nature secretly whispers, all full of caresses,
And the birds and the beasts bear the stamp of your love.
Blessed is the Mother Earth:
Her swift-passing beauty, arousing the yearning
For the eternal native land,
Wherein beauty immortal there sounds: Alleluia.
You led me into this life, as an enchanting paradise.
We saw the sky as a deep blue chalice
In whose azure rings out the song of birds;
We heard the peace-making noise of the forest,
And sweet-sounding music of waters;
We ate fragrant and sweet fruits and scented honey.
It is good to be in your home on earth, joyous to be your guests.
Glory to you for the feast-day of life,
Glory to you for the lilies-of-the-valley and roses,
Glory to you for the sweet variety of berries,
Glory to you for the diamond sparkle of morning dew,
Glory to you for the smile of light awakening,
Glory to you for life unending, herald of heaven.
Slava.
There is obviously some bias here, but the short couplets on the markers to the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae have always gotten to me.
Three hundred here, from Pallas’ Land,
Against three million once did stand.
and
Go tell the Spartans, passer-by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie
Not much by themselves, but I’d be hard pressed to think of a better sendoff. And the laconic Spartans would certainly have appreciated the brevity of both tributes.
Many of the other suggestions have been quite good as well.
Blacknight, your ‘sig’ line moved me more than many of the pieces I have read in this thread (intending NO aspersions upon the tastes of the others…each to their own)
But your: “The brain in a vat became slightly disconcerted with the thought that he might really, truly, be nothing more than a philosopher”…now that choked me no-end!!
William Wordsworth
SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mosy tone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
…For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott…
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”
Two poems that always make me reflect upon the oddity of human existence are by poets that I actually dislike:
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
translated by Pound
and posted earlier by Lissla Lissar
and
When You are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Wm. Butler Yeats