Without Lifting A Finger

 

The various poetic experiments and student exercises that Milton chose to preserve from his time at school and at Cambridge exhibit such an accelerated pursuit of the humanist ideal of the complete orator–poet. Milton’s character and career, as a writer of both poetry and prose, were profoundly influenced by the educational and cultural ideals of humanitas, in which he was intensively trained by private tutors and then at grammar school and university. Milton exemplifies the success of a humanist programme that sought to instil in students an ‘emotional commitment to antiquity and its repository of useful knowledge, which illuminated the human condition and guided behaviour’.29 The following chapters will show how the pursuit of humanist erudition was a key concern of his life up to the point in 1639 when, aged thirty, he returned from a fourteen-month tour of Italy to an England sliding into civil war. His dedication to the cause of liberty after 1640 was motivated less by ‘benevolenc...

We had spent a long day together, and it had seemed to me short. We had promised one another that we would think the same thoughts and that our two souls should become one soul; a dream which is not original, after all, except that, dreamed by all men, it has been realised by none.

"The great misfortune of not being able to be alone," La Bruyere says somewhere, as though to shame those who rush to forget themselves in the crowd, fearing, doubtless, that they will be unable to endure themselves. "Almost all our ills come to us from inability to remain in our room," said another sage, Pascal, I believe, recalling thus in the cell of meditation the frantic ones who seek happiness in animation, and in a prostitution which I could call fraternary, if I wished to use the fine language of my century.

From The Plaything of the Poor: I should like to give you an idea for an innocent diversion. There are so few amusements that are not guilty ones! When you go out in the morning for a stroll along the highways, fill your pockets with little penny contrivances—such as the straight merryandrew moved by a single thread, the blacksmiths who strike the anvil, the rider and his horse, with a whistle for a tail—and, along the taverns, at the foot of the trees, make presents of them to the unknown poor children whom you meet. You will see their eyes grow beyond all measure. At first, they will not dare to take; they will doubt their good fortune. Then their hands will eagerly seize the gift, and they will flee as do the cats who go far off to eat the bit you have given them, having learned to distrust man.

From Crowds: Multitude, solitude: equal terms mutually convertible by the active and begetting poet. He who does not know how to people his solitude, does not know either how to be alone in a busy crowd. The poet enjoys this incomparable privilege, to be at once himself and others. Like those wandering souls that go about seeking bodies, he enters at will the personality of every man. For him alone, every place is vacant; and if certain places seem to be closed against him, that is because in his eyes they are not worth the trouble of visiting.

 I. My Thatched Cottage  In autumn the thrushes would come to rest there, drawn by the berries of a vivid redness harvested from the service tree of the bird-catchers. The Baron R. Monthermé.  Lifting her eyes afterwards, the good old woman observed how the dry cold north wind was tossing the trees, and was dispersing the traces of the crows that hopped over the snow surrounding the barn. The German poet Voss, Idyll XIII.  My thatched cottage will have, in the summer, the leafage of the woodland for a parasol, and in the autumn, for a garden, at the window’s edge, a patch of moss that will enshrine the pearls of the rainfall, and some wallflower that smells like the almond. But in the winter, what a pleasure, when the morning will have discarded its bouquets of hoarfrost on my frozen windows, to perceive quite far off, on the outskirts of the forest, a traveler who continues to diminish, him and his mount, in the snow and the haze!  What a pleasure, in the eveni...

Two new poems -- "Heretic" & "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (see teaser) -- are in the latest In Parentheses. Trouble is: it costs. But there's a lot to love, and the digital version is less than $5. Check it out! #rlswihart #InParentheses #Heretic #GoodbyeYellowBrickRoad #poetry #readmorepoetry2024❤️🎈

My dear children, perhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember all the same and will agree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. 

"I am like the peasant girl, your excellency... you know. How does it go? 'I'll stand up if I like, and I won't if I don't.' They were trying to put on her sarafan to take her to church to be married, and she said, 'I'll stand up if I like, and I won't if I don't.'... It's in some book about the peasantry." "What do you mean by that?" the President asked severely. "Why, this," Ivan suddenly pulled out a roll of notes. "Here's the money... the notes that lay in that envelope" (he nodded towards the table on which lay the material evidence), "for the sake of which our father was murdered. Where shall I put them? Mr. Superintendent, take them." The usher of the court took the whole roll and handed it to the President. "How could this money have come into your possession if it is the same money?" the President asked wonderingly. "I got them from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, ye...

Thick-billed Kingbird in Ontario CA. I had the traffic about right, but next time (perhaps next week) I'll try to better gauge my time with the beautiful and faithful Mr Squeak by the whims of Phoebus in October (he was breaking through the haze when I left), i.e., I could've used more sun.;) I'll gladly redo that trip to spend another hour or two with Mr Squeak, solace broken only by the occasional mower or weedeater. Thanks just.birdies for the spot-on location. He owns that tree.❤️🎈 P.s. Not only in the very so-so video clip I've posted in Stories, but in a second one (also "just hangable," so eventually I'll hang it too), Mr Squeak loves to scrape his Durante-like schnoz on a tree branch. #rlswihart #ontarioca #hazydays #october #mrsqueak #kingbirdsofinstagram #thickbilledkingbird #humpday #nature #beauty #faithful #poetry #readmorepoetry2024🎈❤️

And so he was sitting almost conscious himself of his delirium and, as I have said already, looking persistently at some object on the sofa against the opposite wall. Someone appeared to be sitting there, though goodness knows how he had come in, for he had not been in the room when Ivan came into it, on his return from Smerdyakov. This was a person or, more accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a particular kind, no longer young, qui faisait la cinquantaine[1], as the French say, with rather long, still thick, dark hair, slightly streaked with grey and a small pointed beard. He was wearing a brownish reefer jacket, rather shabby, evidently made by a good tailor though, and of a fashion at least three years old, that had been discarded by smart and well-to-do people for the last two years. His linen and his long scarf-like neck-tie were all such as are worn by people who aim at being stylish, but on closer inspection his linen was not overclean and his wide scarf was very threadb...

 

Ivan did not go home, but went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and alarmed her by his appearance. He was like a madman. He repeated all his conversation with Smerdyakov, every syllable of it. He couldn't be calmed, however much she tried to soothe him: he kept walking about the room, speaking strangely, disconnectedly. At last he sat down, put his elbows on the table, leaned his head on his hands and pronounced this strange sentence: "If it's not Dmitri, but Smerdyakov who's the murderer, I share his guilt, for I put him up to it. Whether I did, I don't know yet. But if he is the murderer, and not Dmitri, then, of course, I am the murderer, too."

"Doctor... your Excellency... and will it be soon, soon?" "You must be prepared for anything," said the doctor in emphatic and incisive tones, and dropping his eyes, he was about to step out to the coach. "Your Excellency, for Christ's sake!" the terror-stricken captain stopped him again. "Your Excellency! But can nothing, absolutely nothing save him now?" "It's not in my hands now," said the doctor impatiently, "but h'm!..." he stopped suddenly. "If you could, for instance... send... your patient... at once, without delay" (the words "at once, without delay," the doctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made the captain start) "to Syracuse, the change to the new be-ne-ficial "To Syracuse!" cried the captain, unable to grasp what was said. "Syracuse is in Sicily," Kolya jerked out suddenly in explanation. The doctor looked at him. "Sicily! Your Excellen...

 

A new poem, "Sometimes," has been published in the October 2024 issue of Quadrant Magazine. Surprise Surprise: it's about a little bird. You should be able to read the whole poem at the following link: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/poetry/rl-swihart-sometimes/ #rlswihart13 #rlswihart #sometimes #poetry #art #littlebirds #quadrantmagazine #readmorepoetry2024🎈♥️🪶