So nigh is grandeur to our dust

In an Age of Fops and Toys
from Voluntaries by Ralph Waldo Emerson

In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,-
Break sharply off their jolly games,
Forsake their comrades gay
And quit proud homes and youthful dames
For famine, toil and fray?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.

If the Medes darken the sun, we shall have our fight in the shade.

From Herodutus' The History.

Thus nobly did the whole body of Lacedaemonians and Thespians behave; but nevertheless one man is said to have distinguished himself above all the rest, to wit, Dieneces the Spartan. A speech which he made before the Greeks engaged the Medes, remains on record. One of the Trachinians told him, "Such was the number of the barbarians, that when they shot forth their arrows the sun would be darkened by their multitude." Dieneces, not at all frightened at these words, but making light of the Median numbers, answered "Our Trachinian friend brings us excellent tidings. If the Medes darken the sun, we shall have our fight in the shade." Other sayings too of a like nature are reported to have been left on record by this same person.

What have I gotten myself into?

From Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. His first night out on the ship in the open sea.

In a few minutes the slide of the hatch was thrown back, which let down the noise and tumult of the deck still louder, the loud cry of "All hands, ahoy! tumble up here and take in sail," saluted our ears, and the hatch was quickly shut again. When I got upon deck, a new scene and a new experience were before me. The little brig was close hauled upon the wind, and lying over, as it then seemed to me, nearly upon her beam ends. The heavy head sea was beating against her bows with the noise and force almost of a sledge-hammer, and flying over the deck, drenching us completely through. The topsail halyards had been let go, and the great sails filling out and backing against the masts with a noise like thunder. The wind was whistling through the rigging, loose ropes flying about; loud and, to me, unintelligible orders constantly given and rapidly executed, and the sailors "singing out" at the ropes in their hoarse and peculiar strains.
In addition to all this, I had not got my "sea legs on," was dreadfully sick, with hardly strength enough to hold on to anything, and it was "pitch dark." This was my state when I was ordered aloft, for the first time, to reef topsails.

How I got along, I cannot now remember. I "laid out" on the yards and held on with all my strength. I could not have been of much service, for I remember having been sick several times before I left the topsail yard. Soon all was snug aloft, and we were again allowed to go below. This I did not consider much of a favor, for the confusion of everything below, and that inexpressible sickening smell, caused by the shaking up of the bilge-water in the hold, made the steerage but an indifferent refuge from the cold, wet decks. I had often read of the nautical experiences of others, but I felt as though there could be none worse than mine; for in addition to every other evil, I could not but remember that this was only the first night of a two years' voyage. When we were on deck we were not much better off, for we were continually ordered about by the officer, who said that it was good for us to be in motion. Yet anything was better than the horrible state of things below.

Department of Trivia

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of elements.

-- The Book of Useless Information by Noel Botham

Heidi is still with us

From an article, Our children won't succeed if they don't read books, by Frank Cottrell Boyce in the February 8, 2009 edition of the Times. His concluding anecdote is one of those that just catches you.

A while ago I was working on a film project about ethnic cleansing. I met a girl who had been taken prisoner when still a baby and brought up in a regimented institution. She'd been starved of all warmth yet she was personable and articulate.

I said to her, "You were in the home from a very young age. How did you know this wasn't normal? How did you know it wasn't right?"

She said - and this is the sentence that made me want to be a children's writer - "Books. I read Heidi."

Casabianca by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

I hardly ever hear it referenced today but I was always taken with the imagery of this poem familiar to me from my childhood and at one time a popular reciter. Perhaps it is better known in Britain than here in the US and may have greater currency there.

There is an odd parallelism between Casabianca and Whitman's O Captain. Not an equivalence but both painting a mortal portrait of maritime fathers and sons.

Heman apparently based her poem on an actual event. Giocante Casabianca was the young son of the French captain of the French ship Orient, Louis de Casabianca. At the battle of the Nile in 1798 the Orient was completely obliterated when her magazine took fire.

Casabianca by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form.

The flames rolled on-he would not go
Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud-'say, Father, say
If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
In still yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,
'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound-
The boy-oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!-

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part-
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.

Susurrus

Not only a word I had never come across before but a seductive one as well. Three s's, three u's and two r's.

susurrus
Main Entry: su.sur.rus
Pronunciation: su-'s&r-&s, -'s&-r&s
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, hum, whisper -- more at SWARM
- su.sur.rant /-'s&r-&nt, -s&-r&nt/ adjective

O Captain! My Captain!

I have never particularly taken to Whitman. Phrases and shards from long poems, yes, but rarely, other than his poem O Captain! My Captain!, have I particularly enjoyed his work. This weekend I purchased Penguin's The Portable Walt Whitman and am finding more that do strike home. I'll blog these later but let's start with Captain.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Ross MacDonal on an old house

"In the full white blast of noon, the Johnson house looked grim and strange, like a long old face appalled by the present."

The Blue Hammer by Ross MacDonald

Raffles

Any widely read person always has some greater or lesser population of authors, persons, ideas or topics that reside on the periphery of their knowledge, something they have seen alluded to but of which they know little or nothing. Raffles, the gentleman burglar, was one such skirmisher between the battlefields of ignorance and my mainline of knowledge. Heard of him but couldn't have told you who wrote about him, when, or really anything else other than that he was a once famous literary character.

I couldn't have told you anything, that is, until this weekend when I picked up The Collected Raffles Stories written by Ernest William Hornung and published by Oxford University Press in 1996 and unfortunately out of print.

I have read the first couple of stories and look forward to the rest of the collection. They read very much in the fashion of a Sherlock Holmes on the wrong side of the law.

This is perhaps not surprising as Hornung's early stories were published in the Strand magazine where Sherlock Holmes also saw the first light of day. Further, Hornung married A.C. Doyle's sister Constance in 1893. The world was so much smaller then.