November 13, 2015

"On the French coast the light Gleams and is gone;"


Samuel Barber - "Dover Beach", Op. 3 Fischer-Dieskau, Juilliard Quartet

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

- - "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

Posted by gerardvanderleun at November 13, 2015 2:45 PM
Bookmark and Share

Comments:

HOME

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

(From "To Una" by Robinson Jeffers)

It is not Europe alone that is falling
Into blood and fire.
Decline and fall have been dancing in all men's souls
For a long while.

Sometime at the last gasp comes peace
To every soul.
Never to mine until I find out and speak
The things that I know....

Posted by: Skorpion at November 13, 2015 3:21 PM

Humm I was just looking up Jeffers To the Stonecutters.

Posted by: Van der Leun at November 13, 2015 4:39 PM

Unless this results in a generational unflinching “delenda est Carthago” commitment to take out the threat by its very roots, then candlelight vigils and calls for solidarity feel like the increasingly hollow gestures of an emasculated and desolate civilization — one which long ago abandoned the metaphysical commitments that could have helped it withstand this very present danger.

Posted by: Daphne at November 13, 2015 5:01 PM

It's come to survival of the fittest. How long will decency and self-respect be held suspect by our Pied Pipers, our venal vipers?
As the Hebraist offered, "If I am not for myself, who am I? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"
We have fallen for a lot of crap. Where's the current evidence for what we stand for?

Posted by: Howard Nelson at November 13, 2015 9:50 PM

Hey!

Ms. Daphne's back (I mean, Ms. Daphne has returned; I was not prescribing that anyone LOOK at Ms. Daphne's back---a rewarding sight though that might be)---and as eloquent (and no doubt as sassy) as ever she was.

"Lance! Are you obsessing about Ms. Daphne again!"

"I have not stopped obsessing about Ms. Daphne, my Queen." [imperious harridan]

"What did you say, cur?"

"I said, 'I'm impervious to Harrison.'"

"Who is Harrison?"

"No idea. Possibly someone."

Open carry time.

Posted by: Lance de Boyle at November 13, 2015 10:21 PM