TERMS STARTING WITH
survey ::: n. 1. The act of looking, seeing, or observing. v. 2. To inspect, examine, carefully scrutinize. 3. To examine or look at comprehensively. Surveys, surveyed, surveying.
Survey ::: A research technique in which subjects respond to a series of questions.
TERMS ANYWHERE
abhidharmapitaka. (P. abhidhammapitaka; T. chos mngon pa'i sde snod; C. lunzang; J. ronzo; K. nonjang 論藏). The third of the three "baskets" (PItAKA) of the Buddhist canon (TRIPItAKA). The abhidharmapitaka derives from attempts in the early Buddhist community to elucidate the definitive significance of the teachings of the Buddha, as compiled in the SuTRAs. Since the Buddha was well known to have adapted his message to fit the predilections and needs of his audience (cf. UPAYAKAUsALYA), there inevitably appeared inconsistencies in his teachings that needed to be resolved. The attempts to ferret out the definitive meaning of the BUDDHADHARMA through scholastic interpretation and exegesis eventually led to a new body of texts that ultimately were granted canonical status in their own right. These are the texts of the abhidharmapitaka. The earliest of these texts, such as the PAli VIBHAnGA and PUGGALAPANNATTI and the SARVASTIVADA SAMGĪTIPARYAYA and DHARMASKANDHA, are structured as commentaries to specific sutras or portions of sutras. These materials typically organized the teachings around elaborate doctrinal taxonomies, which were used as mnemonic devices or catechisms. Later texts move beyond individual sutras to systematize a wide range of doctrinal material, offering ever more complex analytical categorizations and discursive elaborations of the DHARMA. Ultimately, abhidharma texts emerge as a new genre of Buddhist literature in their own right, employing sophisticated philosophical speculation and sometimes even involving polemical attacks on the positions of rival factions within the SAMGHA. ¶ At least seven schools of Indian Buddhism transmitted their own recensions of abhidharma texts, but only two of these canons are extant in their entirety. The PAli abhidhammapitaka of the THERAVADA school, the only recension that survives in an Indian language, includes seven texts (the order of which often differs): (1) DHAMMASAnGAnI ("Enumeration of Dharmas") examines factors of mentality and materiality (NAMARuPA), arranged according to ethical quality; (2) VIBHAnGA ("Analysis") analyzes the aggregates (SKANDHA), conditioned origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA), and meditative development, each treatment culminating in a catechistic series of inquiries; (3) DHATUKATHA ("Discourse on Elements") categorizes all dharmas in terms of the skandhas and sense-fields (AYATANA); (4) PUGGALAPANNATTI ("Description of Human Types") analyzes different character types in terms of the three afflictions of greed (LOBHA), hatred (DVEsA), and delusion (MOHA) and various related subcategories; (5) KATHAVATTHU ("Points of Controversy") scrutinizes the views of rival schools of mainstream Buddhism and how they differ from the TheravAda; (6) YAMAKA ("Pairs") provides specific denotations of problematic terms through paired comparisons; (7) PAttHANA ("Conditions") treats extensively the full implications of conditioned origination. ¶ The abhidharmapitaka of the SARVASTIVADA school is extant only in Chinese translation, the definitive versions of which were prepared by XUANZANG's translation team in the seventh century. It also includes seven texts: (1) SAMGĪTIPARYAYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Discourse on Pronouncements") attributed to either MAHAKAUstHILA or sARIPUTRA, a commentary on the SaMgītisutra (see SAnGĪTISUTTA), where sAriputra sets out a series of dharma lists (MATṚKA), ordered from ones to elevens, to organize the Buddha's teachings systematically; (2) DHARMASKANDHA[PADAsASTRA] ("Aggregation of Dharmas"), attributed to sAriputra or MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA, discusses Buddhist soteriological practices, as well as the afflictions that hinder spiritual progress, drawn primarily from the AGAMAs; (3) PRAJNAPTIBHAsYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Treatise on Designations"), attributed to MaudgalyAyana, treats Buddhist cosmology (lokaprajNapti), causes (kArana), and action (KARMAN); (4) DHATUKAYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Collection on the Elements"), attributed to either PuRnA or VASUMITRA, discusses the mental concomitants (the meaning of DHATU in this treatise) and sets out specific sets of mental factors that are present in all moments of consciousness (viz., the ten MAHABHuMIKA) or all defiled states of mind (viz., the ten KLEsAMAHABHuMIKA); (5) VIJNANAKAYA[PADAsASTRA] ("Collection on Consciousness"), attributed to Devasarman, seeks to prove the veracity of the eponymous SarvAstivAda position that dharmas exist in all three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future, and the falsity of notions of the person (PUDGALA); it also provides the first listing of the four types of conditions (PRATYAYA); (6) PRAKARAnA[PADAsASTRA] ("Exposition"), attributed to VASUMITRA, first introduces the categorization of dharmas according to the more developed SarvAstivAda rubric of RuPA, CITTA, CAITTA, CITTAVIPRAYUKTASAMSKARA, and ASAMSKṚTA dharmas; it also adds a new listing of KUsALAMAHABHuMIKA, or factors always associated with wholesome states of mind; (7) JNANAPRASTHANA ("Foundations of Knowledge"), attributed to KATYAYANĪPUTRA, an exhaustive survey of SarvAstivAda dharma theory and the school's exposition of psychological states, which forms the basis of the massive encyclopedia of SarvAstivAda-VaibhAsika abhidharma, the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA. In the traditional organization of the seven canonical books of the SarvAstivAda abhidharmapitaka, the JNANAPRASTHANA is treated as the "body" (sARĪRA), or central treatise of the canon, with its six "feet" (pAda), or ancillary treatises (pAdasAstra), listed in the following order: (1) PrakaranapAda, (2) VijNAnakAya, (3) Dharmaskandha, (4) PrajNaptibhAsya, (5) DhAtukAya, and (6) SaMgītiparyAya. Abhidharma exegetes later turned their attention to these canonical abhidharma materials and subjected them to the kind of rigorous scholarly analysis previously directed to the sutras. These led to the writing of innovative syntheses and synopses of abhidharma doctrine, in such texts as BUDDHAGHOSA's VISUDDHIMAGGA and ANURUDDHA's ABHIDHAMMATTHASAnGAHA, VASUBANDHU's ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA, and SAMGHABHADRA's *NYAYANUSARA. In East Asia, this third "basket" was eventually expanded to include the burgeoning scholastic literature of the MAHAYANA, transforming it from a strictly abhidharmapitaka into a broader "treatise basket" or *sASTRAPItAKA (C. lunzang).
ALTRAN "language" A {Fortran} extension for {rational algebra} developed by W.S. Brown of {Bell Labs} ca. 1968. ["The ALTRAN System for Rational Function Manipulation - A Survey", A.D. Hall, CACM 14(8):517-521 (Aug 1971)]. (1995-06-01)
ALTRAN ::: (language) A Fortran extension for rational algebra developed by W.S. Brown of Bell Labs ca. 1968.[The ALTRAN System for Rational Function Manipulation - A Survey, A.D. Hall, CACM 14(8):517-521 (Aug 1971)]. (1995-06-01)
ArAda KAlAma. (P. AlAra KAlAma; T. Sgyu rtsal shes kyi bu ring du 'phur; C. Aluoluojialan; J. Ararakaran; K. Araragaran 阿羅邏迦蘭). The Sanskrit name of one of the Buddha's two teachers of meditation (the other being UDRAKA RAMAPUTRA) prior to his enlightenment. He was known as a meditation master who once sat in deep concentration without noticing that five hundred carts had passed by. He explained to GAUTAMA that the goal of his system was the attainment of the "state of nothing whatsoever" (AKINCANYAYATANA), which the BODHISATTVA quickly attained. ArAda KAlAma then regarded the bodhisattva as his equal. However, Gautama eventually recognized that this state was not NIRVAnA and left to begin the practice of austerities. Upon his eventual achievement of buddhahood, Gautama surveyed the world to identify the most worthy recipient of his first sermon. He thought first of ArAda KAlAma but determined that he had unfortunately died just seven days earlier.
Ariel "language" An {array}-oriented language for the {CDC 6400}. ["Ariel Reference Manual", P. Devel, TR 22, CC UC Berkeley, Apr 1968]. ["A New Survey of the Ariel Programming Language", P. Deuel, TR 4, Ariel Consortium, UC Berkeley, June 1972]. [Deuel or Devel?] (1995-12-29)
Ariel ::: (language) An array-oriented language for the CDC 6400.[Ariel Reference Manual, P. Devel, TR 22, CC UC Berkeley, Apr 1968].[A New Survey of the Ariel Programming Language, P. Deuel, TR 4, Ariel Consortium, UC Berkeley, June 1972].[Deuel or Devel?] (1995-12-29)
Aristotle divides the sciences into the theoretical, the practical and the productive, the aim of the first being disinterested knowledge, of the second the guidance of conduct, and of the third the guidance of the arts. The science now called logic, by him known as "analytic", is a discipline preliminary to all the others, since its purpose is to set forth the conditions that must be observed by all thinking which has truth as its aim. Science, in the strict sense of the word, is demonstrated knowledge of the causes of things. Such demonstrated knowledge is obtained by syllogistic deduction from premises in themselves certain. Thus the procedure of science differs from dialectic, which employs probable premises, and from eristic, which aims not at truth but at victory in disputation. The center, therefore, of Aristotle's logic is the syllogism, or that form of reasoning whereby, given two propositions, a third follows necessarily from them. The basis of syllogistic inference is the presence of a term common to both premises (the middle term) so related as subj ect or predicate to each of the other two terms that a conclusion may be drawn regarding the relation of these two terms to one another. Aristotle was the first to formulate the theory of the syllogism, and his minute analysis of its various forms was definitive, so far as the subject-predicate relation is concerned; so that to this part of deductive logic but little has been added since his day. Alongside of deductive reasoning Aristotle recognizes the necessity of induction, or the process whereby premises, particularly first premises, are established. This involves passing from the particulars of sense experience (the things more knowable to us) to the universal and necessary principles involved in sense experience (the things more knowable in themselves). Aristotle attaches most importance, in this search for premises, to the consideration of prevailing beliefs (endoxa) and the examination of the difficulties (aporiai) that have been encountered in the solution of the problem in hand. At some stage in the survey of the field and the theories previously advanced the universal connection sought for is apprehended; and apprehended, Aristotle eventually says, by the intuitive reason, or nous. Thus knowledge ultimately rests upon an indubitable intellectual apprehension; yet for the proper employment of the intuitive reason a wide empirical acquaintance with the subject-matter is indispensable.
arpentator ::: n. --> The Anglicized form of the French arpenteur, a land surveyor.
Ars Combinatoria: (Leibniz) An art or technique of deriving or inventing complex concepts by a combination of a relatively few simple ones taken as primitive. This technique was proposed as a valuable subject for study by Leibniz in De Arte Combinatoria (1666) but was never greatly developed by him. Leibniz's program for logic consisted of two main projects: (1) the development of a universal characteristic (characteristica universalis), and (2) the development of a universal mathematics (mathesis universalis (q.v.). The universal characteristic was to be a universal language for scientists and philosophers. With a relatively few basic symbols for the ultimately simple ideas, and a suitable technique for constructing compound ideas out of the simple ones, Leibniz thought that a language could be constructed which would be much more efficient for reasoning and for communication than the vague, complicated, and more or less parochial languages then available. This language would be completely universal in the sense that all scientific and philosophical concepts could be expressed in it, and also in that it would enable scholars m all countries to communicate over the barriers of their vernacular tongues. Leibniz's proposals in this matter, and what work he did on it, are the grand predecessors of a vast amount of research which has been done in the last hundred years on the techniques of language construction, and specifically on the invention of formal rules and procedures for introducing new terms into a language on the basis of terms already present, the general project of constructing a unified language for science and philosophy. L. Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901; C. I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, 1918. -- F.L.W.
-. A Short Survey of the Literature of Rabbinical and
ASPLE "language" A {toy language}. ["A Sampler of Formal Definitions", M. Marcotty et al, Computing Surveys 8(2):191-276 (Feb 1976)]. (1995-02-08)
ASPLE ::: (language) A toy language.[A Sampler of Formal Definitions, M. Marcotty et al, Computing Surveys 8(2):191-276 (Feb 1976)]. (1995-02-08)
"As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
“As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
azimuth ::: n. --> The quadrant of an azimuth circle.
An arc of the horizon intercepted between the meridian of the place and a vertical circle passing through the center of any object; as, the azimuth of a star; the azimuth or bearing of a line surveying.
BrahmA. [alt. MahAbrahmA] (T. Tshangs pa; C. Fantian; J. Bonten; K. Pomch'on 梵天). An Indian divinity who was adopted into the Buddhist pantheon as a protector of the teachings (DHARMAPALA) and king of the BRAHMALOKA (in the narrow sense of that term). A particular form of the god BrahmA, called SAHAMPATI, plays a crucial role in the inception of the Buddhist dispensation or teaching (sASANA). During the seven weeks following his enlightenment, the newly awakened buddha GAUTAMA was unsure as to whether he should teach, wondering whether there would be anyone in this world who would be able to duplicate his experience. BrahmA descended to earth and convinced him that there were persons "with little dust in their eyes" who would be able to understand his teachings. The Buddha then surveyed the world to determine the most suitable persons to hear the DHARMA. Seeing that his former meditation teachers had died, he chose the "group of five" (PANCAVARGIKA) and proceeded to ṚsIPATANA, where he taught his first sermon, the "Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA; P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA). Because of this intervention, BrahmA is considered one of the main dharmapAlas. BUDDHAGHOSA explains, however, that the compassionate Buddha never had any hesitation about teaching the dharma but felt that if he were implored by the god BrahmA, who was revered in the world, it would lend credence to his mission. BrahmA is depicted with four faces and four arms, and his primary attributes are the lotus and the CAKRA. The figure of BrahmA also fused with early Indian BODHISATTVAs such as PADMAPAnI (AVALOKITEsVARA). In Tibet the dharmapAla TSHANGS PA DKAR PO is a fusion of BrahmA and PE HAR RGYAL PO.
British Crime Survey: a regular, large, face-toface survey of adults living in private households in England and Wales. Its main purpose is to monitor trends in crime but it also covers a range of other topics such as attitudes to crime.
survey ::: n. 1. The act of looking, seeing, or observing. v. 2. To inspect, examine, carefully scrutinize. 3. To examine or look at comprehensively. Surveys, surveyed, surveying.
cairn ::: n. --> A rounded or conical heap of stones erected by early inhabitants of the British Isles, apparently as a sepulchral monument.
A pile of stones heaped up as a landmark, or to arrest attention, as in surveying, or in leaving traces of an exploring party, etc.
camp ::: n. --> The ground or spot on which tents, huts, etc., are erected for shelter, as for an army or for lumbermen, etc.
A collection of tents, huts, etc., for shelter, commonly arranged in an orderly manner.
A single hut or shelter; as, a hunter&
cAturmahArAjakAyika. (P. cAtummahArAjikA; T. rgyal chen rigs bzhi; C. sitianwang tian; J. shitennoten; K. sach'onwang ch'on 四天王天). In Sanskrit, "heaven of the assemblage of the four great kings"; the lowest of all the heavens in Buddhist cosmology and the lowest of the six heavens located in the sensuous realm (KAMADHATU). The heaven is located on the upper slopes of MOUNT SUMERU and is presided over by four kings, one in each of the cardinal directions. The four kings are DHṚTARAstRA in the east; VIRudHAKA in the south; VIRuPAKsA in the west; and VAIsRAVAnA in the north. These four are known collectively as the LOKAPALAs, or protectors of the world. There are many divinities (DEVA) inhabiting this heaven: GANDHARVAs in the east, KUMBHAndAs in the south, NAGAs in the west, and YAKsAs in the north. As vassals of sAKRO DEVANAM INDRAḤ (lit. "sakra, the lord of the gods"; see INDRA; sAKRA), the four heavenly kings serve as protectors of the dharma (DHARMAPALA) and of sentient beings who are devoted to the dharma. They are said to have protected the Buddha from the time that he entered his mother's womb and also to have presented him with his alms bowl after his enlightenment. They survey their respective quadrants of the world and report on the deeds of humans to the divinities of the TRAYASTRIMsA heaven.
census: A survey of the entire population.
chart ::: n. --> A sheet of paper, pasteboard, or the like, on which information is exhibited, esp. when the information is arranged in tabular form; as, an historical chart.
A map; esp., a hydrographic or marine map; a map on which is projected a portion of water and the land which it surrounds, or by which it is surrounded, intended especially for the use of seamen; as, the United States Coast Survey charts; the English Admiralty charts.
A written deed; a charter.
Chengshi lun. (S. *Tattvasiddhi; J. Jojitsuron; K. Songsil non 成實論). In Chinese, "Treatise on Establishing Reality"; a summary written c. 253 CE by the third century CE author HARIVARMAN of the lost ABHIDHARMA of the BAHUsRUTĪYA school, a branch of the MAHASAMGHIKA. (The Sanskrit reconstruction *Tattvasiddhi is now generally preferred over the outmoded *SatyasiddhisAstra). The Tattvasiddhi is extant only in KUMARAJĪVA's Chinese translation, made in 411-412, in sixteen rolls (juan) and 202 chapters (pin). The treatise is especially valuable for its detailed refutations of the positions held by other early MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS; the introduction, for example, surveys ten different grounds of controversy separating the different early schools. The treatise is structured in the form of an exposition of the traditional theory of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, but does not include listings for different factors (DHARMA) that typify many works in the abhidharma genre. The positions advocated in the text are closest to those of the STHAVIRANIKAYA and SAUTRANTIKA schools, although, unlike the SthaviranikAya, the treatise accepts the reality of "unmanifest materiality" (AVIJNAPTIRuPA) and, unlike SautrAntika, rejects the notion of an "intermediate state" (ANTARABHAVA) between existences. Harivarman opposes the SARVASTIVADA position that dharmas exist in past, present, and future, the MahAsAMghika view that thought is inherently pure, and the VATSĪPUTRĪYA premise that the "person" (PUDGALA) exists. The Chengshi lun thus hones to a "middle way" between the extremes of "everything exists" and "everything does not exist," both of which it views as expediencies that do not represent ultimate reality. The text advocates, instead, the "voidness of everything" (sarvasunya) and is therefore sometimes viewed within the East Asian traditions as representing a transitional stage between the mainstream Buddhist schools and MahAyAna philosophical doctrine. The text was so widely studied in East Asia, especially during the fifth and sixth centuries, that reference is made to a *Tattvasiddhi school of exegesis (C. Chengshi zong; J. Jojitsushu; K. Songsilchong); indeed, the Jojitsu school is considered one of the six major schools of Japanese Buddhist scholasticism during the Nara period.
chorograph ::: n. --> An instrument for constructing triangles in marine surveying, etc.
chorometry ::: n. --> The art of surveying a region or district.
C. I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, Cal., 1918.
circumferentor ::: n. --> A surveying instrument, for taking horizontal angles and bearings; a surveyor&
cīvara. (T. chos gos; C. yi; J. e/koromo; K. ŭi 衣). In PAli and Sanskrit, "monastic robe"; the generic term for the robes worn by Buddhist monks, nuns, female probationers, and male and female novices. The cīvara may be made of cotton, wool, linen, or silk. Initially, the robe was to be made of rags discarded in the rubbish heap (S. pAMsukula; P. paMsukula) or from funeral shrouds. The rule was amended by the Buddha to allow monks also to accept cloth offered by the laity. A full set of monastic robes is comprised of three robes (S. TRICĪVARA; P. ticīvara): the larger outer robe (S. SAMGHAtĪ; P. sanghAti), the upper robe (S. UTTARASAMGA; P. uttarAsanga), and the lower robe or waist-cloth (S. ANTARVASAS; P. antaravAsaka). The antarvAsas is the smallest of the three robes: normally made of one layer of cloth, it is worn about the waist and is intended to cover the body from the navel to the middle of the calf. The uttarAsaMga is worn over one or both shoulders, depending on whether one is inside or outside the monastery grounds, and is large enough to cover the body from the neck to the middle of the calf; it too is normally made of one layer of cloth. The saMghAtī or outer robe is the same size as the uttarAsaMga but is normally made of two layers of cloth rather than one; it is worn over one or both shoulders, depending on whether one is inside or outside the monastery grounds. The saMghAtī was required to be tailored of patches, ranging in number from nine up to twenty-five, depending on the VINAYA recension; this use of patches of cloth is said to have been modeled after plots of farmland in MAGADHA that the Buddha once surveyed. All three robes must be dyed a sullied color, interpreted as anything from a reddish- or brownish-yellow saffron color to an ochre tone (see KAsAYA). Robes were one of the four major requisites (S. NIsRAYA; P. nissaya) of the monks and nuns, along with such basics as a begging bowl and lodging, and were the object of the KAtHINA ceremony in which the monastics were offered cloth for making new sets of robes at the end of each rains' retreats (VARsA).
Consumer price index (CPI) – Is a weighted index that measure of change in consumer prices as determined by a monthly survey. It is used to show the level of inflation. See retail price index (RPI)
Conze, Edward. [Eberhard (Edward) Julius Dietrich Conze] (1904-1979). An influential Anglo-German Buddhist scholar and practitioner, Edward Conze was born in London, the son of the then German vice consul, but was raised in Germany. He attended the universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Hamburg, where he studied both Western and Indian philosophy and Buddhist languages, including Sanskrit, PAli, and Tibetan. Conze was raised as a Protestant, but he also explored Communism and had a strong interest in Theosophy. Because of his deep opposition to the Nazi ideology, he became persona non grata in Germany and in 1933 moved to England. Although initially active with English socialists, he eventually became disillusioned with politics and began to study the works of DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, whom he came to consider his informal spiritual mentor. Conze taught at various universities in the UK between 1933 and 1960, expanding the range of his visiting professorships to the USA and Canada in the 1960s. However, the Communist affiliations of his youth and his outspoken condemnation of the Vietnam War put him at odds with American authorities, prompting him to return to England. Conze was especially enamored of the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNAPARAMITA) texts and the related MADHYAMAKA strand of Buddhist philosophy and became one of foremost scholarly exponents of this literature of his day. He saw Buddhism and especially Madhyamaka philosophy as presenting an "intelligible, plausible, and valid system" that rivaled anything produced in the West and was therefore worthy of the close attention of Western philosophers. He translated several of the major texts of the prajNApAramitA, including The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousands Lines and Its Verse Summary (1973), and The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom with the Divisions of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra (1975), as well as the VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") and the PRAJNAPARAMITAHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). His compilation of terminology derived from this translation work, Materials for a Dictionary of the PrajNApAramitA Literature (1967), did much to help establish many of the standard English equivalencies of Sanskrit Buddhist terms. Conze also wrote more general surveys of Buddhist philosophy and history, including Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (1951) and Buddhist Thought in India (1962).
cross-staff ::: n. --> An instrument formerly used at sea for taking the altitudes of celestial bodies.
A surveyor&
Data_science ::: is a field of Big Data geared toward providing meaningful information based on large amounts of complex data. Data science, or data-driven science, combines different fields of work in statistics and computation in order to interpret data for the purpose of decision making. BREAKING DOWN 'Data Science' Data is drawn from different sectors and platforms including cell phones, social media, e-commerce sites, healthcare surveys, internet searches, etc. The increase in the amount of data available opened the door to a new field of study called Big Data — or the extremely large data sets that can help produce better operational tools in all sectors. The continually increasing sets of and easy access to data are made possible by a collaboration of companies known as fintech, which use technology to innovate and enhance traditional financial products and services. The data produced creates even more data which is easily shared across entities thanks to emergent fintech products like cloud computing and storage. However, the interpretation of vast amounts of unstructured data for effective decision making may prove too complex and time consuming for companies, hence the emergence of data science.
demicircle ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring angles, in surveying, etc. It resembles a protractor, but has an alidade, sights, and a compass.
dialing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Dial ::: n. --> The art of constructing dials; the science which treats of measuring time by dials.
A method of surveying, especially in mines, in which the bearings of the courses, or the angles which they make with each other,
DISCURSIVITY The quality of the lower mental (47:6,7) of not being able to survey wholes but having to deal with isolated parts in succession.
episcopy ::: n. --> Survey; superintendence.
Episcopacy.
extend ::: v. t. --> To stretch out; to prolong in space; to carry forward or continue in length; as, to extend a line in surveying; to extend a cord across the street.
To enlarge, as a surface or volume; to expand; to spread; to amplify; as, to extend metal plates by hammering or rolling them.
To enlarge; to widen; to carry out further; as, to extend the capacities, the sphere of usefulness, or commerce; to extend
fanion ::: n. --> A small flag sometimes carried at the head of the baggage of a brigade.
A small flag for marking the stations in surveying.
faradise /far'*-di:z/ [US Geological Survey] To start any hyper-addictive process or trend, or to continue adding current to such a trend. Telling one user about a new octo-tetris game you compiled would be a faradising act - in two weeks you might find your entire department playing the faradic game.
faradise ::: /far'*-di:z/ [US Geological Survey] To start any hyper-addictive process or trend, or to continue adding current to such a trend. Telling one user about a new octo-tetris game you compiled would be a faradising act - in two weeks you might find your entire department playing the faradic game.
Flynn's taxonomy "architecture" A classification of computer architectures based on the number of streams of instructions and data: {Single instruction/single data} stream (SISD) - a sequential computer. Multiple instruction/single data stream (MISD) - unusual. {Single instruction/multiple data} streams (SIMD) - e.g. an {array processor}. {Multiple instruction/multiple data} streams (MIMD) - multiple autonomous processors simultaneously executing different instructions on different data. [Flynn, M. J., "Some Computer Organizations and Their Effectiveness", IEEE Transactions on Computing C-21, No. 9, Sep 1972, pp 948-960]. ["A Survey of Parallel Computer Architectures", Duncan, Ralph, IEEE Computer, Feb 1990, pp 5-16]. (2003-05-29)
Flynn's taxonomy ::: (architecture) A classification of computer architectures based on the number of streams of instructions and data:Single instruction/single data stream (SISD) - a sequential computer.Multiple instruction/single data stream (MISD) - unusual.Single instruction/multiple data streams (SIMD) - e.g. an array processor.Multiple instruction/multiple data streams (MIMD) - multiple autonomous processors simultaneously executing different instructions on different data.[Flynn, M. J., Some Computer Organizations and Their Effectiveness, IEEE Transactions on Computing C-21, No. 9, Sep 1972, pp 948-960].[A Survey of Parallel Computer Architectures, Duncan, Ralph, IEEE Computer, Feb 1990, pp 5-16].(2003-05-29)
Frauwallner, Erich. (1898-1974). Austrian scholar of Sanskrit philology; professor at the University of Vienna and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Frauwallner wrote some twenty monographs on various strands of Indian Buddhist literature, especially concerning the VINAYA and ABHIDHARMA, and broader surveys of Indian philosophy. His works include his The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature (1956) and Abhidharmastudien (translated into English as Studies in Abhidharma Literature and the Origins of Buddhist Philosophical Systems), which treats the analytical structure of early Buddhist abhidharma as the inception of systematic philosophical thought in Buddhism. Frauwallner was also one of the first Western scholars to explore the writings of DHARMAKĪRTI on Buddhist logic and epistemology and especially the APOHA theory, laying the foundation for PRALĀnA studies in Austria. Frauwallner, with other Indologists like Ludwig Alsdorf, were tainted by their association with Nazism and anti-Semitism; Frauwallner, however, later acknowledged the great contributions that the Alsatian Jewish scholar SYLVAIN LÉVI had made to Buddhist studies.
Fun ::: A typed lambda-calculus, similar to SOL[2]. On Understanding Types, Data Abstractions and Polymorphism, L. Cardelli et al, ACM Comp Surveys 17(4) (Dec 1985).
Fun A {typed lambda-calculus}, similar to {SOL}[2]. "On Understanding Types, Data Abstractions and Polymorphism", L. Cardelli et al, ACM Comp Surveys 17(4) (Dec 1985).
geodesy ::: n. --> That branch of applied mathematics which determines, by means of observations and measurements, the figures and areas of large portions of the earth&
geodetical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to geodesy; obtained or determined by the operations of geodesy; engaged in geodesy; geodesic; as, geodetic surveying; geodetic observers.
glance ::: n. --> A sudden flash of light or splendor.
A quick cast of the eyes; a quick or a casual look; a swift survey; a glimpse.
An incidental or passing thought or allusion.
A name given to some sulphides, mostly dark-colored, which have a brilliant metallic luster, as the sulphide of copper, called copper glance.
Harivarman. (T. Seng ge go cha; C. Helibamo; J. Karibatsuma; K. Haribalma 訶梨跋摩). Indian Buddhist exegete who probably lived between the third and fourth centuries CE (c. 250-350 CE). Harivarman was a disciple of Kumāralabdha and is the author of the CHENGSHI LUN (*Tattvasiddhi; "Treatise on Establishing Reality"), a summary of the lost ABHIDHARMA of the BAHUsRUTĪYA school, a branch of the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA school of the mainstream Buddhist tradition. The *Tattvasiddhi, extant only in Chinese translation as the Chengshi lun, is especially valuable for its detailed refutations of the positions held by other early sRĀVAKAYĀNA schools; the introduction, e.g., surveys ten different bases of controversy that separate the different early schools. The treatise is structured in the form of an exposition of the traditional theory of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, but does not include the listings for different factors (DHARMA) that typify many works in the abhidharma genre. The positions that Harivarman advocates are closest to those of the STHAVIRANIKĀYA and SAUTRĀNTIKA schools, although, unlike the Pāli texts, he accepts the reality of "unmanifest materiality" (AVIJNAPTIRuPA) and, unlike Sautrāntika, rejects the notion of an "intermediate state" (ANTARĀBHAVA) between existences. Harivarman opposes the SARVĀSTIVĀDA position that dharmas exist in both past and future, the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA view that thought is inherently pure, and the VĀTSĪPUTRĪYA premise that the "person" (PUDGALA) exists in reality. Harivarman seems to hone to a middle way between the extremes of "everything exists" and "everything does not exist," both of which he views as expediencies that do not represent ultimate reality. Harivarman advocates, instead, the "emptiness of everything" (sarva-suNYATĀ) and is therefore sometimes viewed within the East Asian traditions as representing a transitional stage between the mainstream Buddhist schools and MAHĀYĀNA philosophical doctrine.
Hlidskjalf (Icelandic) [from hlid side, gate; or from hlifd protection + skjalf shelf, bench, plane] The word may mean either that the gods are arrayed by our side in the struggle of life; or deriving it from the Scandinavian lida (to suffer), it could be by extension of meaning the “shelf of compassion,” whence their protection extends over the human race. In the Norse Edda, it is on Hlidskjalf that Odin is enthroned with his consort Frigga and whence he is able to survey all worlds. Frey, the deity of our terrestrial world, also oversees his domain from this vantage point.
hydrographer ::: n. --> One skilled in the hydrography; one who surveys, or draws maps or charts of, the sea, lakes, or other waters, with the adjacent shores; one who describes the sea or other waters.
hydrography ::: n. --> The art of measuring and describing the sea, lakes, rivers, and other waters, with their phenomena.
That branch of surveying which embraces the determination of the contour of the bottom of a harbor or other sheet of water, the depth of soundings, the position of channels and shoals, with the construction of charts exhibiting these particulars.
Jean E. Sammet ::: (person) Author of several surveys of early programming languages, refererred to in many entries in this dictionary.E-mail: Relevant publications include:[Sammet, Jean E., Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, P-H 1969. QA76.5 .S213]. The definitive work on early computer language development.[Sammet, Jean E., Programming Languages: History and Future, CACM 15(7):601-610, Jul 1972].[Sammet, Jean E., Roster of Programming Languages Computers & Automation 16(6):80-82, June 1967; Computers & Automation 17(6):120-123, June 1968; Computers & Automation 21(6B), 30 Aug 1972; Computing Reviews 15(4): 147-160, April 1974; CACM 19(12):655-669, Dec 1976; SIGPLAN Notices 13(11):56, Nov 1978]. (1998-10-03)
Jean E. Sammet "person" Author of several surveys of early programming languages, refererred to in many entries in this dictionary. E-mail: sammet@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu Relevant publications include: [Sammet, Jean E., "Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals", P-H 1969. QA76.5 .S213]. The definitive work on early computer language development. [Sammet, Jean E., "Programming Languages: History and Future", CACM 15(7):601-610, Jul 1972]. [Sammet, Jean E., "Roster of Programming Languages" Computers & Automation 16(6):80-82, June 1967; Computers & Automation 17(6):120-123, June 1968; Computers & Automation 18(7):153-158, June 1969; Computers & Automation 19(6B):6-11, 30 Nov 1970; Computers & Automation 20(6B):6-13, 30 Jun, 1971; Computers & Automation 21(6B), 30 Aug 1972; Computing Reviews 15(4): 147-160, April 1974; CACM 19(12):655-669, Dec 1976; SIGPLAN Notices 13(11):56, Nov 1978]. (1998-10-03)
keypal The {electronic mail} equivalent of a pen pal - someone with whom to exchange electronic mail for the simple joy of communicating. {Request for keypals (gopher://wealaka.okgeosurvey1.gov/11/K12/keypals)}. [Is there some kind of central clearing-house for requests on the net?]
Koyasan. (高野山). In Japanese, "Mt. Koya"; a Japanese sacred mountain in Wakayama prefecture. Currently, the monastery Kongobuji on Mt. Koya serves as the headquarters (honzan) of the Koyasan SHINGONSHu sect of the Shingon tradition. While traveling through the lands southwest of Yoshino, the Japanese monk KuKAI is said to have stumbled upon a flat plateau named Koya (High Field) on a mountain. Kukai determined that Koya was an ideal site of self-cultivation, as it appeared to be an uninhabited area surrounded on four sides by high mountain peaks. It is said that the mountain was revealed to Kukai by a hunter who was an incarnation of the god (KAMI) of the mountain, Koya Myojin. This deity is still worshipped on Mt. Koya in his hunter form as Kariba Myojin. In 816, Kukai received permission from the emperor to establish a practice center dedicated to the study of MIKKYo ritual and doctrine at Koya. Kukai first sent his disciples Jitsue (786-847) and Enmyo (d. 851) to survey the entire area and went to the site himself in 818. Due to his activities at the official monastery, ToJI, and his business at the monasteries Jingoji and Muroji, Kukai's involvement with Mt. Koya was limited. In 835, he retired to Mt. Koya due to his deteriorating health and finally died there, purportedly while in a deep meditative state. Kukai's body is housed in the mausoleum complex Okunoin near Kongobuji. According to legend, he remains there in a state of eternal SAMĀDHI. As a result of the developing cult of Kukai, who increasingly came to be worshipped as a bodhisattva, Mt. Koya came to be viewed as a PURE LAND on earth. Later, as a result of political contestations, as well as several fires on the mountain in 994, Mt. Koya entered a period of protracted decline and neglect. Through the efforts of Fujiwara and other aristocrats as well as the patronage of reigning and retired emperors, Mt. Koya reemerged as a powerful monastic and economic center in the region, and became an influential center of pilgrimage and religious cultivation famous throughout Japan. In 1114, KAKUBAN took up residence on the mountain and assiduously practiced mikkyo for eight years. In 1132, he established the monasteries of Daidenboin and Mitsugon'in on Mt. Koya. Despite his efforts to refocus Mt. Koya scholasticism around the doctrinal and ritual teachings of Kukai, his rapid rise through the monastic ranks was met with great animosity from the conservative factions on the mountain. In 1288, the monk Raiyu (1226-1304) moved Daidenboin and Mitsugon'in to nearby Mt. Negoro and established what came to be known as Shingi Shingon, which regarded Kakuban as its founder. In 1185, Myohen, a disciple of HoNEN, moved to Mt. Koya to pursue rebirth in the pure land, a common goal for many pilgrims to Mt. Koya. It is said that, around 1192, NICHIREN and Honen made pilgrimages to the mountain. MYoAN EISAI's senior disciple Gyoyu established Kongosanmai-in and taught Chinese RINZAI (LINJI) Zen on Mt. Koya. Zen lineages developed between Mt. Koya, Kyoto, and Kamakura around this time. In 1585, during the Warring States Period, the monk Mokujiki ogo was able to convince Toyotomi Hideyoshi not to burn down the mountain as Oda Nobunaga had done at HIEIZAN. As a result, Mt. Koya preserves ancient manuscripts and images that would have otherwise been lost. Mt. Koya's monastic structures shrank to less than a third of their original size during the Meiji persecution of Buddhism (HAIBUTSU KISHAKU). At that same time, Mt. Koya lost much of its former land holdings, which greatly reduced its economic base. In the twentieth century, Mt. Koya went through several modernization steps: the ban against women was lifted in 1905, its roads were paved, and Mt. Koya University was built on the mountain. At present, Mt. Koya is a thriving tourist, pilgrimage, and monastic training center.
L0 "language" A low-level language developed at the {Technical University of Munich}. L0 was typed and had the usual {flow control}, but only 3-address expressions. Higher level languages, L1 and L2 were planned. ["Brief Survey of L0", H. Scheidig, in Machine Oriented Higher Level Languages, W. van der Poel ed, N-H 1974, pp. 239-247]. (2003-06-12)
L0 ::: (language) A low-level language developed at the Technical University of Munich. L0 was typed and had the usual flow control, but only 3-address expressions. Higher level languages, L1 and L2 were planned.[Brief Survey of L0, H. Scheidig, in Machine Oriented Higher Level Languages, W. van der Poel ed, N-H 1974, pp. 239-247].(2003-06-12)
leveling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Level ::: n. --> The act or operation of making level.
The art or operation of using a leveling instrument for finding a horizontal line, for ascertaining the differences of level between different points of the earth&
Lewis, Clarence Irving: (1883-) Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. In Logic, Lewis has originated and defended strict implication (q.v.) in contrast to material implication, urging that formal inference should be based on a relation which can be known to hold without knowing what is true or false of this particular universe. See his Survey of Symbolic Logic, and his and C. H. Langford's Symbolic Logic, esp. Ch. VIII. Lewis has argued also for "queer logics", that is, abstract systems somewhat different from the abstract system usually interpreted as logic. Lewis raises the question how "queer" a system can be and still be interpretable properly as a system of logic.
Likert scalea type of response format used in surveys developed by Rensis Likert. Likert items have responses on a continuum and response categories such as "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," and "strongly disagree."
lineman ::: n. --> One who carries the line in surveying, etc.
A man employed to examine the rails of a railroad to see if they are in good condition; also, a man employed to repair telegraph lines.
Lmbert is known also for important contributions to mathematics, and astronomy; also for his work in logic, in particular his (unsuccessful, but historically significant) attempts at construction of a mathematical or symbolic logic. Cf. C. I. Lewis, Survey of Symbolic Logic. -- A.C.
loop-and-a-half "programming" A {loop} structure with its termination test in the middle. This contrasts with the more common {while loop} which has the test at the beginning or a {repeat loop} which has it at the end. A generic example gets a value, tests it then processes it: while (true) { value = get(); if (isTerminal(value)) break; process(value); } Alternatives require either an extra get() before the loop: value = get(); while (! isTerminal(value)) process(value); value = get(); } or an extra test for termination: do { value = get(); done = isTerminal(value); if (! done) process(value); } while (! done); The structure is discussed, though not named as such, in [Donald Knuth, "Structured programming with goto statements", Computing Surveys, December 1974]. A good summary is presented in [Eric S. Roberts, "Loop Exits and Structured Programming: Reopening the Debate", ACM SIGCSE, March 1995]. (2019-09-03)
Mahāyāna. (T. theg pa chen po; C. dasheng; J. daijo; K. taesŭng 大乘). In Sanskrit, "great vehicle"; a term, originally of self-appellation, which is used historically to refer to a movement that began some four centuries after the Buddha's death, marked by the composition of texts that purported to be his words (BUDDHAVACANA). Although ranging widely in content, these texts generally set forth the bodhisattva path to buddhahood as the ideal to which all should aspire and described BODHISATTVAs and buddhas as objects of devotion. The key doctrines of the Mahāyāna include the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ), the skillful methods (UPĀYAKAUsALYA) of a buddha, the three bodies (TRIKĀYA) of a buddha, the inherency of buddha-nature (BUDDHADHĀTU; TATHĀGATAGARBHA), and PURE LANDs or buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). The term Mahāyāna is also appended to two of the leading schools of Indian Buddhism, the YOGĀCĀRA and the MADHYAMAKA, because they accepted the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha. However, the tenets of these schools were not restricted to expositions of the philosophy and practice of the bodhisattva but sought to set forth the nature of wisdom and the constituents of the path for the ARHAT as well. The term Mahāyāna often appears in contrast to HĪNAYĀNA, the "lesser vehicle," a pejorative term used to refer to those who do not accept the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha. Mahāyāna became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Mongolia, and therefore is sometimes referred to as "Northern Buddhism," especially in nineteenth-century sources. Because of the predominance of the Mahāyāna in East Asia and Tibet, it is sometimes assumed that the Mahāyāna displaced earlier forms of Buddhism (sometimes referred to by scholars as "Nikāya Buddhism" or "MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS") in India, but the testimony of Chinese pilgrims, such as XUANZANG and YIJING, suggests that the Mahāyāna remained a minority movement in India. These pilgrims report that Mahāyāna and "hīnayāna" monks lived together in the same monasteries and followed the same VINAYA. The supremacy of the Mahāyāna is also sometimes assumed because of the large corpus of Mahāyāna literature in India. However, scholars have begun to speculate that the size of this corpus may not be a sign of the Mahāyāna's dominance but rather of its secondary status, with more and more works composed but few gaining adherents. Scholars find it significant that the first mention of the term "Mahāyāna" in a stone inscription does not appear in India until some five centuries after the first Mahāyāna sutras were presumably composed, perhaps reflecting its minority, or even marginal, status on the Indian subcontinent. The origins of the Mahāyāna remain the subject of scholarly debate. Earlier theories that saw the Mahāyāna as largely a lay movement against entrenched conservative monastics have given way to views of the Mahāyāna as beginning as disconnected cults (of monastic and sometimes lay members) centered around an individual sutra, in some instances proclaimed by charismatic teachers called DHARMABHĀnAKA. The teachings contained in these sutras varied widely, with some extolling a particular buddha or bodhisattva above all others, some saying that the text itself functioned as a STuPA. Each of these sutras sought to represent itself as the authentic word of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, which was more or less independent from other sutras; hence, the trope in so many Mahāyāna sutras in which the Buddha proclaims the supremacy of that particular text and describes the benefits that will accrue to those who recite, copy, and worship it. The late appearance of these texts had to be accounted for, and various arguments were set forth, most making some appeal to UPĀYA, the Buddha's skillful methods whereby he teaches what is most appropriate for a given person or audience. Thus, in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the Buddha famously proclaims that the three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) that he had previously set forth were in fact expedient stratagems to reach different audiences and that there is in fact only one vehicle (EKAYĀNA), revealed in the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the BUDDHAYĀNA, which had been taught many times in the past by previous buddhas. These early Mahāyāna sutras seem to have been deemed complete unto themselves, each representing its own world. This relatively disconnected assemblage of various cults of the book would eventually become a self-conscious scholastic entity that thought of itself as the Mahāyāna; this exegetical endeavor devoted a good deal of energy to surveying what was by then a large corpus of such books and then attempting to craft the myriad doctrines contained therein into coherent philosophical and religious systems, such as Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. The authority of the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha seems to have remained a sensitive issue throughout the history of the Mahāyāna in India, since many of the most important authors, from the second to the twelfth century, often offered a defense of these sutras' authenticity. Another influential strand of early Mahāyāna was that associated with the RĀstRAPĀLAPARIPṚCCHĀ, KĀsYAPAPARIVARTA, and UGRAPARIPṚCCHĀ, which viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation and instead advocated forest dwelling (see ARANNAVĀSI) away from the cities, following a rigorous asceticism (S. dhutaguna; P. DHUTAnGA) that was thought to characterize the early SAMGHA. This conscious estrangement from the monks of the city, where the great majority of monks would have resided, again suggests the Mahāyāna's minority status in India. Although one often reads in Western sources of the three vehicles of Buddhism-the hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and VAJRAYĀNA-the distinction of the Mahāyāna from the vajrayāna is less clear, at least polemically speaking, than the distinction between the Mahāyāna and the hīnayāna, with followers of the vajrayāna considering themselves as following the path to buddhahood set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, although via a shorter route. Thus, in some expositions, the Mahāyāna is said to subsume two vehicles, the PĀRAMITĀYĀNA, that is, the path to buddhahood by following the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) as set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, and the MANTRAYĀNA or vajrayāna, that is, the path to buddhahood set forth in the tantras.
Māyā. [alt. Māyādevī; Mahāmāyā] (T. Sgyu 'phrul ma; C. Moye; J. Maya; K. Maya 摩耶). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "Illusion"; the mother of GAUTAMA Buddha. Her father was ANjana, king of Devadaha, and her mother was Yasodharā. Māyā and her sister MAHĀPRAJĀPATĪ were both married to the Buddha's father sUDDHODANA, the king of KAPILAVASTU. Māyā was between forty and fifty when the future buddha was conceived. At that time, the future buddha was a BODHISATTVA residing in TUsITA heaven, where he surveyed the world and selected his future parents. On the night of his conception, Māyā dreamed that four great gods transported her to the Himalayas, where goddesses bathed her in the waters of the Anotatta Lake and clad her in divine raiment. As she lay on a couch prepared for her, the future buddha, in the form of a white elephant holding a white lotus in its trunk, entered into her right side. After ten lunar months, during which time she remained chaste, Māyā set out to visit her parents in Devadaha. Along the way she stopped at the LUMBINĪ grove, where she gave birth to the prince and future buddha while holding onto a branch of a sĀLA tree; according to some accounts, he emerged from her right side. Seven days later, Māyā died. Varying reasons are provided for her demise, including that she died from joy at having given birth to the future buddha and that she died after seven days because she would have died from a broken heart when Prince SIDDHĀRTHA subsequently renounced the world at the age of twenty-nine. It is also said that the mothers of all buddhas die shortly after their birth because it is not suitable that any other child be conceived in the womb that had been occupied by a future buddha. Māyā was reborn as a male divinity named Māyādevaputra in the TUsITA heaven. After her death, Māyā's sister Mahāprājāpatī raised the future buddha as her own child. Because his mother's death had prevented her from benefiting from his teachings, the Buddha once spent a rainy season in TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven atop Mount SUMERU, during which time he preached the ABHIDHARMA to his mother, who had come from tusita heaven to listen, along with the other assembled divinities. These teachings, which the Buddha later recounted to sĀRIPUTRA, would become the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA. The Buddha's descent from the heaven at SĀMKĀsYA at the conclusion of his teachings is one of the most commonly depicted scenes in Buddhist art. The entry of the future Buddha into his mother's womb, and by extension into the human realm of existence, is a momentous event in Buddhist history, and elaborate descriptions of that descent and of that womb appear in a number of texts. One of the most famous is found in the forty-fourth chapter of the GAndAVYuHA, a MAHĀYĀNA SuTRA dating from perhaps the second century of the Common Era. In the sutra, SUDHANA goes in search of enlightenment. During his journey, he encounters all manner of exalted beings, each of whom provides him with instruction. One of the teachers he meets is Māyā. She describes in elaborate detail how her son entered her womb, revealing that it was able to accommodate much more than a white elephant, without for a moment distorting her form. She reveals that it was not only the bodhisattva SIDDHĀRTHA who descended from the tusita and entered her womb; in fact, countless other bodhisattvas accompanied him to become buddhas simultaneously in millions of similar universes. She reveals as well that she is the mother not only of all the buddhas of the present, but of all the buddhas of the past and that she will also be the mother of the next buddha, MAITREYA.
metadata "data, data processing" /me't*-day`t*/, or combinations of /may'-/ or (Commonwealth) /mee'-/; /-dah`t*/ (Or "meta-data") Data about {data}. In {data processing}, metadata is definitional data that provides information about or documentation of other data managed within an application or environment. For example, metadata would document data about {data elements} or {attributes}, (name, size, data type, etc) and data about {records} or {data structures} (length, fields, columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it is associated, ownership, etc.). Metadata may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data. A collection of metadata, e.g. in a {database}, is called a {data dictionary}. Myers of {The Metadata Company} claims to have coined the term in 1969 though it appears in the book, "Extension of programming language concepts" published in 1968, by {Philip R. Bagley}. Bagley was a pioneer of computer document retrieval. "A survey of extensible programming languages" by Solntsseff and Yezerski (Annual Review in Automatic Programming, 1974, pp267-307) cites "the notion of 'metadata' introduced by Bagley". (2010-05-15)
Mo chia: The School of Mo Tzu (Moh Tzu, Mo Ti, between 500 and 396 B.C.) and his followers. This utilitarian and scientific minded philosopher, whose doctrines are embodied in Mo Tzu, advocated: "benefit" (li), or the promotion of general welfare and removal of evil, through the increase of population and of benevolence and righteousness toward this practical objective, the elimination of war, and the suppression of wasteful musical events and elaborate funerals; "universal love" (chien ai), or treating others, their families, and their countries as one's own, to the end that the greatest amount of benefit will be realized; agreement with the superiors (shang t'ung); a method of reasoning which involves a foundation, a survey, and application (san piao); the belief in Heaven and the spirits both as a religious sanction of governmental measures and as an effective way of promotion of peace and welfare. For the development of his teachings by his followers, see Mo che. -- W.T.C.
modal logic "logic" An extension of {propositional calculus} with {operators} that express various "modes" of truth. Examples of modes are: necessarily A, possibly A, probably A, it has always been true that A, it is permissible that A, it is believed that A. "It is necessarily true that A" means that things being as they are, A must be true, e.g. "It is necessarily true that x=x" is TRUE while "It is necessarily true that x=y" is FALSE even though "x=y" might be TRUE. Adding modal operators [F] and [P], meaning, respectively, henceforth and hitherto leads to a "{temporal logic}". Flavours of modal logics include: {Propositional Dynamic Logic} (PDL), {Propositional Linear Temporal Logic} (PLTL), {Linear Temporal Logic} (LTL), {Computational Tree Logic} (CTL), {Hennessy-Milner Logic}, S1-S5, T. C.I. Lewis, "A Survey of Symbolic Logic", 1918, initiated the modern analysis of modality. He developed the logical systems S1-S5. JCC McKinsey used algebraic methods ({Boolean algebras} with operators) to prove the decidability of Lewis' S2 and S4 in 1941. Saul Kripke developed the {relational semantics} for modal logics (1959, 1963). Vaughan Pratt introduced {dynamic logic} in 1976. Amir Pnuelli proposed the use of temporal logic to formalise the behaviour of continually operating {concurrent} programs in 1977. [Robert Goldblatt, "Logics of Time and Computation", CSLI Lecture Notes No. 7, Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Second Edition, 1992, (distributed by University of Chicago Press)]. [Robert Goldblatt, "Mathematics of Modality", CSLI Lecture Notes No. 43, Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, 1993, (distributed by University of Chicago Press)]. [G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell, "An Introduction to Modal Logic", Methuen, 1968]. [E.J. Lemmon (with Dana Scott), "An Introduction to Modal Logic", American Philosophical Quarterly Monograpph Series, no. 11 (ed. by Krister Segerberg), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977]. (1995-02-15)
modal logic ::: (logic) An extension of propositional calculus with operators that express various modes of truth. Examples of modes are: necessarily A, possibly A, probably A, it has always been true that A, it is permissible that A, it is believed that A.It is necessarily true that A means that things being as they are, A must be true, e.g. It is necessarily true that x=x is TRUE while It is necessarily true that x=y is FALSE even though x=y might be TRUE.Adding modal operators [F] and [P], meaning, respectively, henceforth and hitherto leads to a temporal logic.Flavours of modal logics include: Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL), Propositional Linear Temporal Logic (PLTL), Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), Computational Tree Logic (CTL), Hennessy-Milner Logic, S1-S5, T.C.I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, 1918, initiated the modern analysis of modality. He developed the logical systems S1-S5. JCC McKinsey used algebraic proposed the use of temporal logic to formalise the behaviour of continually operating concurrent programs in 1977.[Robert Goldblatt, Logics of Time and Computation, CSLI Lecture Notes No. 7, Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Second Edition, 1992, (distributed by University of Chicago Press)].[Robert Goldblatt, Mathematics of Modality, CSLI Lecture Notes No. 43, Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, 1993, (distributed by University of Chicago Press)].[G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell, An Introduction to Modal Logic, Methuen, 1968].[E.J. Lemmon (with Dana Scott), An Introduction to Modal Logic, American Philosophical Quarterly Monograpph Series, no. 11 (ed. by Krister Segerberg), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977]. (1995-02-15)
odometer ::: n. --> An instrument attached to the wheel of a vehicle, to measure the distance traversed; also, a wheel used by surveyors, which registers the miles and rods traversed.
otani Kozui. (大谷光瑞) (1876-1948). Modern Japanese explorer to Buddhist archeological sites in Central Asia, and especially DUNHUANG; the twenty-second abbot of the NISHI HONGANJIHA, one of the two main sub-branches of the JoDO SHINSHu of the Japanese pure land tradition. otani was sent to London at the age of fourteen by his father, the twenty-first abbot of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto, to study Western theology. Inspired by the contemporary expeditions to Central Asia then being conducted by European explorers such as SIR MARC AUREL STEIN (1862-1943) and Sven Hedin (1865-1952), otani decided to take an overland route on his return to Japan so that he could survey Buddhist sites along the SILK ROAD. otani embarked on his first expedition to the region in 1902, accompanied by several other Japanese priests from Nishi Honganji. While en route, otani received the news of his father's death and returned to Japan to succeed to the abbacy; the expedition continued and returned to Japan in 1904. Even though his duties subsequently kept him in Japan, otani dispatched expeditions to Chinese Turkestan in 1908-1909 and between 1910 and 1914. The artifacts recovered during these three expeditions include manuscripts, murals, sculpture, textiles, etc., and are known collectively as the "otani collection." These materials are now dispersed in Japan, Korea, and China, but they are still regarded as important sources for the study of Central Asian Buddhist archeology.
outkeeper ::: n. --> An attachment to a surveyor&
overseers ::: those who survey or watch, as from a higher position.
paNcavargika. (P. paNcavaggiyā; T. lnga sde; C. wuqun [biqiu]; J. gogun [biku]; K. ogun [pigu] 五群[比丘]). In Sanskrit, the "group of five"; the five ascetics who practiced austerities with the BODHISATTVA prior to his enlightenment and to whom the Buddha preached his first sermon after his enlightenment, thus becoming the Buddha's first disciples. They are ĀJNĀTAKAUndIYA (or Kaundinya), AsVAJIT, VĀsPA, MAHĀNĀMAN, and BHADRIKA. According to the Pāli account (where they are called ANNātakondaNNa or KondaNNa, Assaji, Vappa, Mahānāma, and Bhaddiya), KondaNNa had been present as one of the eight brāhmanas who attended the infant's naming ceremony, during which the prophesy was made that the prince would one day become either a wheel-turning monarch (P. cakkavatti, S. CAKRAVARTIN) or a buddha. The other four ascetics were sons of four of the other brāhmanas in attendance at the naming ceremony. When the prince gave up his practice of austerities and accepted a meal, the five ascetics abandoned him in disgust. After his enlightenment, the Buddha surveyed the world with his divine eye (S. DIVYACAKsUS) and surmised that, of all people then alive, these five ascetics were most likely to understand the profundity of his message. When he first approached them, they refused to recognize him, but the power of his charisma was such that they felt compelled to show him the honor due a teacher. He preached to them two important discourses, the DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA, in which he explained the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (S. catvāry āryasatyāni), and the ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA (S. *Anātmalaksanasutra), in which he explained the doctrine of nonself (P. anatta, S. ANĀTMAN). Upon hearing and comprehending the first sermon, the five ascetics attained the dhammacakku (S. DHARMACAKsUS) or the "dhamma eye," an attainment equated in the Pāli canon with that of the stream-enterer (P. sotāpanna, S. SROTAĀPANNA). The five then requested to be accepted as the Buddha's disciples and were ordained as the first Buddhist monks (P. bhikkhu, S. BHIKsU), using the informal EHIBHIKsUKĀ (P. ehi bhikkhu), or "come, monk," formula. Upon hearing the second sermon, the five were completely freed of the contaminants (P. āsava, S. ĀSRAVA), becoming thereby arahants (ARHAT) freed from the prospect of any further rebirth. With this experience, there were then six arahants in the world, including the Buddha. The Pāli story of the conversion of the group of five is recounted in the MAHĀVAGGA section of the Pāli VINAYAPItAKA. The group of five appears often in JĀTAKA stories of the previous lives of the Buddha, indicating their long karmic connections to him, which result in their remarkable fortune at being the first to hear the Buddha preach the dharma. In Sanskrit materials, this group of five is usually known as the bhadravargīya, or "auspicious group."
perambulate ::: v. t. --> To walk through or over; especially, to travel over for the purpose of surveying or examining; to inspect by traversing; specifically, to inspect officially the boundaries of, as of a town or parish, by walking over the whole line. ::: v. i. --> To walk about; to ramble; to stroll; as, he
perambulation ::: n. --> The act of perambulating; traversing.
An annual survey of boundaries, as of town, a parish, a forest, etc.
A district within which one is authorized to make a tour of inspection.
perambulator ::: n. --> One who perambulates.
A surveyor&
PL/I ::: (language) Programming Language One.An attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, COBOL and ALGOL 60. Developed by George Radin of IBM in 1964. Originally named NPL and Fortran VI. of PL/I, was used to write almost all of the Multics operating system. PL/I is still widely used internally at IBM. The PL/I standard is ANS X3.53-1976.PL/I has no reserved words. Types are fixed, float, complex, character strings with maximum length, bit strings, and label variables. Arrays have lower bounds concurrency ('call task' and 'wait(event)' are equivalent to fork/join) and compile-time statements.LPI is a PL/I interpreter.[A Structural View of PL/I, D. Beech, Computing Surveys, 2,1 33-64 (1970)]. (1994-10-25)
PL/I "language" Programming Language One. An attempt to combine the best features of {Fortran}, {COBOL} and {ALGOL 60}. Developed by George Radin of {IBM} in 1964. Originally named NPL and Fortran VI. The result is large but elegant. PL/I was one of the first languages to have a formal {semantic} definition, using the {Vienna Definition Language}. {EPL}, a dialect of PL/I, was used to write almost all of the {Multics} {operating system}. PL/I is still widely used internally at {IBM}. The PL/I standard is ANS X3.53-1976. PL/I has no {reserved words}. Types are fixed, float, complex, character strings with maximum length, bit strings, and label variables. {Arrays} have lower bounds and may be dynamic. It also has summation, multi-level structures, {structure assignment}, untyped pointers, {side effects} and {aliasing}. {Control flow} constructs include goto; do-end groups; do-to-by-while-end loops; external procedures; internal nested procedures and blocks; {generic procedures} and {exception handling}. Procedures may be declared {recursive}. Many implementations support {concurrency} ('call task' and 'wait(event)' are equivalent to {fork}/join) and compile-time statements. {LPI} is a PL/I {interpreter}. ["A Structural View of PL/I", D. Beech, Computing Surveys, 2,1 33-64 (1970)]. (1994-10-25)
profile ::: n. --> An outline, or contour; as, the profile of an apple.
A human head represented sidewise, or in a side view; the side face or half face.
A section of any member, made at right angles with its main lines, showing the exact shape of moldings and the like.
A drawing exhibiting a vertical section of the ground along a surveyed line, or graded work, as of a railway, showing elevations, depressions, grades, etc.
Pushan (Sanskrit) Pūṣan [from the verbal root puṣ to nourish, feed] The nourisher; a name of the sun, who nourishes and feeds all within his kingdom from his own vital substance and power. As one of the Vedic gods, the surveyor of all things, the conductor on journeys, and the guide on the way to the next world, functions reminiscent of Hermes or Mercury in classical thought.
questionnaire (survey): a research method that is contains different formats of questionnaires, for example the Likert scale, open- and closed- questions.
Range of survey results - The highest and lowest results from market research surveys.
resurvey ::: v. t. --> To survey again or anew; to review. ::: n. --> A second or new survey.
reconnaissance ::: n. --> The act of reconnoitering; preliminary examination or survey.
An examination or survey of a region in reference to its general geological character.
An examination of a region as to its general natural features, preparatory to a more particular survey for the purposes of triangulation, or of determining the location of a public work.
reconnoitre ::: v. t. --> To examine with the eye to make a preliminary examination or survey of; esp., to survey with a view to military or engineering operations.
To recognize.
regular expression 1. "text, operating system" (regexp, RE) One of the {wild card} patterns used by {Perl} and other languages, following {Unix} utilities such as {grep}, {sed}, and {awk} and editors such as {vi} and {Emacs}. Regular expressions use conventions similar to but more elaborate than those described under {glob}. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings (in Perl, other flavours vary): An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character. A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are: "." matches any character except {newline}; "RE*" (where RE is any regular expression and the "*" is called the "{Kleene star}") matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen. "^" at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and "$" at the end of an RE matches the end of a line. [CHARS] matches any one of the characters in CHARS. If the first character of the string is a "^" it matches any character except the remaining characters in the string (and also usually excluding newline). "-" may be used to indicate a range of consecutive {ASCII} characters. (RE) matches whatever RE matches and \N, where N is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the Nth "(" and its corresponding ")" earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use \(RE\) instead of just (RE). The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches. \" matches the beginning of a word and \" matches the end of a word. Many flavours use "\b" instead as the special character for "word boundary". RE\{M\} matches M occurences of RE. RE\{M,\} matches M or more occurences of RE. RE\{M,N\} matches between M and N occurences. Other flavours use RE\\{M\\} etc. Perl provides several "quote-like" {operators} for writing REs, including the common // form and less common {??}. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below). [Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, "{Mastering Regular Expressions (http://enterprise.ic.gc.ca/~jfriedl/regex/index.html)}, O'Reilly, 1997]. 2. Any description of a {pattern} composed from combinations of {symbols} and the three {operators}: Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B. Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B. Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern. The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician {Stephen Cole Kleene} in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate "regular sets", formal descriptions of the behaviour of {finite state machines}, in {regular algebra}. [S.C. Kleene, "Representation of events in nerve nets and finite automata", 1956, Automata Studies. Princeton]. [J.H. Conway, "Regular algebra and finite machines", 1971, Eds Chapman & Hall]. [Sedgewick, "Algorithms in C", page 294]. (2015-04-30)
regular expression ::: 1. (text, operating system) (regexp, RE) One of the wild card patterns used by Perl and other languages, following Unix utilities such as grep, sed, similar to but more elaborate than those described under glob. A regular expression is a sequence of characters with the following meanings:An ordinary character (not one of the special characters discussed below) matches that character.A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the special character itself. The special characters are:. matches any character except NEWLINE; RE* (where the * is called the Kleene star) matches zero or more occurrences of RE. If there is any choice, the longest leftmost matching string is chosen, in most regexp flavours.^ at the beginning of an RE matches the start of a line and $ at the end of an RE matches the end of a line.[string] matches any one character in that string. If the first character of the string is a ^ it matches any character except the remaining characters in the string (and also usually excluding NEWLINE). - may be used to indicate a range of consecutive ASCII characters.\( RE \) matches whatever RE matches and \n, where n is a digit, matches whatever was matched by the RE between the nth \( and its corresponding \) earlier in the same RE. Many flavours use ( RE ) used instead of \( RE \).The concatenation of REs is a RE that matches the concatenation of the strings matched by each RE. RE1 | RE2 matches whatever RE1 or RE2 matches.\ matches the beginning of a word and \> matches the end of a word. In many flavours of regexp, \> and \ are replaced by \b, the special character for word boundary.RE{m} matches m occurences of RE. RE{m,} matches m or more occurences of RE. RE{m,n} matches between m and n occurences.The exact details of how regexp will work in a given application vary greatly from flavour to flavour. A comprehensive survey of regexp flavours is found in Friedl 1997 (see below).[Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, , O'Reilly, 1997].2. Any description of a pattern composed from combinations of symbols and the three operators:Concatenation - pattern A concatenated with B matches a match for A followed by a match for B.Or - pattern A-or-B matches either a match for A or a match for B.Closure - zero or more matches for a pattern.The earliest form of regular expressions (and the term itself) were invented by mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in the mid-1950s, as a notation to easily manipulate regular sets, formal descriptions of the behaviour of finite state machines, in regular algebra.[S.C. Kleene, Representation of events in nerve nets and finite automata, 1956, Automata Studies. Princeton].[J.H. Conway, Regular algebra and finite machines, 1971, Eds Chapman & Hall].[Sedgewick, Algorithms in C, page 294].(2004-02-01)
Reichenbach's work has been devoted mainly to the philosophy of empirical science; for a brief general survey of the problems which have particularly attracted his attention, and of his conception of an adequate method for their solution, cf. his Raum. Zeit Lehre. His contributions center around (I) the problems of space and time, and (II) those of causality, induction and probability. His studies of the first group of problems include thorough analyses of the nature of geometry and of the logical structure of relativistic physics, these researches led Reichenbach to a rejection of the aprioristic theory of space and time. Reichenbach's contributions to the second group of problems pivot around his general theory of probability which is based on a statistical definition of the probability concept. In terms of this probabilistic approach, Relchenbach has carried out comprehensive analyses of methodological and epistemological problems such as those of causality and induction. He has also extended his formal probability theory into a probability logic in which probabilities play the part of truth values. -- C.G.H.
Risk_tolerance ::: is the degree of variability in investment returns that an investor is willing to withstand. Risk tolerance is an important component in investing. You should have a realistic understanding of your ability and willingness to stomach large swings in the value of your investments; if you take on too much risk, you might panic and sell at the wrong time. BREAKING DOWN 'Risk Tolerance' Risk tolerance assessments for investors abound, including risk-related surveys or questionnaires. As an investor, you may also want to review historical worst-case returns for different asset classes to get an idea of how much money you would feel comfortable losing if your investments have a bad year or bad series of years. Other factors affecting risk tolerance are the time horizon you have to invest, your future earning capacity, and the presence of other assets such as a home, pension, Social Security or an inheritance. In general, you can take greater risk with investable assets when you have other, more stable sources of funds available. Aggressive Risk Tolerance Aggressive investors tend to be market-savvy. A deep understanding of securities and their propensities allows such individuals and institutional investors to purchase highly volatile instruments, such as small company stocks that can plummet to zero or options contracts that can expire worthless. While maintaining a base of riskless securities, aggressive investors reach for maximum returns with maximum risk.
rodsman ::: n. --> One who carries and holds a leveling staff, or rod, in a surveying party.
saMghātī. (P. sanghāti; T. snam sbyar; C. sengqieli/dayi; J. sogyari/daie; K. sŭnggari/taeŭi 僧伽梨/大衣). In Sanskrit, "outer robe"; the largest of the "three robes" (TRICĪVARA) worn by a monk or nun, along with the "lower robe" or waistcloth (S. ANTARVĀSAS, P. antaravāsaka), and the upper robe (S. UTTARĀSAMGA, P. uttarāsanga). This particular robe was in two layers and was required to be tailored in patches, numbering from nine up to twenty-five, depending on the account in the various VINAYA recensions. This use of patches of cloth is said to have been modeled after plots of farmland in MAGADHA that the Buddha once surveyed. See also CĪVARA; KĀsĀYA.
SāNcī. A famous STuPA or CAITYA about six miles southwest of Vidisā in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; often seen transcribed as Sanchi. The SāNcī stupa and its surrounding compound is one of the best-preserved Buddhist archeological sites in the world and is well known for its many monasteries, reliquaries, pillars, and stone relief carvings. SāNcī was an active site of worship and pilgrimage in India between the third century BCE and the twelfth century CE. However, unlike other pilgrimage sites such as SĀRNĀTH and BODHGAYĀ, SāNcī is not known to be a place that was associated with the historical Buddha and there are no records or stories of the Buddha himself ever visiting the site. The emperor AsOKA is credited with laying the foundation of the compound by erecting a stupa and a pillar on the site. Other stories mention a Vidisā woman whom Asoka married, called Vidisā Devī, who was a devout Buddhist; according to tradition, she was the one who initiated construction of a Buddhist monastery at the site. When Asoka ascended the throne at PĀtALIPUTRA, she did not accompany him to the capital, but remained behind in her hometown and later became a nun. SāNcī and the nearby city of Vidisā were located near the junction of two important trading routes, and the city's wealthy merchants munificently supported its monasteries and religious sites. Structures erected during the rule of the sungas and the sātavāhanas still stand today, and the area flourished after 400 CE during the reign of the Guptas. SāNcī subsequently fell into a lengthy decline and seems to have been completely deserted at least by the end of the thirteenth century. The site was rediscovered in 1818 by a certain British General Taylor, who excavated the western section of the stupa; his archeological work was continued by F. C. Maisay and Alexander Cunningham, who discovered relics (sARĪRA) believed to be those of the Buddha's two major disciples sĀRIPUTRA and MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA in the center of the dome of the main stupa. There was ongoing controversy within different divisions of the British colonial government over whether or not SāNcī artifacts should be shipped to British museums; finally, in 1861, the Archeological Survey of India was established and the area was preserved and protected. See also NĀSIK.
San piao: The three laws in reasoning and argumentation, namely, that "there must be a basis or foundation" which can be "found in a study of the experiences of the wisest men of the past," that "there must be a general survey" by "examining (its compatibility with) the facts of the actual experience of the people," and that "there must be practical application" by "putting it into law and governmental policies, and see whether or not it is conducive to the welfare of the state and of the people." (Mo Tzu, between 500 and 396 B.C.) -- W.T.C.
sāntaraksita. (T. Zhi ba 'tsho) (725-788). Eighth-century Indian Mahāyāna master who played an important role in the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet. According to traditional accounts, he was born into a royal family in Zahor in Bengal and was ordained at NĀLANDĀ monastery, where he became a renowned scholar. He is best known for two works. The first is the TATTVASAMGRAHA, or "Compendium of Principles," a critical survey and analysis of the various non-Buddhist and Buddhist schools of Indian philosophy, set forth in 3,646 verses in twenty-six chapters. This work, which is preserved in Sanskrit, along with its commentary by his disciple KAMALAsĪLA, remains an important source on the philosophical systems of India during this period. His other famous work is the MADHYAMAKĀLAMKĀRA, or "Ornament of the Middle Way," which sets forth his own philosophical position, identified by later Tibetan doxographers as YOGĀCĀRA-*SVĀTANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA, so called because it asserts, as in YOGĀCĀRA, that external objects do not exist, i.e., that sense objects are of the nature of consciousness; however, it also asserts, unlike Yogācāra and like MADHYAMAKA, that consciousness lacks ultimate existence. It further asserts that conventional truths (SAMVṚTISATYA) possess their own character (SVALAKsAnA) and in this regard differs from the other branch of Madhyamaka, the *PRĀSAnGIKA. The Yogacāra-Madhyamaka synthesis, of which sāntaraksita is the major proponent, was the most important philosophical development of late Indian Buddhism, and the MadhyamakālaMkāra is its locus classicus. This work, together with the MADHYAMAKĀLOKA of sāntaraksita's disciple Kamalasīla and the SATYADVAYAVIBHAnGA of JNĀNAGARBHA, are known in Tibet as the "three works of the eastern *Svātantrikas" (rang rgyud shar gsum) because the three authors were from Bengal. sāntaraksita's renown as a scholar was such that he was invited to Tibet by King KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN. When a series of natural disasters indicated that the local deities were not positively disposed to the introduction of Buddhism, he left Tibet for Nepal and advised the king to invite the Indian tantric master PADMASAMBHAVA, who subdued the local deities. With this accomplished, sāntaraksita returned, the first Buddhist monastery of BSAM YAS was founded, and sāntaraksita invited twelve MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA monks to Tibet to ordain the first seven Tibetan monks. sāntaraksita lived and taught at Bsam yas from its founding (c. 775) until his death (c. 788) in an equestrian accident. Tibetans refer to him as the "bodhisattva abbot." The founding of Bsam yas and the ordination of the first monks were pivotal moments in Tibetan Buddhist history, and the relationship of sāntaraksita, Padmasambhava, and Khri srong lde btsan figures in many Tibetan legends, most famously as brothers in a previous life. Prior to his death, sāntaraksita predicted that a doctrinal dispute would arise in Tibet, in which case his disciple Kamalasīla should be invited from India. Such a conflict arose between the Indian and Chinese factions, and Kamalasīla came to Tibet to debate with the Chan monk Moheyan in what is referred to as the BSAM YAS DEBATE, or the "Council of Lhasa."
scan ::: 1. To examine (especially look at with the eyes) the particulars or points of minutely; scrutinize. 2. To peer out at or observe repeatedly or sweepingly, as a large expanse; survey. scans, scanned, scanning.
sight ::: v. t. --> The act of seeing; perception of objects by the eye; view; as, to gain sight of land.
The power of seeing; the faculty of vision, or of perceiving objects by the instrumentality of the eyes.
The state of admitting unobstructed vision; visibility; open view; region which the eye at one time surveys; space through which the power of vision extends; as, an object within sight.
A spectacle; a view; a show; something worth seeing.
Sokkuram. (石窟庵). In Korean, "Stone Grotto Hermitage"; a Silla-period, man-made grotto located high on Mt. T'oham behind the monastery of PULGUKSA, which houses what is widely considered to be the most impressive buddha image in Korea. According to the SAMGUK YUSA ("Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms," written c. 1282-1289), the master builder Kim Taesong (d. 774), who also designed Pulguksa, constructed the cave as an expression of filial piety toward his deceased parents. However, because the grotto directly faces the underwater tomb of the Silla king Munmu (r. 661-680) in the East Sea/Sea of Japan, the site may be also have been associated with a funerary cult surrounding the Silla royal family or with state-protection Buddhism (K. hoguk Pulgyo; C. HUGUO FOJIAO). The construction of both monasteries began around 751 CE, during the reign of the Silla king Kyongdok (r. 742-764), and the grotto temple was completed a few years after Kim Taesong's death in 774 CE. The site was originally named SoKPULSA, or "Stone Buddha Monastery." Since the Korean peninsula has no natural stone grottos like those found in India or Central Asia, the cave was excavated out of the mountainside, and some 360 large granite blocks in various shapes were used to create the ceiling of the shrine. In addition, granite carvings were attached to the inner walls. The result was what appears for all intents and purposes to be a natural cave temple. The finished grotto combines two different styles of Buddhist architecture, the domed rotunda design of the CAITYA halls of India and the cave-temple design of Central Asia and China as seen in DUNHUANG and others sites along the SILK ROAD. At the Sokkuram grotto, a rectangular antechamber with two guardians carved on either side leads into a short, narrow passageway that opens onto the thirty-foot-(nine m.) high domed rotunda. In the vestibule itself are carvings of the four heavenly kings as guardians of the dharma. The center of the rotunda chamber enshrines the Sokkuram stone buddha, a seated-buddha image in the "earth-touching gesture" (BHuMISPARsAMUDRĀ). This image is 10 ft. 8 in. (3.26 meters) in height and carved from a single block of granite; it sits atop a lotus-throne base that is 5 ft. 2 in. (1.58 meters) high. The image is generally accepted to be that of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, although some scholars instead identify it as an image of VAIROCANA or even AMITĀBHA. In the original layout of the grotto, the morning sunshine would have cascaded through the cave's entrance and struck the jeweled uRnĀKEsA in the Buddha's forehead. On the inner walls surrounding the statue are thirty-nine carvings of Buddhist figures, including the Indian divinities BRAHMĀ and INDRA, the two flanking bodhisattvas SAMANTABHADRA and MANJUsRĪ, and the buddha's ten principal ARHAT-disciples. On the wall directly behind the main image is a carving of the eleven-headed AVALOKITEsVARA. The combination of exquisite architectural beauty and sophisticated design is widely considered to be the pinnacle of Silla Buddhist culture. Despite its fame and reputation during the Silla kingdom, Sokkuram fell into disrepair during the suppression of Buddhism that occurred during the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). Almost everyone except locals had forgotten the grotto until one rainy day in 1909, when a weary postman traveling over the ridge of Mt. T'oham accidentally rediscovered the grotto as he sought shelter from a sudden thunderstorm. He found a narrow opening to a small cave, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he was startled to see the massive stone image of the Buddha along with exquisite stone wall carvings. In 1913, the Japanese colonial government spent two years dismantling and repairing the structure, using cement and iron, which later collected moisture and began to decay, threatening the superstructure of the grotto. In 1920, the earth was removed in order to secure the foundation and tar and asphalt were used to waterproof the roof. No further renovations were made until a UNESCO survey team came to evaluate the cave temple and decided to aid the Korean government in further restoring the site between 1961 and 1964. Nowadays, visitors enter the grotto from the side, rather than its original front entrance, and must view the buddha image from behind a protective glass window. Sokkuram is Korean National Treasure No. 24 and was also added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1995.
Specific research – Refers to a method used when gathering primary information for a market survey where targeted customers / consumers are asked very specific and in-depth questions geared toward resolving problems found through prior exploratory research.
SPSS, Inc. ::: (company) A company selling a variety of software under the general description of Statistical Product and Service Solutions.The company was founded to distribute and support the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, but now supplies software or four broad markets: data mining, survey/market research, quality improvement, and scientific research. . (1999-07-20)
SPSS, Inc. "company" A company selling a variety of {software} under the general description of "Statistical Product and Service Solutions". The company was founded to distribute and support the {Statistical Package for the Social Sciences}, but now supplies software or four broad markets: {data mining}, survey/market research, quality improvement, and scientific research. {(http://spss.com/)}. (1999-07-20)
staff ::: n. --> A long piece of wood; a stick; the long handle of an instrument or weapon; a pole or srick, used for many purposes; as, a surveyor&
Stein, Sir Marc Aurel. (1862-1943). Hungarian-born archaeologist who led four British expeditions through Central Asia to document and collect artifacts from the lost cultures of the ancient SILK ROAD. After receiving his doctorate in Sanskrit and Oriental religions under Rudolf von Roth at the University of Tübingen, Stein moved to England where he made use of the resources at the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian Library, the India Office Library, and the British Museum to further his study of Sanskrit. During his service in the Hungarian military, Stein learned both surveying and map-making, skills that would aid him in his career. Stein's greatest discovery was made at the DUNHUANG caves in northwest China. There, he came across a hidden library cave (Cave 17) containing over forty thousand scrolls, many of which he sent back to England for study. The Stein collection at the British Library contains over thirty thousand manuscripts and printed documents in languages as varied as Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Mongolian, Tangut, Khotanese, Kuchean, Sogdian, and Uighur. The art objects Stein collected are now divided between the British Museum, the British Library, the Srinigar Museum, and the Indian National Museum at New Delhi. In addition, thousands of photographs taken by Stein dating from the 1890s to 1938 have been preserved, as well as several volumes published by Stein detailing his explorations. These items are critical to the study of the history of Central Asia generally and the spread of Buddhist art and literature. Stein died and was buried in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Survey ::: A research technique in which subjects respond to a series of questions.
svetaketu. (P. Setaketu; T. Dam pa tog dkar po; C. Baijing/Baiying; J. Byakujo/Byakuei; K. Paekchong/Paegyong 白淨/白英). Proper name of sĀKYAMUNI when he was a divinity in the TUsITA heaven, during his lifetime immediately preceding his attainment of buddhahood. He was a BODHISATTVA of the tenth BHuMI, appointed as regent of tusita by the preceding buddha KĀsYAPA. As svetaketu, he surveyed JAMBUDVĪPA to determine the proper time, place, caste, and family of his final lifetime. Upon his descent into the womb of Queen MĀYĀ, he appointed MAITREYA as regent. Depictions of svetaketu in heaven, alongside INDRA and BRAHMĀ, appear at a number of ancient Indian Buddhist sites, including NĀGĀRJUNAKOndĀ and AMARĀVATĪ.
Tāranātha. (1575-1634). The appellation of Kun dga' snying po (Kunga Nyingpo), a Tibetan scholar affiliated with the JO NANG tradition. Tāranātha was an author of exceptional scope, writing on a vast range of philosophical and doctrinal topics. Born in Drong, he was a precocious child, famously declaring himself to be an incarnate lama (SPRUL SKU) at the age of one, an identification that was eventually confirmed. He was installed at Chos lung rtse monastery at the age of four. By age fifteen, he had studied many tantric cycles, becoming adept at both the six yogas of NĀROPA (NA RO CHOS DRUG) and MAHĀMUDRĀ. He also developed an interest in Indian languages; several of his translations of Sanskrit works are included in the Tibetan canon. Tāranātha had a strong interest in India throughout his life, not simply its ancient past but also its contemporary present, chronicling events of the Mughal period. He even declared that he and the Mughal emperor Jahangir were emanations of the same person. He also had a strong interest in the SIDDHA tradition and studied with many Buddhist and non-Buddhist YOGINs. At the age of sixteen, Tāranātha met his most influential Indian teacher, Buddhaguptanātha, who had traveled throughout the Buddhist world and studied directly with some of the last remaining members of the siddha tradition. Tāranātha surveyed the Indian siddha lineages in his BKA' BABS BDUN LDAN GYI RNAM THAR ("Biographies of the Seven Instruction Lineages"). His most famous work, informally called the RGYA GAR CHOS 'BYUNG ("History of Indian Buddhism"), is highly regarded by later Tibetan historians. Tāranātha was a great master of the KĀLACAKRATANTRA and its surrounding topics, writing extensively about them. He restored the STuPA built by the Jo nang founder DOL PO PA SHES RAB RGYAL MTSHAN. Tāranātha saw Dol po pa in many visions and strongly promoted his teachings, writing in support of the GZHAN STONG view. In 1615, with the patronage of the rulers of Gtsang, he began work on JO NANG PHUN TSHOGS GLING, northwest of Gzhis ka rtse (Shigatse) in central Tibet. It was completed in 1628. Renowned for its beautiful design and sumptuous artwork, the monastery would be his primary residence in the last years of his life. After his death, the fifth DALAI LAMA suppressed the Jo nang sect, converting the monastery into a DGE LUGS establishment. He also identified Tāranātha's incarnation in Mongolia as the first RJE BTSUN DAM PA, a line of incarnations who would serve as titular head of the Dge lugs sect in Mongolia until the twentieth century. The reasons for this identification are debated. The Dalai Lama claimed in one of his autobiographies that his mother had been the tantric consort of Tāranātha and that Tāranātha was his biological father. It was also the case that Tāranātha had been supported by the rulers of Gtsang, the opponents that the Dalai Lama's faction had defeated in the civil war that resulted in the Dalai Lama gaining political control over Tibet.
Tārā. (T. Sgrol ma; C. Duoluo; J. Tara; K. Tara 多羅). In Sanskrit, lit. "Savioress"; a female bodhisattva who has the miraculous power to be able to deliver her devotees from all forms of physical danger. Tārā is said to have arisen from either a ray of blue light from the eye of the buddha AMITĀBHA, or from a tear from the eye of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA as he surveyed the suffering universe. The tear fell into a valley and formed a lake, out of which grew the lotus from which Tārā appeared. She is thus said to be the physical manifestation of the compassion of Avalokitesvara, who is himself the quintessence of the compassion of the buddhas. Because buddhas are produced from wisdom and compassion, Tārā, like the goddess PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ ("Perfection of Wisdom"), is hailed as "the mother of all buddhas," despite the fact that she is most commonly represented as a beautiful sixteen-year-old maiden. She is often depicted together with BHṚKUTĪ (one of her forms) as one of two female bodhisattvas flanking Avalokitesvara. Tārā is the subject of much devotion in her own right, serving as the subject of many stories, prayers, and tantric SĀDHANAs. She can appear in peaceful or wrathful forms, depending on the circumstances, her powers extending beyond the subjugation of these worldly frights, into the heavens and into the hells. She has two major peaceful forms, however. The first is SITATĀRĀ, or White Tārā. Her right hand is in VARADAMUDRĀ, her left is at her chest in VITARKAMUDRĀ and holds a lotus and she sits in DHYĀNĀSANA. The other is sYĀMATĀRĀ, or Green Tārā. Her right hand is in varadamudrā, her left is at her chest in vitarkamudrā and holds an utpala, and she sits in LALITĀSANA. Her wrathful forms include KURUKULLĀ, a dancing naked YOGINĪ, red in color, who brandishes a bow and arrow in her four arms. In tantric MAndALAs, she appears as the consort of AMOGHASIDDHI, the buddha of the northern quarter; together they are lord and lady of the KARMAKULA. But she is herself also the sole deity in many tantric SĀDHANAs, in which the meditator, whether male or female, visualizes himself or herself in Tārā's feminine form. Tārā is best-known for her salvific powers, appearing the instant her devotee recites her MANTRA, oM tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. She is especially renowned as Astabhayatrānatārā, "Tārā Who Protects from the Eight Fears," because of her ability to deliver those who call upon her when facing the eight great fears (mahābhaya) of lions, elephants, fire, snakes, thieves, water, imprisonment, and demons. Many tales are told recounting her miraculous interventions. Apart from the recitation of her mantra, a particular prayer is the most common medium of invoking Tārā in Tibet. It is a prayer to twenty-one Tārās, derived from an Indian TANTRA devoted to Tārā, the Sarvatathāgatamātṛtārāvisvakarmabhavatantra ("Source of All Rites to Tārā, the Mother of All the Tathāgatas"). According to some commentarial traditions on the prayer, each of the verses refers to a different form of Tārā, totaling twenty-one. According to others, the forms of Tārā are iconographically almost indistinguishable. Tārā entered the Buddhist pantheon relatively late, around the sixth century, in northern India and Nepal, and her worship in Java is attested in inscriptions dating to the end of the eighth century. Like Avalokitesvara, she has played a crucial role in Tibet's history, in both divine and human forms. One version of the creation myth that has the Tibetan race originating from a dalliance between a monkey and an ogress says the monkey was a form of Avalokitesvara and the ogress a form of Tārā. Worship of Tārā in Tibet began in earnest with the second propagation and the arrival of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA in the eleventh century; she appears repeatedly in accounts of his life and in his teachings. He had visions of the goddess at crucial points in his life, and she advised him to make his fateful journey to Tibet, despite the fact that his life span would be shortened as a result. His sādhanas for the propitiation of Sitatārā and syāmatārā played a key role in promoting the worship of Tārā in Tibet. He further was responsible for the translation of several important Indic texts relating to the goddess, including three by Vāgīsvarakīrti that make up the 'chi blu, or "cheating death" cycle, the foundation of all lineages of the worship of Sitatārā in Tibet. The famous Tārā chapel at Atisa's temple at SNYE THANG contains nearly identical statues of the twenty-one Tārās. The translator Darmadra brought to Tibet the important ANUYOGA tantra devoted to the worship of Tārā, entitled Bcom ldan 'das ma sgrol ma yang dag par rdzogs pa'i sangs rgyas bstod pa gsungs pa. Tārā is said to have taken human form earlier in Tibetan history as the Chinese princess WENCHENG and Nepalese princess Bhṛkutī, who married King SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO, bringing with them buddha images that would become the most revered in Tibet. Which Tārā they were remains unsettled; however, some sources identify Wencheng with syāmatārā and Bhṛkutī with the goddess of the same name, herself said to be a form of Tārā. Others argue that the Nepalese princess was Sitatārā, and Wencheng was syāmatārā. These identifications, however, like that of Srong btsan sgam po with Avalokitesvara, date only to the fourteenth century, when the cult of Tārā in Tibet was flourishing. In the next generation, Tārā appeared as the wife of King KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN and the consort of PADMASAMBHAVA, YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, who in addition to becoming a great tantric master herself, served as scribe when Padmasambhava dictated the treasure texts (GTER MA). Later, Tārā is said to have appeared as the great practitioner of the GCOD tradition, MA GCIG LAP SGRON (1055-1149). Indeed, when Tārā first vowed eons ago to achieve buddhahood in order to free all beings from SAMSĀRA, she swore she would always appear in female form.
TattvasaMgraha. (T. De kho na nyid bsdus pa). In Sanskrit, the "Compendium of Principles"; one of the major works of the eighth-century Indian master sĀNTARAKsITA. It is a massive work in 3,646 verses, in twenty-six chapters. The verses themselves are called the TattvasaMgrahakārikā; there is also an extensive prose commentary by sāntaraksita's student, KAMALAsĪLA, entitled the TattvasaMgrahapaNjikā. The TattvasaMgraha is a polemical text, surveying the philosophical positions of a wide variety of non-Buddhist (and some Buddhist) schools on a number of topics or principles (TATTVA) and demonstrating their faults. These topics include matter (prakṛti), the person (PURUsA), God (īsvara), the self (ĀTMAN), and valid knowledge (PRAMĀnA), among many others. Among the schools whose positions are presented and critiqued are SāMkhya, Nyāya, Vaisesika, Mīmāmsā, Advaita Vedānta, JAINA, and VĀTSĪPUTRĪYA. The work is of great value to scholars for its presentation (albeit polemical) of the tenets of these schools as they existed in eighth-century India. The commentary often provides the names and positions of specific philosophers of these schools. ¶ The term is also the abbreviated title of the SarvatathāgatatattvasaMgraha; see SARVATATHĀGATATATTVASAMGRAHA.
Terminal Oriented Social Science "project" (TOSS) The Cambridge Project {Project MAC} was an ARPA-funded political science computing project. They worked on topics like survey analysis and simulation, led by Ithiel de Sola Pool, J.C.R. Licklider and Douwe B. Yntema. Yntema had done a system on the {MIT} Lincoln Labs {TX-2} called the {Lincoln Reckoner}, and in the summer of 1969 led a Cambridge Project team in the construction of an experiment called TOSS. TOSS was like {Logo}, with {matrix} operators. A major feature was multiple levels of {undo}, back to the level of the {login} session. This feature was cheap on the Lincoln Reckoner, but absurdly expensive on {Multics}. (1997-01-29)
Terminal Oriented Social Science ::: (project) (TOSS) The Cambridge Project Project MAC was an ARPA-funded political science computing project. They worked on topics like survey analysis login session. This feature was cheap on the Lincoln Reckoner, but absurdly expensive on Multics. (1997-01-29)
theodolite ::: n. --> An instrument used, especially in trigonometrical surveying, for the accurate measurement of horizontal angles, and also usually of vertical angles. It is variously constructed.
“The Sun was always called by the Egyptians ‘the eye of Osiris,’ and was himself the Logos, the first-begotten, or light made manifest to the world, ‘which is the Mind and divine intellect of the Concealed’ ” (SD 2:25). This symbol connects Horus with the characteristic nature and functions of the manifest Logos which spiritually surveys all, guides all, and watches over all; and as the Logos contains in itself all that is, both of spirit and matter when they are manifested, the reason is seen for the more detailed ascription to sun or moon of this or that function or activity of the Logos.
This carefully calibrated survey is attributed to the Hebrew sage, Rab Chanina (Kahana), of the
township ::: n. --> The district or territory of a town.
In surveys of the public land of the United States, a division of territory six miles square, containing 36 sections.
In Canada, one of the subdivisions of a county.
triangulate ::: v. t. --> To divide into triangles; specifically, to survey by means of a series of triangles properly laid down and measured.
To make triangular, or three-cornered.
triangulation ::: n. --> The series or network of triangles into which the face of a country, or any portion of it, is divided in a trigonometrical survey; the operation of measuring the elements necessary to determine the triangles into which the country to be surveyed is supposed to be divided, and thus to fix the positions and distances of the several points connected by them.
tricīvara. (P. ticīvara; T. chos gos gsum; C. sanyi; J. san'e/sanne; K. samŭi 三衣). In Sanskrit, the "three robes" or "triple robe" worn by a monk or nun: the larger outer robe (S. SAMGHĀtĪ; P. sanghātī), the upper robe (S. UTTARĀSAMGA; P. uttarāsanga), and a lower robe or waist cloth (S. ANTARVĀSAS; P. antaravāsaka). According to the VINAYA account, the Buddha was concerned that too many monks had begun to hoard robes, which might cause them to "revert to luxury"; and after sitting through the cold one evening, he decided that the triple robe was sufficient to stay warm. The antarvāsas is the smallest of the three robes: normally made of one layer of cloth, it is worn around the waist and is intended to cover the body from the navel to the middle of the calf. The uttarāsaMga is large enough to cover the body from the neck to the middle of the calf; it is also normally made of one layer of cloth. The saMghātī or outer robe is the same size as the uttarāsaMga but is normally made of two layers of cloth rather than one; it is worn over one or both shoulders, depending on whether one is inside or outside the monastery grounds. The saMghātī was required to be tailored of patches, ranging in number from nine up to twenty-five, depending on the VINAYA recension; this use of patches of cloth is said to have been modeled after plots of farmland in MAGADHA that the Buddha once surveyed. All three robes must be dyed a sullied color, interpreted as anything from a reddish- or brownish-yellow saffron color to an ochre tone. For this reason, robes as also known as the KĀsĀYA, or "dyed" (lit. "turbid-colored") robes, which were traditionally required to be sewn from pieces of soiled cloth and "dyed." Robes were one of the four major requisites (S. NIsRAYA; P. NISSAYA) allowed to monks and nuns, along with such basics as a begging bowl (PĀTRA) and lodging, and were the object of the KAtHINA ceremony, in which the monastics were offered cloth for making new sets of robes at the end of each rains retreat (S. VARsĀ; P. vassa).
U. Cassina, L'oeuvre philosophique de G. Peano, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 40 (1933), pp. 481-491. Peirce, Charles Sanders: American Philosopher. Born in Cambridge, Mass, on September 10th, 1839. Harvard M.A. in 1862 and Sc. B. in 1863. Except for a brief cireer as lectuier in philosophy at Harvard, 1864-65 and 1869-70 and in logic at Johns Hopkins, 1879-84, he did no formal teaching. Longest tenure was with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for thirty years beginning in 1861. Died at Milford, Pa. in 1914 He had completed only one work, The Grand Logic, published posthumously (Coll. Papers). Edited Studies in Logic (1883). No volumes published during his lifetime but author of many lectures, essays and reviews in periodicals, particularly in the Popular Science Monthly, 1877-78, and in The Monist, 1891-93, some of which have been reprinted in Chance, Love and Logic (1923), edited by Morris R. Cohen, and. together with the best of his other work both published and unpublished, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931-35), edited by Charles Hartshorne ¦ind Paul Weiss. He was most influenced by Kant, who had he thought, raised all the relevant philosophical problems but from whom he differed on almost every solution. He was excited by Darwin, whose doctrine of evolution coincided with his own thought, and disciplined by laboratory experience in the physical sciences which inspired his search for rigor and demonstration throughout his work. Felt himself deeply opposed to Descartes, whom he accused of being responsible for the modern form of the nominalistic error. Favorably inclined toward Duns Scotus, from whom he derived his realism. Philosophy is a sub-class of the science of discovery, in turn a branch of theoretical science. The function of philosophy is to expliin and hence show unity in the variety of the universe. All philosophy takes its start in logic, or the relations of signs to their objects, and phenomenology, or the brute experience of the objective actual world. The conclusions from these two studies meet in the three basic metaphysical categories: quality, reaction, and representation. Quality is firstness or spontaneity; reaction is secondness or actuality; and representation is thirdness or possibility. Realism (q.v.) is explicit in the distinction of the modes of being actuality as the field of reactions, possibility as the field of quality (or values) and representation (or relations). He was much concerned to establish the realism of scientific method: that the postulates, implications and conclusions of science are the results of inquiry yet presupposed by it. He was responsible for pragmatism as a method of philosophy that the sum of the practical consequences which result by necessity from the truth of an intellectual conception constitutes the entire meaning of that conception. Author of the ethical principle that the limited duration of all finite things logically demands the identification of one's interests with those of an unlimited community of persons and things. In his cosmology the flux of actuality left to itself develops those systematic characteristics which are usually associated with the realm of possibility. There is a logical continuity to chance events which through indefinite repetition beget order, as illustrated in the tendency of all things to acquire habits. The desire of all things to come together in this certain order renders love a kind of evolutionary force. Exerted a strong influence both on the American pragmatist, William James (1842-1910), the instrumentalist, John Dewey (1859-), as well as on the idealist, Jociah Royce (1855-1916), and many others. -- J.K.F.
Unemployment - Those members of the labour force who are willing and able to work cannot find a job. ILO Unemployment or Labour Force Survey method - Records those memebrs of the labour force out of work and has been looking for a job in the past four weeks and is available to take up work in the next two weeks. The measue is claculated by an interview survey of approximately 60,000 households.
unlocated ::: a. --> Not located or placed; not fixed in a place.
Not surveyed, or designated by marks, limits, or boundaries, as appropriated to some individual, company, or corporation; as, unlocated lands.
Vannevar Bush "person" Dr. Vannevar Bush, 1890-1974. The man who invented {hypertext}, which he called {memex}, in the 1930s. Bush did his undergraduate work at Tufts College, where he later taught. His masters thesis (1913) included the invention of the Profile Tracer, used in surveying work to measure distances over uneven ground. In 1919, he joined {MIT}'s Department of Electrical Engineering, where he stayed for twenty-five years. In 1932, he was appointed vice-president and dean. At this time, Bush worked on optical and photocomposition devices, as well as a machine for rapid selection from banks of microfilm. Further positions followed: president of the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC (1939); chair of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1939); director of Office of Scientific Research and Development. This last role was as presidential science advisor, which made him personally responsible for the 6,000 scientists involved in the war effort. During World War II, Bush worked on radar antenna profiles and the calculation of artillery firing tables. He proposed the development of an {analogue computer}, which later became the {Rockefeller Differential Analyser}. Bush is the pivotal figure in hypertext research. His ground-breaking 1945 paper, "As We May Think," speculated on how a machine might be created to assist human reasoning, and introduced the idea of an easily accessible, individually configurable storehouse of knowledge. This machine, which he dubbed "memex," in various ways anticipated {hypermedia} and the {World Wide Web} by nearly half a century. {Electronic Labyrinth article (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0034.html)}. {Bush's famous article, "As We May Think" (http://theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm)}. (2001-06-17)
Vienna Definition Language (VDL) IBM Vienna Labs. A language for formal, algebraic definition via operational semantics. Used to specify the semantics of PL/I. See also {VDM}. ["The Vienna Definition Language", P. Wegner, ACM Comp Surveys 4(1):5-63 (Mar 1972)].
Vienna Definition Language ::: (VDL) IBM Vienna Labs. A language for formal, algebraic definition via operational semantics. Used to specify the semantics of PL/I. See also VDM.[The Vienna Definition Language, P. Wegner, ACM Comp Surveys 4(1):5-63 (Mar 1972)].
view ::: n. --> The act of seeing or beholding; sight; look; survey; examination by the eye; inspection.
Mental survey; intellectual perception or examination; as, a just view of the arguments or facts in a case.
Power of seeing, either physically or mentally; reach or range of sight; extent of prospect.
That which is seen or beheld; sight presented to the natural or intellectual eye; scene; prospect; as, the view from a window.
window shopping ::: (jargon) A term used among users of WIMP environments like the X Window System or the Macintosh at the US Geological Survey for extended experimentation and different icons and background patterns for all to see. Also: window dressing, the act of applying new fonts, colours, etc.See fritterware, compare macdink.[Jargon File] (1996-07-08)
window shopping "jargon" A term used among users of {WIMP} environments like the {X Window System} or the {Macintosh} at the US Geological Survey for extended experimentation with new window colours, {fonts}, and {icon} shapes. This activity can take up hours of what might otherwise have been productive working time. "I spent the afternoon window shopping until I found the coolest shade of green for my active window borders --- now they perfectly match my medium slate blue background." Serious window shoppers will spend their days with bitmap editors, creating new and different icons and background patterns for all to see. Also: "window dressing", the act of applying new fonts, colours, etc. See {fritterware}, compare {macdink}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-07-08)
W. T. Parry, Modalities in the Survey system of strict implication, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 4 (1939). pp 137-154. Structuralism: (Lat. structura, a building) The conception of mind in terms of its structure whether this structure be interpreted (a) atomistically. See Psychological Atomism, Structural Psychology); or (b) configurationally. (Gestalt Psychology). -- L.W.
Ximingsi. (西明寺). In Chinese, "Luminosity of the West Monastery," located in the Tang capital of Chang'an (presentday Xi'an). There are two founding narratives. The first credits the Gaozong emperor (r. 649-683) with establishing the monastery at his old residence in 658 and installing DAOXUAN (596-667), founder of the Nanshan VINAYA school (NANSHAN LÜ ZONG), as its abbot. It is there that Daoxuan is said to have compiled the DA TANG NEIDIAN ("Great Tang Catalogue of Inner [viz., Buddhist] Classics") as an inventory of scriptures for the newly established library at the monastery. Daoxuan also assisted XUANZANG (600/602-664) in translating preceptive texts, collaborated with his brother Daoshi (d. c. 683) in publishing VINAYA texts, and wrote his collection of essays in defense of Buddhism entitled the GUANG HONGMING JI. A second narrative instead credits Xuanzang with founding the monastery. According to this story, the grounds were originally the residence of an imperial prince, and at first it was proposed to build both a Buddhist and a Daoist monastery there. After Xuanzang surveyed the site, he pronounced the site too small for two establishments, and thus only a Buddhist monastery was built. When Xuanzang settled there, the Gaozong emperor (r. 649-683) is said to have donated land, silk, and cotton to sustain it. ¶ Regardless of which account is correct, Ximingsi quickly became a major center of Buddhist scholarship and housed the most comprehensive library of Buddhist texts in the country. The monastery is said to have been built to match the dimensions of JETAVANA in India and, at one point, housed sixty-four cloisters. Because of its location in the Tang capital, several eminent monks resided and worked there. For example, the Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 713-756) is said to have invited sUBHAKARASIMHA to stay at Ximingsi, where YIXING (683-727) assisted him in his translation work. YIJING (635-713) also translated there the Sanskrit manuscripts he brought back with him from his pilgrimage to India. The Korean monk WoNCH'ŬK (613-695) worked with Xuanzang at Ximingsi (to the point that his lineage of scholastic interpretation is sometimes called the Ximing lineage, see XIMING XUEPAI), and the Japanese monk KuKAI (774-835) is also known to have studied at the monastery.
Yujomsa. (楡岾寺). In Korean, "Elm Hillock Monastery"; one of the four major monasteries located in the Diamond Mountains (KŬMGANGSAN) in present-day North Korea, and best known traditionally for its fifty-three buddha images. Yujomsa claims to be one of the oldest monasteries on the Korean peninsula. According to its historical record, Kŭmgangsan Yujomsa sajokki, written in 1297 by the Koryo official and diplomat Min Chi (1248-1326), icons of fifty-three buddhas drifted to the Silla seashore in the year 4 CE through the intercession of an Indo-Scythian [alt. Yuezhi, Rouzhi] king from the northwestern region of India. These images were originally cast by MANJUsRĪ in the Indian city of sRĀVASTĪ and enshrined inside a large bell. After landing in Korea, the bell containing these fifty-three icons magically traveled inland and was eventually discovered in a branch of an elm tree by a Korean local official. To house these icons, the Silla king Namhae Ch'ach'aung (r. 4-24 CE) ordered the construction of this monastery, which he named after the elm tree in which the bell was discovered. Despite this legend of the monastery's origins, however, the main construction work at Yujomsa could not have begun before 1168. In the thirteenth century, during the late Koryo period, the monastery enjoyed the patronage of the Mongol-Korean court, which raised its political status and importance. The fifty-three buddhas of Yujomsa remained a popular destination for both literati tourists and Buddhist pilgrims to the Diamond Mountains throughout the Choson dynasty. When the site was surveyed in 1912 by the Japanese scholar Sekino Tadashi (1867-1935), only fifty small gilt bronze icons were displayed in the Nŭngin pojon on a unique screen altar that was ornamented with meandering tree branches. In contrast to Min Chi's description of the iconography, various other images, including bodhisattvas and monastic figures, were included along with the buddha icons. Stylistically, forty-three individual figures could be dated to the Unified Silla period, and the remaining seven were determined to be post-Koryo products. This incongruent mixture of styles is due to continuous devastations of the images by fire and theft and their subsequent restorations. Yujomsa burned to the ground during the Korean War (1950-1953) and the current whereabouts of the fifty-three icons are unknown.
Zongjing lu. (J. Sugyoroku; K. Chonggyong nok 宗鏡録). In Chinese, "Records of the Mirror of the Source"; composed c. 961 by the Song-dynasty CHAN master YONGMING YANSHOU (904-975), in one hundred rolls; also called "Records of the Mirror of the Mind" (Xinjing lu). The "source" (zong), Yanshou says in the preface to the Zongjing lu, refers to the "one mind" (YIXIN), which functions like a mirror that is able to reflect all dharmas. This comprehensive collection offers an exhaustive elaboration of the Chan teaching of "one mind" by systematizing the doctrinal and meditative positions of the various Chan traditions of past and present. The Zongjing lu consists of three main sections: exemplifications of the source (biaozong zhang), questions and answers (wenda chang), and citations (yinzheng chang). The first section, which comprises much of the first roll, offers a general overview of the treatise, focusing on Chan's "source" in the one mind. The massive second section, corresponding to the second half of the first roll through the ninety-third roll, offers various explanations on the one mind through a question raised at the beginning of each section, followed by Yanshou's detailed response. His explanations are typically accompanied by extensive citations from various sutras and commentaries, such as the YUANJUE JING and the DAZHIDU LUN. Throughout this exhaustive survey and explanation of doctrinal matters, Yanshou underscores the importance of the one mind or one dharma as the underlying source of all external phenomena. The third and final section, which comprises the last seven rolls of the collection, validates the previous explanations through quotations of hundreds of scriptures and sayings of eminent Chan masters; its aim is to help those of inferior spiritual capacity give rise to faith. Many of these quotations are from materials that are no longer extant, thus providing an important overview of Chan during Yanshou's time. Yanshou's goal throughout this work is to present his distinctive vision of Chan as a pansectarian tradition that subsumes not only the different Chan lineages, but also such doctrinal traditions as TIANTAI, HUAYAN, and FAXIANG. Much of the source material that Yanshou compiled in the Zongjing lu may derive from GUIFENG ZONGMI's similarly massive Chanyuan ji ("Chan Collection"), only the prolegomenon to which survives (see CHANYUAN ZHUQUANJI DUXU). The collection was influential not only in China, but also in Koryo-period Korean SoN and the five mountain (GOZAN) schools of Ashikaga-period Japanese ZEN.
KEYS (10k)
1 Ken Wilber
1 Gregory the Great
1 Cyril of Jerusalem
1 Sri Aurobindo
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
28 Anonymous
11 Samuel Johnson
8 Jay Leno
7 Charles Dickens
6 J K Rowling
5 William Shakespeare
5 Tony Blair
5 Seth Stephens Davidowitz
5 John Berger
5 Henry David Thoreau
5 David Letterman
5 Alexander Pope
4 Lisa Kleypas
4 Ilona Andrews
4 Evan Osnos
4 Edith Wharton
4 Barry Schwartz
3 T Colin Campbell
3 Rush Limbaugh
3 Michelle Alexander
1:Likewise whoever is appointed watchman to a people should live a life on the heights so that he can help them by taking a wide survey. ~ Gregory the Great, #KEYS
2:Actually, when we survey other people and are horrified by all the evils we "see" in them, we are but gazing unerringly into the mirror of our own souls. ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
3:For God appears the greater to every man in proportion as he has grasped a larger survey of the creatures: and when his heart is lifted up by that larger survey, he gains withal a greater conception of God. ~ Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures IX.2, #KEYS
4:One thing is needful. -- To "give style" to one's character-- a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here a large mass of second nature has been added; there a piece of original nature has been removed -- both times through long practice and daily work at it. Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has been reinterpreted and made sublime. Much that is vague and resisted shaping has been saved and exploited for distant views; it is meant to beckon toward the far and immeasurable. In the end, when the work is finished, it becomes evident how the constraint of a single taste governed and formed everything large and small. Whether this taste was good or bad is less important than one might suppose, if only it was a single taste!
It will be the strong and domineering natures that enjoy their finest gaiety in such constraint and perfection under a law of their own; the passion of their tremendous will relaxes in the face of all stylized nature, of all conquered and serving nature. Even when they have to build palaces and design gardens they demur at giving nature freedom.
Conversely, it is the weak characters without power over themselves that hate the constraint of style. They feel that if this bitter and evil constraint were imposed upon them they would be demeaned; they become slaves as soon as they serve; they hate to serve. Such spirits -- and they may be of the first rank -- are always out to shape and interpret their environment as free nature: wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and surprising. And they are well advised because it is only in this way that they can give pleasure to themselves. For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, mod trans. Walter Kaufmann,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:God gave man an upright countenance to survey the heavens, and to look upward to the stars. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 2:A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 3:The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 4:They took a survey: Why do men get up in the middle of the night? Ten percent get up to go to the bathroom and 90 percent get up to go home. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 5:When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe a thousand objects offer themselves which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 6:Any survey of the free world's defense structure cannot fail to impart a feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted to armaments. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 7:All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. ~ margaret-fuller, @wisdomtrove 8:I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 9:He with a graceful pride, While his rider every hand survey'd, Sprung loose, and flew into an escapade; Not moving forward, yet with every bound Pressing, and seeming still to quit his ground. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 10:It's not possible to present an accurate picture of our culture without all the voices of the people in the culture. So at the emerging level, you can't have a good survey art show without women and artists of color. ~ frida-kahlo, @wisdomtrove 11:Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 12:A recent survey stated that the average person's greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you're telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy. ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 13:Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star. … From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist. … [K]nowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 14:Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star. ... From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist. ... [K]nowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove 15:To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 16:Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 17:When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 18:Well for everyone to make a study of astrology for, as indicated, while many individuals have set about to prove the astrological aspects and astrological survey enable one to determine future as well as the past conditions, these are well to the point where the individual understands that these act upon individuals because of their sojourn or correlation of their associations with the environs through which these are shown - see? Rather than the star directing the life, the life of the individual directs the courses of the stars, see? ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 19:In the twentieth century per capita GDP was perhaps the supreme yardstick for evaluating national success. From this perspective, Singapore, each of whose citizens produces on average $56,000 worth of goods and services a year, is a more successful country than Costa Rica, whose citizens produce only $14,000 a year. But nowadays thinkers, politicians and even economists are calling to supplement or even replace GDP with GDH – gross domestic happiness. After all, what do people want? They don’t want to produce. They want to be happy. Production is important because it provides the material basis for happiness. But it is only the means, not the end. In one survey after another Costa Ricans report far higher levels of life satisfaction than Singaporeans. Would you rather be a highly productive but dissatisfied Singaporean, or a less productive but satisfied Costa Rican? ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 20:The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray. Everyone therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god and the beautiful itself. Thus proceeding in the right way of beauty he will first ascend into the region of intellect, contemplating every fair species, the beauty of which he will perceive to be no other than ideas themselves; for all things are beautiful by the supervening irradiations of these, because they are the offspring and essence of intellect. But that which is superior to these is no other than the fountain of good, everywhere widely diffusing around the streams of beauty, and hence in discourse called the beautiful itself because beauty is its immediate offspring. But if you accurately distinguish the intelligible objects you will call the beautiful the receptacle of ideas; but the good itself, which is superior, the fountain and principle of the beautiful; or, you may place the first beautiful and the good in the same principle, independent of the beauty which there subsists. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I am monarch of all I survey, ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
2:Survey says: one more for the bad guys. ~ Scott Hall, #NFDB
3:Time, that takes survey of all the world, ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
4:This gentleman, with knowing air, Survey'd ~ Jean de La Fontaine, #NFDB
5:sartorial splendor with a long, speculative survey ~ Dana Stabenow, #NFDB
6:How does your city rank in European air pollution survey? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
7:My father was a soil scientist with the Geological Survey. ~ Jim Fowler, #NFDB
8:love to see the Irish Ordnance Survey offer something similar. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
9:The worst time to take a survey is in the middle of a cataclysmic event. ~ Stuart Rothenberg, #NFDB
10:Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
11:She couldn't survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern. ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
12:In survey after survey, the Iraqi people say, 'We want to choose our leaders.' ~ Scott McClellan, #NFDB
13:I had a survey done on my house. 8 out of 10 people said they really rather liked it ~ Jimmy Carr, #NFDB
14:God gave man an upright countenance to survey the heavens, and to look upward to the stars. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
15:Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs! ~ Diana Wynne Jones, #NFDB
16:Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world's population. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
17:A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
18:A recent survey said that 51% of Americans don't know any evangelicals – even casually. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
19:On a recent survey, 80 percent of golfers admitted cheating. The other 20 percent lied. ~ Bruce Lansky, #NFDB
20:A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
21:in a 2013 Gallup survey, 70 percent of Americans said they hated their jobs or felt disengaged. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
22:I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. ~ Charles Hartshorne, #NFDB
23:Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
24:If you were to survey celebrated women, with every step toward real success there came a baby. ~ Miriam Schapiro, #NFDB
25:I saw a survey and it is that NFL fans are fed up with listening to players talk about politics. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
26:Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value. ~ Sidney Hook, #NFDB
27:Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, called JOLTS, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
28:The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
29:A technical survey that systematize, digest, and appraise the mid century state of psychology. ~ Stanley Smith Stevens, #NFDB
30:I once read a survey that explained how moving is as traumatic as divorce, or as the death of a parent. ~ S K Tremayne, #NFDB
31:The BBC did a survey of the top 50 things to do before we die. Not while we're still alive, before we die. ~ Bill Bailey, #NFDB
32:I leaned closer and gave her the look I usually save for rampaging demons and those survey people at malls. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
33:A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey. ~ Banksy, #NFDB
34:Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort. ~ Andrew Greeley, #NFDB
35:I'm sure if you could survey the unborn they would prefer the chance for life over the options of solar power. ~ Greg Gutfeld, #NFDB
36:I've done an informal, anecdotal survey about marriage, and I've found no evidence that it brings happiness. ~ Mary McCormack, #NFDB
37:I don’t mind being lord of all I survey but I don’t want to have to work at it. It just wouldn’t be practical. ~ Katherine Dunn, #NFDB
38:But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before. ~ John Williams, #NFDB
39:[W]here there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them... ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
40:This is a survey, not an encyclopedia; a study, not a painting; an essay, not a mathematical or historical proof. ~ Joseph P Farrell, #NFDB
41:USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
42:USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
43:you can brainstorm, you can argue, you can survey, but only shipping will tell you whether you’re going to sink or swim. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
44:According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill. ~ Ron Fournier, #NFDB
45:A survey asked married women when they most want to have sex. 84 per cent of them said right after their husband is finished. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
46:I walked out of that office with my survey still in the box, unsure of what I was. An optimist? A pessimist? Neither. A fool. I ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
47:Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
48:I think that if anyone bothered to take a survey, they would find a sharp decline in atheism during the winters in Cleveland, Ohio. ~ Drew Carey, #NFDB
49:But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,
And Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
50:It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of a task which it is performing and survey what it has done. ~ Douglas Hofstadter, #NFDB
51:A survey has shown that the average man has had sex in a car 15 times. Something to keep in mind next time you're looking for a used car. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
52:But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
53:Forget romantic fiction, a survey has found that most women would rather read a good book than go shopping, have sex, or sleep. ~ Janet Street Porter, #NFDB
54:(Nearly half of all Chinese tourists in one market survey reported eating no more than one “European-style” meal on a trip to the West.) ~ Evan Osnos, #NFDB
55:Ironically, survey after survey shows that married men are happier and healthier than unmarried men. Oh, and they also have more sex. ~ Michael Kimmel, #NFDB
56:Amnesty International Survey found that 25 percent of people believe a woman is to blame for being raped if she dresses "provocatively. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
57:My mind was once the true survey Of all these meadows fresh and gay; And in the greenness of the grass Did see its hopes as in a glass. ~ Andrew Marvell, #NFDB
58:The employees now things about our business that we don't. We should do a survey and ask them why they think so many people come and go. ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
59:A new survey says one in three adults will be dressing up for Halloween. As for me, I'm not going to do anything. I'm going as Congress. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
60:Rio chuckled. “Are there Doms and subs on Ariel?”
Nella blinked up at him. “I really have no idea. I don’t think we’ve done a survey. ~ Allyson James,#NFDB
61:According to a survey in this week's Time magazine, 85% of Americans think global warming is happening. The other 15% work for the White House. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
62:It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways. ~ Madeleine de Souvre marquise de Sable, #NFDB
63:The quality most desirable in a CEO? According to a global survey conducted by IBM of 1,500 top executives in sixty countries: creativity. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
64:Fawcett was taught not just how to survey but how to see—to record and classify everything around him, in what the Greeks called an autopsis. ~ David Grann, #NFDB
65:Just as ants do when their nest is disturbed, we return, survey the damage, and then without hesitation immediately get to work rebuilding. ~ Camron Wright, #NFDB
66:In one survey, respondents listed Princeton as one of the country’s top ten law schools. The problem? Princeton doesn’t have a law school ~ Alexandra Robbins, #NFDB
67:As we survey church history, we discover that A. W. Tozer’s piercing observation is most accurate: “All great Christians have been wounded souls. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
68:You may have read that I went to M.I.T. In 1982 I filled out a Who's Who survey with joking responses, and they never bothered to check the facts. ~ Chevy Chase, #NFDB
69:A man with deep far-sightedness will survey both the beginning and the end of a situation and continually consider its every facet as important. ~ Takeda Shingen, #NFDB
70:They took a survey: Why do men get up in the middle of the night? Ten percent get up to go to the bathroom and 90 percent get up to go home. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
71:According to a recent Spencer Stuart survey, a company’s chief marketing officer has the shortest tenure of any top executive. “This job is radioactive, ~ Al Ries, #NFDB
72:According to the 2013-2014 National Pet Owners Survey, there are 86.4 million cats kept in 45.3 percent of U.S. households, a number expected to rise. ~ Amy Shojai, #NFDB
73:(like the BMW mechanic who handed Robert Sutton a survey and pleaded for a five on a five-point scale, because otherwise he would get in trouble). ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer, #NFDB
74:There is nothing that this age, from whatever standpoint we survey it, needs more, physically, intellectually, and morally, than thorough ventilation. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
75:According to a new survey, people who get divorced die early. People who stay married live longer. The difference is they just wish they were dead. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
76:A survey carried out across the U.S. between 2004 and 2006 showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers are more likely to give money to charity. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
77:he took a survey of personal finance authors who recommend that people keep budgets, and he found that none of them actually kept budgets themselves. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
78:In blissful solitude; he then survey’d Hell and the Gulf between, and Satan there Coasting the wall of Heav’n on this side Night In the dun Air sublime, ~ John Milton, #NFDB
79:Tiago turned to survey the large, crowded ballroom. "Good job not killing anybody."
"That's what Pia said," Dragos told him. "Night's not over yet. ~ Thea Harrison,#NFDB
80:a Pew Research Center survey found that sharing household chores ranked third in importance on a list of nine items associated with successful marriages. ~ Jancee Dunn, #NFDB
81:Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
82:So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey. ~ Plato, #NFDB
83:When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe a thousand objects offer themselves which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
84:A telephone survey says that 51 percent of college students drink until they pass out at least once a month. The other 49 percent didn't answer the phone. ~ Craig Kilborn, #NFDB
85:Survey 2001: Men who never married, never had a child, worked full time and were college educated earn only 85% of what women with the same criteria earn. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
86:Changing habits 127 words Among other details from the CDC survey: 25% of students were in a physical fight in the year before the survey, down from 42% in 1991. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
87:Physiology is the basis of all medical improvement and in precise proportion as our survey of it becomes more accurate and extended, it is rendered more solid. ~ John Gorrie, #NFDB
88:According to a new survey, 90% of men say their lover is also their best friend. Which is really kind of disturbing when you consider man's best friend is his dog. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
89:Don’t just ask questions. Know how the answers to the questions will change your behavior. In other words, draw a line in the sand before you run the survey. ~ Alistair Croll, #NFDB
90:It would be very interesting to make a survey around the world, from wealthy countries to the most advanced countries to see what influence Americans have had. I ~ Emilio Pucci, #NFDB
91:Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
92:When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
93:A recent survey of 2,000 male graduates of Harvard Business School
found that penis length & IQ were equally good predictors of annual
income. -- from "Eugene ~ Greg Egan,#NFDB
94:In the rather informal survey I have taken over the years on intensity of interest in food by profession, lawyers rank only a few trades below concert pianists.... ~ Calvin Trillin, #NFDB
95:A new survey out says 64 percent of Americans own a smartphone. Which is interesting because in a related survey, 100 percent of smart phones say they own an American. ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
96:At the level of ego-psychology', wrote Mowrer in his survey on 'Motivation' in the Annual Review for 1952, 'there may be said to be only one master motive: anxiety. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
97:One survey of American newspapers found that the number of articles written by papers’ own writers increased from 25 percent to 45 percent between the 1820s and 1850s. ~ Tom Standage, #NFDB
98:With Twitter and other social networking tools, you can get a lot of advice from great people. I learn more from Twitter than any survey or discussion with a big company. ~ Daniel Ek, #NFDB
99:Any survey of the free world's defense structure cannot fail to impart a feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted to armaments. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
100:According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about women is their eyes. And women say the first thing they notice about men is they're a bunch of liars. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
101:a gentleman of thirty-two who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin. ~ Robert Dallek, #NFDB
102:A new survey found that 12 percent of parents punish their kids by banning social networking sites. The other 88 percent punish their kids by joining social networking sites. ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
103:If a man could mount to Heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had someone to share in his pleasure. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
104:The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
105:They suggest that with respect to facts, partisan differences are much less sharp than they seem—and that political polarization is often an artifact of the survey setting. ~ Cass R Sunstein, #NFDB
106:The purpose of quantum linguistics is to survey the spirit of linguistics and finding solutions to the common barrier problems faced by means of deliberate use of language. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
107:And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson must By Time's slow finger written in the dust. ~ Anna Letitia Barbauld, #NFDB
108:If we take a survey of the greatest actions...in the world...we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
109:In 2009, the First Amendment Center’s survey of knowledge about basic rights found that 39 percent of Americans could not name even one right protected by the First Amendment. ~ Greg Lukianoff, #NFDB
110:According to our most recent survey, the typical American millionaire reported that he (she) never spent more than $399 for a suit of clothing for himself or for anyone else. ~ Thomas J Stanley, #NFDB
111:A survey says that American workers work the first three hours every day just to pay their taxes. So that's why we can't get anything done in the morning: We're government workers. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
112:I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less. ~ Walter Cronkite, #NFDB
113:Mindfulness not only makes it possible to survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity but can also actively steer us in the right direction for self-care. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
114:A new survey reveals that women would rather give up sex than give up the remote control for the TV. Men, on the other hand, would be willing to have sex with the remote for the TV. ~ Conan O Brien, #NFDB
115:we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
116:Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites - by far the highest number in the survey - report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents'. ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
117:We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
118:All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. ~ Margaret Fuller, #NFDB
119:I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
120:I think it's a Pew survey of Millennials, and the first one is that more and more Millennial-aged women are ashamed and embarrassed that they earn more than their husbands or boyfriends. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
121:According to a recent survey, kids are receiving an average of 40 cents less from the tooth fairy. That's right, the economy is so bad that even make-believe people are feeling the pinch. ~ Conan O Brien, #NFDB
122:After I watched Newton disappear down the hallway, I took the folded paper out of my pocket. It was the survey. What has Shakespeare done for you? He had written, “Shakespeare saved my life. ~ Laura Bates, #NFDB
123:I don't think it's surprising we will have to look for them. I'm confident that when the Iraq Survey Group has done its work we will find what's happened to those weapons because he had them. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
124:At the end of 2011, only twenty of the sixty-five Republican members of Congress who responded to a survey were willing to say that they believed climate change was causing the planet to warm. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
125:He with a graceful pride, While his rider every hand survey'd, Sprung loose, and flew into an escapade; Not moving forward, yet with every bound Pressing, and seeming still to quit his ground. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
126:It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always looking for, and often finding, patterns. ~ Douglas R Hofstadter, #NFDB
127:I need to find Meg." I wiped my mouth with a shaky hand. "What would the myrmekes do with her?"
"I don't know!"
"Tell me or I will not complete your customer service survey. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
128:More than 40 percent of Americans aged twenty years and older have either diabetes or prediabetes according to a review of data from the 2005–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
129:I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans start being accurate there’s no end to it! ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
130:In a survey of more than 10,000 people from 48 countries, happiness was viewed as more important than success, intelligence, knowledge, maturity, wisdom, relationships, wealth, and meaning in life. ~ Todd Kashdan, #NFDB
131:When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfil our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
132:In a bird's eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don't have that advantage of looking at everything. ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
133:There`s plenty of other evidence Trump is in sync with the base, including a major survey released that found that 76 percent of Republicans think Islam is incompatible with the American way of life. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
134:According to a new survey, 40 percent of adults in Mexico say they would move to the United States if they got a chance. The number would have been higher, but the other 60 percent already live here. ~ Conan O Brien, #NFDB
135:I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don't know if I'm the monarch of all I survey. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
136:BJP is a political party with a difference that aims at good governance. This is proved by the fact that three of the five Chief Ministers according to a recent NDTV survey/poll are from BJP-ruled states. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
137:One survey shows that throughout the world and throughout history, from thirteenth-century England to modern Canada, from Kenya to Mexico, men have killed men much more often – on average about ninety-seven ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
138:I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone. ~ Nikolai Gogol, #NFDB
139:The 1994 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles in Britain finds that the only obvious distinguishing feature of British homosexuals apart from sexual orientation is a tendency to live in London. ~ Graham Robb, #NFDB
140:Even when educators survey grade school texts and create new bibliographies to help teachers include Asians, Eskimos, and other Americans, females in and out of those groups may be down-played or forgotten. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
141:The province of science, on the other hand, is not to take so wide a survey, but to gain knowledge piece-meal: to locate points inductively, and thus to plot out the curve which we believe existence constitutes. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
142:If you want to know the truth about what you’ve built, you have to ship it. You can test, you can brainstorm, you can argue, you can survey, but only shipping will tell you whether you’re going to sink or swim. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
143:In the United States, the most recent survey by the Federal Reserve, which covers the same years, indicates that the top decile own 72 percent of America’s wealth, while the bottom half claim just 2 percent. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
144:Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: ‘What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
145:A national survey ongoing since 1974 has shown that Americans have never been less likely to be friends with their neighbors as they are now. The lowest levels of neighborliness were recorded in the suburbs.33 ~ Bella DePaulo, #NFDB
146:Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organization far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB
147:One way to identify the optimal human diet, pretty obvious to all but fundamentalist reductionists, is to survey and compare populations as they already exist, and see what they eat and how healthy they are. ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
148:One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials. ~ Robert Waterman McChesney, #NFDB
149:In a recent survey, 93 percent of teenage girls surveyed said that shopping was their favorite activity. Mature women also say they like shopping, but working women say that shopping is a hassle, as do most men. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
150:Consider individuals, survey men in general; there is none whose life does not look forward to the morrow. 13. "What harm is there in this," you ask? Infinite harm; for such persons do not live, but are preparing to live. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
151:In 1989, I started the National Association of Business Women. We incorporated microfinance and different job training for women. We did a survey, with USAID, that found women lacked training, credit and information. ~ Joyce Banda, #NFDB
152:It looks like a gingerbread house assembled by a thoroughly mad child,” Page said. He took a puff from his cigarette and stepped a few paces to the side as if to survey the house from a different angle. “I love it. ~ Cat Sebastian, #NFDB
153:It's not possible to present an accurate picture of our culture without all the voices of the people in the culture. So at the emerging level, you can't have a good survey art show without women and artists of color. ~ Frida Kahlo, #NFDB
154:There is something inhuman and vaguely pornographic about statistics... Pornography, on the other hand, with its loosely bound sequences of storyless sexual couplings often has the feel of a statistical survey. ~ John Allen Paulos, #NFDB
155:There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind. ~ Hermann von Helmholtz, #NFDB
156:But thought’s the slave of life, and life time’s fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
157:In a recent survey, innovative people — from inventors to scientists, writers to programmers — were asked what techniques they used. Over 70% believed they got their best ideas by exploring areas they were not experts in ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
158:A weekly survey of economists by the Brazilian central bank showed they expected economic growth this year to shrink 1.18 per cent, inflation to end the year at 8.26 per cent and the benchmark interest rate at 13.5 per cent. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
159:There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You're supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
160:According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful. ~ Robert De Niro, #NFDB
161:There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
162:the survey made a clear connection between the fact that people who read less were also far less likely to go to a concert or volunteer for charity or even take part in as traditional and common a thing as a baseball game. ~ Sarah Clarkson, #NFDB
163:I don't know if [Barack Obama] saw the latest religion survey, but almost a quarter of the country are Nones. I don't mean the ones who hit me on the knuckles with a ruler in Sunday School - I mean they put "None" for religion. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
164:Predictably, the national broadcaster—a viper’s nest of socialists, tree-huggers and ugly, barren females—had seized on the survey, exhuming one of its bleeding-heart ideologues to moan about funding cuts to education. ~ Michelle de Kretser, #NFDB
165:Time has become a precious commodity and the ultimate scarcity for millions of Americans. A 1996 Wall Street Journal survey found 40% of Americans saying that lack of time was a bigger problem for them than lack of money.”6 ~ Dan B Allender, #NFDB
166:What we also know is we haven't found them [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq - now let the survey group complete its work and give us the report... They will not report that there was no threat from Saddam, I don't believe. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
167:On the bottom of every Krispy Kreme receipt is a plea to fill out a survey. You get a free doughnut for doing the survey. When you get your doughnut, you get another receipt, with another survey. Free doughnuts for life! 496 ~ Keith Bradford, #NFDB
168:I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com. ~ Piers Anthony, #NFDB
169:There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
170:It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
171:To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
172:But we are now starting to realize that traumatic stress is almost as common as depression. More than 12 percent of U.S. women in a recent large survey reported having significant post-traumatic stress at some point in their lives. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
173:I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
174:In a survey by econsultancy.com2 23% of web professionals cited fragmentation of departments and poor organizational structures as a reason for digital failing. Furthermore, Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong wrote in a post for UXmatters ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
175:My colleagues and I have done a survey of 13,000 students on more than 17 campuses, and we found that while sex in college has always been a bit more casual, "hooking up" has pretty much replaced other traditional forms of dating. ~ Michael Kimmel, #NFDB
176:A Pew survey released this week found that 57 percent of Americans favor allowing same-sex marriage, while 39 percent oppose it. Just five years ago, only 42 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage, while 48 percent opposed it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
177:A recent survey claimed that two thirds of young British Asians believe that families should live according to the concept of honour. Seventy per cent of Sikhs and Muslims. Three per cent said that they sanctioned honour killings. ~ Mark Billingham, #NFDB
178:According to a survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners, a majority of people want more control over the details of their lives, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives. There you have it—the paradox of our times. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
179:I’d be more than happy to let you survey my physical perfection in its entirety. But only if I get to see you, too.” To her shocked silence, he replied, “It’s only fair. Tit for tat.”
“How is that fair? You've seen countless tits. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
180:Our research inside companies revealed that the best way to motivate people, day in and day out, is by facilitating progress—even small wins. But the managers in our survey ranked “supporting progress” dead last as a work motivator.3 ~ Teresa Amabile, #NFDB
181:Luckily, a recent survey published in the American Sociological Review revealed that atheists are the least trusted group in America—less trusted, even, than homosexuals. It makes sense at least we trust the homosexuals with our hair. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
182:It's like lifting off in an airplane: you're on the ground, on the ground, on the ground... and then you're up, riding on a magical cushion of air and prince of all you survey. That makes me happy, because it's what I was made to do. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
183:Pew survey found that 45 percent of the poorest Americans use a mobile phone as their primary internet device. Same with nearly half of all Americans aged 18–29, and particularly among minorities and the less-educated. Young, poor, not white: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
184:The FT reported overnight that “In just two years, from 2011 to 2012, China produced more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century, according to historical data from the US Geological Survey and China’s National Bureau of Statistics. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
185:A survey released today found that men spend twice as much on their mistresses for Christmas as they do on their wives. On the other hand, men spend half their income on the wives when the wife finds out about the mistress. So it all balances out. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
186:Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
187:In the United States, the middle class is the group of working people who, according to a May 2016 Pew survey, with a yearly household income for a family of three ranging from $42,000 to $125,000 in 2014, make up 51 percent of U.S. households. ~ Alissa Quart, #NFDB
188:Whoever wishes to see the world truly, to rise in thought above the tyranny of practical desires, must learn to overcome the difference of attitude towards past and future, and to survey the whole stream of time in one comprehensive vision. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
189:A 2001 survey of business owners with MBAs conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology found that money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
190:I am now about to enter on my normal condition. For people are almost always in their graves. When we survey the long race of men, it is strange and still more strange to find that they are mainly dead men, who have scarcely ever been otherwise. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
191:A new survey indicates that Obama supporters love iPhones. So if you have an iPhone, chances are you are going to be supporting President Obama. In a related story, if you support Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey, chances are you love IHOP. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
192:Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly! ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
193:According to a new survey, almost half of the voters in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania say that they do not trust Hillary Clinton. Republicans immediately got together and said, 'OK, this is a huge opportunity for us. How are we going to screw it up?' ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
194:Fully 36 percent of parents who answered a recent survey said their children had “touched or scrolled a screen” before they had celebrated their first birthday. An additional 33 percent of parents said their children had done so when they were 1 year old. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
195:One of the findings of the landmark Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey of almost thirty thousand Americans, published in 2000, was that those who give contributions of time or money are 42 percent more likely to be happy than those who don’t give. ~ Andrew Weil, #NFDB
196:One survey shows that throughout the world and throughout history, from thirteenth-century England to modern Canada, from Kenya to Mexico, men have killed men much more often – on average about ninety-seven times more often – than women have killed women. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
197:It's about average for us. Behavior always draws more than survey. We're the sexy ones,' Nate said with a grin. Amy snorted. 'Oh, yeah, you guys are the Mae Wests of the nerd world.' We're action nerds,' Nate said. 'Adventure nerds. Nerds of romance. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
198:My zest for exhibition has over a long career become increasingly a mania. The ecstasy I feel as I survey work I have done I want to share with the world - not the whole world which couldn't care less, but my private world, which is my country, Canada. ~ Joseph Plaskett, #NFDB
199:The teachings or the information in the Venus project is not what Jacque Fresco dictates. It’s first doing a survey of the carrying capacity of a given environment and maintaining a population in accordance of the Earth's resources, not Fresco's opinion. ~ Jacque Fresco, #NFDB
200:According to the World Values Survey, while 60 percent of Europeans say they think “the poor are trapped in poverty,” only 29 percent of Americans think so. Instead, 60 percent of Americans think “the poor are lazy,” compared with just 26 percent of Europeans. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
201:What is true about (ex-Iraq Survey Group head) David Kay's evidence, and this is something I have to accept, and is one of the reasons why I think we now need a new inquiry - it is true David Kay is saying we have not found large stockpiles of actual weapons. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
202:The best survey of the spirit and practice of the laws of Massachusetts Bay is found in Zechariah Chafee Jr.’s brilliant introduction to the Records of the Suffolk County Court, 1671–1680, in the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications, Vol. XXIX. ~ Daniel J Boorstin, #NFDB
203:When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why - television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio "because the pictures were better. ~ Alistair Cooke, #NFDB
204:The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
205:The whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind so that I can survey it at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What delight this is I cannot tell! ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, #NFDB
206:Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
207:A 2013 survey of high school students revealed that most respondents Inc.SALE got slightly more than six hours of sleep on a school night. ( The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that teens get at leastFOR Publ., nine hours of sleep per night.16 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
208:But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to encrease and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
209:The career acceleration that for so many men precedes any inner survey also serves to delay it. By the time the true and sobering issues that are driving them forward begin to insist on acknowledgment, the impact may be more cruel. A crucible rather than a survey. Jung ~ Gail Sheehy, #NFDB
210:It's about average for us. Behavior always draws more than survey. We're the sexy ones,' Nate said with a grin.
Amy snorted. 'Oh, yeah, you guys are the Mae Wests of the nerd world.'
We're action nerds,' Nate said. 'Adventure nerds. Nerds of romance. ~ Christopher Moore,#NFDB
211:I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents' house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey. ~ Jonathan Meades, #NFDB
212:I feel that buzz of happiness, that sense of having found the right words and put them in a line. It's like lifting off in an airplane: you're on the ground, on the ground, on the ground... and then you're up, riding on a magical cushion of air and prince of all you survey. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
213:By the time she wrote The Sovereignty of Good in 1970 her criticism had become stringent: ‘we are not isolated free choosers, monarchs of all we survey, but benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy’. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
214:Lancelot Plummer had expected to undertake this survey with Adam, but had been foiled calmly in passing by Lymond. ‘Ah, no. One aesthete and one philistine are what we require.’ There could have been few philistines, thought Plummer acidly, as insistently common as Hislop. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
215:When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable ~ William James, #NFDB
216:Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
217:You might discover that, nationwide, America's food banks are experiencing 'a torrent of need which [they] cannot meet' and that, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 67 percent of the adults requesting emergency food aid are people with jobs. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
218:Michael?” Eliza asked again. “What?” I said testily. “Oh. No, there are no surprises, our original agreement is in effect.” “You won’t mind then if I send some of my army in to verify that?” she asked. “You sound awfully frightened for being the Lord of All You Survey,” I rang out. ~ Mark Tufo, #NFDB
219:Genghis was also a popular figure with the fairer sex, producing countless children through his many wives and concubines. Recently an international team of geneticists announced after a 10-year survey that one out of every 200 men on earth are directly descended from Genghis Khan; ~ Michael Rank, #NFDB
220:In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
221:No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
222:Shut up, Ed—the world below us has turned into a map. A real map! The woods look like the “Woodland: Deciduous” markings of Ordnance Survey. It is just as they drew it! Who knew! Who knew you could put the whole world on paper, after all! The artists were right! This is so reassuring! ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
223:The membership survey was a great moment for inner-party democracy. We can't go back, nor do we want to. Our members are pouring their hearts into this campaign. But people don't join the Social Democrats party just to put up posters. They join because they want to help steer the party. ~ Martin Schulz, #NFDB
224:The U.S. Army in 1974 devised a food called funistrada as a test word during a survey of soldiers’ dietary preferences. Although no such food existed, funistrada ranked higher in the survey than lima beans and eggplant (which seems about right to me, at least as far as the lima beans go). ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
225:A Gallup survey in 1962 indicated that only about one-third of American women considered themselves victims of discrimination. Eight years later the proportion had risen to a half, and by 1974 to two-thirds. By any standard these were striking measures of social and cultural change.18 ~ James T Patterson, #NFDB
226:Immense deposits of kimmeridge clay, containing the oil-bearing bands or seams, stretch across England from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire. [An early political recognition of the native resource. The Geological Survey had identified the inflammable oil shale in reports since at least 1888.] ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
227:While the churchless continue to show some openness to high-touch, relational connections—pastoral home visits (27 percent), a phone call from a church (24 percent), a survey conducted with them about their interests (21 percent)—they are also increasingly resistant to other forms of outreach. ~ George Barna, #NFDB
228:Fifteen minutes later, Justin looks at his pint of blood with pride. He doesn't want it to go to some stranger, he almost wants to bring it to the hospital himself, survey the wards and present it to someone special, for it's the first thing to come straight from his heart in a very long time. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
229:But because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn: 'When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. My richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.' ~ Margaret Thatcher, #NFDB
230:As for wife beating, one survey found support for it from 62 percent of Indian village women themselves. And no group systematically abuses young women more cruelly than mothers-in-law, who serve as household matriarchs in much of the world and take charge of disciplining the younger women. ~ Nicholas D Kristof, #NFDB
231:Honour forbid! at whose unrivall'd shrine 105 Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign. Methinks already I your tears survey, Already hear the horrid things they say, Already see you a degraded toast, And all your honour in a whisper lost! 110 How shall I, then, your helpless fame ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
232:according to the authors of Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, “Twice as many women who went to college have given or received oral sex as compared to those who did not finish high school and twice as many of those better-educated women had or received oral sex the last time they had sex.” Whereas ~ Ian Kerner, #NFDB
233:Denis Burkitt, fueled a decade-long fiber craze. Americans were forcing down unprecedented amounts of bran muffins, oatmeal, and high-fiber breakfast cereals. Whorton cited a 1984 survey that found a third of Americans eating more fiber to stay healthy. You don’t hear so much about fiber these days. ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
234:Consider any year, that has been so unfruitful that many thousands have died of hunger; and yet if, at the end of that year, a survey was made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn, it would be found that there was enough among them to have prevented all that consumption ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
235:Today, I comfort my threatened heart. I affirm my safety in times of change. I accept the comfort of spiritual sunlight. I am warmed by the truth that I am loved and protected even in the midst of chaotic change. Despite my shock, I survey my new spiritual surroundings with a sense of possibility. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
236:Using data gathered in 2011, the CDC study estimated that across all age groups, 19.3 percent of American women “have been raped in their lifetimes” and that 1.6 percent of American women—nearly two and a half million individuals—“reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
237:An effective survey question to ask your employees is how many minutes a week they spend learning on their own, not mandated, not directed. Typically it’s a small number. An organizational measure of improving health would be to increase that number. If you want engaged teams, don’t brief, certify! ~ L David Marquet, #NFDB
238:To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity,” he wrote in one of his essays. “The next is to strive and deserve to conquer; but he whose life has passed without contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
239:Conscientiousness on a survey seemed like a trifling matter. In life, it was a big deal. Conscientiousness—a tendency to be responsible, hardworking, and organized—mattered at every point in the human life cycle. It even predicted how long people lived—with more accuracy than intelligence or background. ~ Amanda Ripley, #NFDB
240:Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” Following brief reflection, nearly everyone answered yes. In that privileged moment—after subjects had confirmed privately and affirmed publicly their helpful natures—the researchers pounced, requesting help with their survey. Now 77.3 percent volunteered. ~ Robert B Cialdini, #NFDB
241:A recent survey stated that the average person's greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you're telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy. ~ Jerry Seinfeld, #NFDB
242:More than 500 deluge legends are known around the world and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7 African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist researcher Dr Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
243:Believe in yourself... or believe in me and them... the Survey Corps. I don't know the answer. I never have. Whether you trust in your own strength... or trust in the choies made by reliable comrades. No one knows what the outcome will be. So as much as you can... choose whatever you'll regret the least. ~ Hajime Isayama, #NFDB
244:If I were to peruse a survey of label options, as they exist now, they either sound like a time bomb disorder or manic depression or Bipolar divide or mental illness. How can I find an identity in that? It certainly isn't something I can bring up in conversation, without a reaction of judgement or even fear. ~ Paul Dalio, #NFDB
245:At the end of his career, when William attempted to assess the scale of this transformation by launching a great survey, his subjects compared it to the Last Judgement of God. Thanks to the Domesday Book, we know more about eleventh-century England than any other medieval society anywhere in the world. Accurate ~ Marc Morris, #NFDB
246:There are literally thousands of sites. As I was told in Iraq, information is coming in the entire time, but it is only now that the Iraq survey group has been put together that a dedicated team of people, which includes former UN inspectors, scientists and experts, will be able to go in and do the job properly. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
247:According to a 2009 Public Policy Polling survey, 39% of people in the United States believe that the United States government should stay out of Medicare (a government-run program). Ten percent of people are not certain or do not believe that Hawaii is a state, and 7% believe that Barack Obama is from France.[51] ~ Clay A Johnson, #NFDB
248:Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star. ... From his central position man can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist. ... [K]nowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars. ~ Arthur Eddington, #NFDB
249:They have shown that problems endemic to poverty—residential instability, severe deprivation, concentrated neighborhood disadvantage, health disparities, even joblessness—stem from the lack of affordable housing in our cities. I have made all survey data publicly available through the Harvard Dataverse Network.13 — ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
250:until it reached an Asante village. There, it disappeared, becoming one with the night. Effia’s father, Cobbe Otcher, left his first wife, Baaba, with the new baby so that he might survey the damage to his yams, that most precious crop known far and wide to sustain families. Cobbe had lost seven yams, and he felt each loss ~ Yaa Gyasi, #NFDB
251:For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
252:There was a research I think team, which conducted a survey about what Indians think of Americans, and 71 percent I believe said, well, I think all the nice things about our working together with the United States. But there are people I think that are old mind-sets, who still I think remain mired in the Cold War ideology. ~ Manmohan Singh, #NFDB
253:According to a survey released by the Pew Research Center in September, 25 percent of Americans are expected to be single into their mid-40s and mid-50s, and are unlikely to have ever been married. As of 2013, there were over 100 million single people in the country. Of that number, 53 percent were women, and 47 percent were men. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
254:Human beings are compelled to adopt a belief system; some paradigm to provide meaning, purpose, and understanding to our lives. A quick survey of the world shows that pretty much any idea will do - it need not reflect reality or truth, merely function to fascinate, distract, and compel. We are designed for belief, not for truth. ~ Terry Rossio, #NFDB
255:The collapse, the crisis. It is how the world knows Congo. Death is as widespread in few places. Children born here have the bleakest futures. It is the most diseased, the most corrupt, and the least habitable—the country heads nearly every conceivable blacklist. One survey has it that no nation has more citizens who want to leave. ~ Anjan Sundaram, #NFDB
256:The easiest way to a “lifestyle” is a government job. The following year, another survey (from Newsweek) found that seven of the ten wealthiest counties in the United States were in the Washington commuter belt.9 What matters in the America of the twenty-first century is proximity not to industry or to wealth creation but to government. ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
257:18 percent of respondents clearly rejected the so-called superstitious beliefs ( mixin) (see Table 4). Perhaps more surprisingly, this proportion is not really different from that in the U.S. population. For example, the 1994 General Social Survey included a question on astrology, and only 19 percent of Americans definitely rejected it (see ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
258:Survey data collected in 2008 suggested that adults collectively watched 9.8 billion hours of television over the course of a year. In further studies using actuarial tables, researchers determined that, for every hour of television watched by an adult over the age of twenty-five, that adult’s life expectancy was reduced by 21.8 minutes. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
259:She knew that Virginia's survey of the world was limited to people, the clothes they wore, and the carriages they drove in. Her own universe was so crammed to bursting with wonderful sights and sounds that, in spite of her sense of Virginia's superiority - her beauty, her ease, her confidence - Nan sometimes felt a shamefaced pity for her. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
260:In his survey, Alexander came to know that although these world-forsakers, ascetics, recluses and others were all wandering alone, their opinions exerted a powerful influence because of their disinterestedness, fearlessness and their disregard for any consequences whatever, upon the governments of Indian republics and also on the monarchies. ~ V D Savarkar, #NFDB
261:There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.) ~ Harvey Pekar, #NFDB
262:After starting a blood feud with Fox News, something no Republican presidential candidate has dared to do before, [Donald] Trump seems to have successfully undermine the network in the eyes of its core audience with perception of the Fox News brand among Republican adults hitting its lowest point in three years according to a new YouGov survey. ~ Chris Hayes, #NFDB
263:Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
264:Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes on is usually directly related to the number of bathrooms he has in his home and office. I am working on a survey that will show that, over a lifetime, readers are in bathrooms seven years and three months longer than nonreaders. ~ Calvin Miller, #NFDB
265:you can send a 360-degree survey that asks you and other people questions about your self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management skills. The result is a complete picture of your own and others’ perceptions. Believe it or not, what others say about you is usually more accurate than what you think about yourself. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
266:In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
267:Our objective is to begin a national conversation to better support individuals and families living with ASD in Canada. The Summit will review the recent National Needs Assessment Survey and provide leaders with a better understanding of ASD surveillance across the country. We are pleased that Minister Bergen will be part of this important discussion. ~ Cynthia Carroll, #NFDB
268:Historic American Buildings Survey—HABS for short—was one of FDR’s greatest New Deal investments. Jobless folk fanned out across the country, seeking old buildings, photographing them and sketching their floor plans. Many of the structures they recorded in the 1930s were caught in the act of falling down. Some of them were documented in no other place. ~ Mary Anna Evans, #NFDB
269:Once you get into the era of the printed book, it gets a little easier. After years and years, you make a serious survey of that literature, and then you make it more specific depending on what kind of case appears. I never set out to collect material on cheating at bowling, but I found out that after 20 years, I had a lot of material on cheating at bowling. ~ Ricky Jay, #NFDB
270:The medical officer’s microplan was a sheaf of ragged paper, with marker-drawn maps and penciled-in tables. The first page said that he had recruited twenty-two teams of two vaccinators each to cover a population of 34,144 people. “How do you know this population estimate is right?” Pankaj asked. The officer replied that he’d done a house-to-house survey. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
271:While re-addiction is clearly a hazard for some, others achieve a realistic and lasting confidence that they’ve outgrown their addictions and it’s time to move on. In fact, survey research published over the last thirty years indicates that most addicts eventually recover permanently.9 For them, the disease label may be an unnecessary, even harmful, burden. ~ Marc Lewis, #NFDB
272:A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.
(Page 40) ~ John Berger,#NFDB
273:When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast to so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
274:In a survey of thousands of respondents, researchers in England found that of all the “happy habits” science has currently identified as being keys to a more fulfilling life, self-acceptance was the one most strongly associated with overall satisfaction. Yet the same study revealed that this particular habit was also the one people practiced least! Respondents ~ Susan David, #NFDB
275:In a wartime survey conducted by a team of food-habits researchers, only 14 percent of the students at a women’s college said they liked evaporated milk. After serving it to the students sixteen times over the course of a month, the researchers asked again. Now 51 percent liked it. As Kurt Lewin put it, “People like what they eat, rather than eat what they like. ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
276:Look back to 1948 when the British Medical Association denounced Aneurin Bevan as 'a would-be Führer' for wanting them to join a National Health Service. And Bevan himself described the BMA as 'politically poisoned people'. A survey at the time showed only 10 per cent of doctors backed the plans ... But where would we be today if my predecessors had caved in? ~ Andrew Lansley, #NFDB
277:unprecedented yearning for fame. In a survey in 1976, people ranked being famous 15th out of 16 possible life goals. By 2007, 51% of young people said it was one of their principal ambitions. On a recent multiple-choice quiz, nearly twice as many middle-school girls said they would rather be a celebrity’s personal assistant than the president of Harvard University. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
278:Conflict is ubiquitous. Workplaces, homes, and communities are riddled with it. The trouble is, not nearly enough people understand what to do about it. The 2013 Executive Coaching Survey published by Stanford University, for example, reveals that company CEOs feel a greater need to improve their conflict management skills than skills of any other type. ~ The Arbinger Institute, #NFDB
279:She pursed her lips and nodded, swiveling around to continue her survey of my modest living space. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest as she strolled around. Letting out a long, deep breath, she dropped her hands to her sides when she reached my DVD collection.
“Downton Abbey?”
I jolted forward, clearing my throat. “Yeah, it’s uh…it’s a good show. ~ Rachael Wade,#NFDB
280:Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
281:There are moments in friendship, Fred had said, when the thing spreads beyond the ordinary margins, when something is said that carries you beyond the little guidemarks of restraint or indifference, like watercolours merging on a page, a moment when you survey a relationship from som transcendent point and see its beauty, the beauty of persons, of friendship itself. ~ Kate Millett, #NFDB
282:If you enjoy racist jokes, you have zero incentive to share that un-PC fact with a survey. You do, however, have an incentive to search for the best new racist jokes online. If you think you may be suffering from depression, you don’t have an incentive to admit this to a survey. You do have an incentive to ask Google for symptoms and potential treatments. ~ Seth Stephens Davidowitz, #NFDB
283:To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
284:...." I was rather discouraged when I discovered that Paul and Hotch had no marketing survey, no business plan, no budget, no organized strategy for the introduction of the sauce. When asked about this lack of preparation, the haphazard nature of their business, Paul said, 'Me in this business is just part of life's great folly. Stay loose, men, keep 'em off balance.'" ~ Paul Newman, #NFDB
285:One of the most remarkable features to be noted as we survey the scale of animal life is that as we go up, individuality is seen to be more and more fully developed. At the bottom, life is concerned only in the survival of the species as a whole; at the top, life seeks expression through particular individuals, while accomplishing also the survival of the group. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
286:Although the traditional focus of Valentine's Day is on women and the gifts they desire, this survey found that not only do men like to get gifts for Valentine's Day, but they also like those gifts to be luxurious. Sixty-three percent of the people we surveyed agreed that this Valentine's Day, Johnnie Walker Blue Label is a great gift for the men in their lives. ~ Christopher Parsons, #NFDB
287:God leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterward, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us. ~ Paul Tournier, #NFDB
288:Political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who has overseen the massive World Values Survey that seeks to measure value change around the world, has argued that economic modernization and middle-class status produce what he calls “post-material” values in which democracy, equality, and identity issues become much more prominent than older issues of economic distribution. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
289:The number of clerics has also increased exponentially. At Independence in 1947, there were only 137 madrasas (Islamic seminaries) in Pakistan. Nine years later, a 1956 survey reported that the number of madrasas had increased to 244 in West Pakistan. By 1995, the ministry of education estimated the figure at 3,906, which increased to 7,000 in 2000 and 35,000 by 2016. ~ Husain Haqqani, #NFDB
290:The phrase “say yes” means “to agree to” those things that life hands us. Saying yes means letting go of resistance and letting in the possibilities that our universe offers in new ways of seeing the world. It means to relax bodily and calmly survey the situation, thereby reducing upset and anxiety. Aside from the emotional benefits, the physical benefits are enormous. ~ Susan Jeffers, #NFDB
291:When a website run by the People’s Daily conducted a “Chinese Dream” survey, asking whether people supported one-party rule and believed in socialism, 80 percent of the three thousand respondents replied “no” to both questions, and the survey was abruptly withdrawn. People used to say that their censored work had been “harmonized.” Now they said it had been “dreamed away. ~ Evan Osnos, #NFDB
292:Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
293:Most of all I enjoy central-heating control rooms, where men with higher education, chained to their jobs like dogs to their kennels, write the history of their times as a sort of sociological survey and where I learned how the fourth estate was depopulated and the proletariat went from base to superstructure and how the university-trained elite now carries on its work. ~ Bohumil Hrabal, #NFDB
294:Between 1980 and 2008, blacks made up 52.5% of homicide offenders, despite making up just 12.2% of the population. In the same survey, it was found that 93% of black homicide victims were killed by other black people.108 Black Lives Matter focuses exclusively on deaths caused by the police, yet these are far eclipsed by the black deaths caused by other black people. In ~ Milo Yiannopoulos, #NFDB
295:In 1960, when a survey asked American adults whether it would “disturb” them if their child married a member of the other political party, no more than 5 percent of either party answered “yes.” But in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans answered “yes.” In fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild, #NFDB
296:The drys seemingly are afraid of the truth. Why not take inventory and ascertain the true conditions. Let us not leave it to the charge of an antiprohibition organization, or to any other private association, let us have an official survey and let the American people know what is going on. A complete and honest and impartial survey would reveal incredible conditions. ~ Fiorello H La Guardia, #NFDB
297:I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
298:Traditionally, when academics or businesspeople wanted data, they conducted surveys. The data came neatly formed, drawn from numbers or checked boxes on questionnaires. This is no longer the case. The days of structured, clean, simple, survey-based data are over. In this new age, the messy traces we leave as we go through life are becoming the primary source of data. ~ Seth Stephens Davidowitz, #NFDB
299:In my survey course of America, I’d seen portraits of the Irish drawn in the same ravenous, lustful, and simian way. Perhaps there had been other bodies, mocked, terrorized, and insecure. Perhaps the Irish too had once lost their bodies. Perhaps being named “black” had nothing to do with any of this; perhaps being named “black” was just someone’s name for being at the bottom, ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
300:A perfect Judge will read each work of Wit
With the same spirit that its author writ;
Survey the WHOLE, nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
.... In wit, as nature, what effects our hearts
Is not th'exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all. ~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
301:I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina. In ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
302:Stat Watch 67 words In a survey 91% of university staff members said they had been ignored, avoided, shut out of conversations, or treated as invisible during the previous year, according to a study led by Jane O’Reilly, of the University of Ottawa. Research shows that ostracism does more psychological harm and causes higher turnover than outright harassment, which is far less common. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
303:Privacy is gone, 60 words Privacy is gone, or at least an endangered notion, most respondents to a recent Pew survey said. Of 607 adults surveyed, 91% said that they "agree" or "strongly agree" that consumers have lost control over how companies collect and use personal information. 88% agree or strongly agree that it would be very difficult to remove inaccurate info about them online. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
304:So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th'eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way;
Th'increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! ~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
305:Be Not Too Timorous
Be not too timorous, youth, nor strive to merit
Thy mistress' favour by a broken spirit;
Lift up thine eyes, boldly thy fair survey;
Yea, turn them, now and then, the other way:
For woman, though with glee abashing pride,
Delights not less the abject to deride;
And best may he subdue her to his bent
Who is both humble and impertinent.
~ Agathias,#NFDB
306:Boxing Day.
Country pubs.
Saying 'you're the dog's bollocks' as an expression of endearment or admiration.
Jam roly-poly with custard
Ordnance Survey maps
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
Cream teas
The shipping forecast
The 20p piece
June evenings, about 8pm
Smelling the sea before you see it
Villages with ridiculous names like Shellow Bowells and Nether Wallop ~ Bill Bryson,#NFDB
307:This is the portrait of the future customers—connected yet distracted. A survey by the National Center for Biotechnological Information shows that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. This can be attributed to the massive and overwhelming volume of messages that constantly bombard our connected mobile devices and demand instant attention. ~ Philip Kotler, #NFDB
308:The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75% of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity, and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense. ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB
309:In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children. ~ Richard Louv, #NFDB
310:As the most romantic day of the year approaches, and as a brand that is uniquely male, we wanted to find out how men really feel about Valentines Day, and how they want to celebrate it. The Johnnie Walker Blue Label Luxury Survey tells us what gifts men really want versus what gifts women think men want for Valentine's Day - and the reality is that we're not as far apart as we like to think. ~ Christopher Parsons, #NFDB
311:School choice opponents are also dishonest when they speak of saving public schools. A Heritage Foundation survey found that 47 percent of House members and 51 percent of senators with school-age children enrolled them in private schools in 2001. Public school teachers enroll their children in private schools to a much greater extent than the general public, in some cities close to 50 percent. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
312:I am somewhat influenced by the years that I've spent trying to actually get things done, whether it was reforming education in Arkansas or a survey and Legal Services Corporation board when President [Jimmy ]Carter appointed me and trying to get lawyers for poor people. I have worked in these areas. I know it's more than just a hope. You've got to translate it into a policy that leads to action. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
313:In a 2013 survey of college counseling center directors,2 95 percent said the number of students with significant psychological problems is a growing concern on their campus, 70 percent said that the number of students on their campus with severe psychological problems has increased in the past year, and they reported that 24.5 percent of their student clients were taking psychotropic drugs. ~ Julie Lythcott Haims, #NFDB
314:Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
315:The much later age of menarche in rural China is remarkable. Twenty-five women in each of the 130 villages in the survey were asked when they had their first menstrual period. The range of village averages was fifteen to nineteen years, with an average of seventeen years. The U.S. average is roughly eleven years! Many studies have shown that earlier menarche leads to higher risk for breast cancer. ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
316:That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. ~ Anthony Burgess, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)., #NFDB
317:Should a survey be made to determine the reason why so many seemingly educated men and women fail in their after-college years or should it be made to determine the reason for the different earning powers of the masses, there would be no doubt but that imagination played the important part. Such a survey would show that it is imagination which makes one a leader while the lack of it makes one a follower. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
318:Last year, the journalist Malcolm Gladwell conducted a survey of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies for his book Blink. He discovered that while in the US population 14.5 per cent of all men are 6ft (1.83m) or taller, among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies the proportion is 58 per cent. And while 3.9 per cent of American adults are 6ft 2in or taller, almost a third of the CEOs were that tall. ~ Daniel Finkelstein, #NFDB
319:Survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it. ~ Andrew Greeley, #NFDB
320:Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. ~ Paul Nitze, #NFDB
321:Chancellor Angela Merkel attributed some of her own country’s decline in the second quarter to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, over which tit-for-tat sanctions threaten trade. The Munich-based Ifo, a research firm, echoed some of those sentiments as it reported its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 companies, fell to a worse-than-expected 106.3 from 108, the lowest level in more than a year. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
322:It is in the field of prayer that life's critical battles are lost or won. We must conquer all our circumstances there. We must first of all bring them there. We must survey them there. We must master them there. In prayer we bring our spiritual enemies into the Presence of God and we fight them there. Have you tried that? Or have you been satisfied to meet and fight your foes in the open spaces of the world? ~ John Henry Jowett, #NFDB
323:Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
324:The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. ...The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013. ~ Janet Yellen, #NFDB
325:Polls show that Americans significantly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. In November 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, on average, Americans believe that 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance, and more than 60 percent of people say that’s too much. But in reality we spend less than 1 percent of the budget on foreign aid. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
326:A 2005 survey of 12,000 adolescents found that those who had pledged to remain abstinent until marriage were more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens, less likely to use condoms, and just as likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases as their unapologetically non-abstinent peers. The study’s authors found that 88 percent of those who pledged abstinence admitted to failing to keep their pledge. ~ Christopher Ryan, #NFDB
327:The Research Excellence Framework is starting to ask what sorts of curiosity our culture can afford, and that scares me even more than the demise of the silly survey because it strikes at the heart of what it means to be civilised, to have instincts other than survival. If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn’t have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap. ~ David Mitchell, #NFDB
328:His book Witchcraft and the Shamanic Journey (formerly North Star Road) was one of the first works presented to mainstream pagan practitioners that overtly demonstrates the similarities between witchcraft and shamanism through a survey of cultures as diverse as the Norse and the Mayan. He is
also responsible for bringing greater awareness to Slavic magick and shamanism through his book Slavic Sorcery.
Two ~ Christopher Penczak,#NFDB
329:Telhami’s survey indicates that religious devotion to Israel isn’t primarily a Jewish thing. It’s a Christian thing. Among respondents who described themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, a 38 percent plurality cited religious or ethnic duty, rather than shared national values or interests, as their reason for siding with Israel. Among Jews, religious or ethnic duty was the least cited reason, at 24 percent. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
330:Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
False Eloquence, like the Prismatic Glass,
Its gawdy Colours spreads on ev’ry place;
The Face of Nature was no more Survey,
All glares alike, without Distinction gay:
But true Expression, like th’ unchanging Sun,
Clears, and improves whate’er it shines upon,
It gilds all Objects, but it alters none. ~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
331:If you are receptive and humble, mathematics will lead you by the hand. Again and again, when I have been at a loss how to proceed, I have just had to wait until I have felt the mathematics led me by the hand. It has led me along an unexpected path, a path where new vistas open up, a path leading to new territory, where one can set up a base of operations, from which one can survey the surroundings and plan future progress. ~ Paul Dirac, #NFDB
332:When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn’t any). ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
333:One of many problems with survey research in general is that you can only survey the survivors. In other words, if you were to do a survey of people who were known to have played Russian Roulette and you sent out the questions before the time they were going to play and then you come back six months after they played Russian Roulette, you would probably discover that among the people who did come back there was no harm done. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
334:more than a good book; it’s an urgently necessary one.” —Time “An encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “If you haven’t read the bestselling, superb biography and inspiring business book, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, do so. . . . [A] masterpiece.” —Steve Forbes, Forbes “The ability of Isaacson to write books that ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
335:Haven’t you ever watched ants struggling with a load too big for them? How much did you care? Even if, like God, you marked the fall of every sparrow, you might simply be conducting a survey or expressing colossal boredom, like the people who delight in measuring things. ~ Mildred Clingerman "Birds Can't Count" (Originally published at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (February, 1955) and reprinted in her collection A Cupful of Space), #NFDB
336:By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature--for instance in a biological survey of evolution--we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer. ~ Owen Barfield, #NFDB
337:Riding a wave of interest in technology, Stanford University has become America’s “it” school, by measures that Harvard once dominated. Stanford has had the nation’s lowest undergraduate acceptance rate for two years in a row; in five of the last six years, it has topped the Princeton Review survey asking high school seniors to name their “dream college”; and year in and year out, it raises more money from donors than any other university. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
338:The next day, the 30th of March, after a hasty breakfast, which consisted solely of the roasted tragopan, the engineer wished to climb again to the summit of the volcano, so as more attentively to survey the island upon which he and his companions were imprisoned for life perhaps, should the island be situated at a great distance from any land, or if it was out of the course of vessels which visited the archipelagoes of the Pacific Ocean. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
339:According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon's demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance. ~ Gary Kleck, #NFDB
340:Another statistical survey, of 7,948 students at forty-eight colleges, was conducted by social scientists from Johns Hopkins University. Their preliminary report is part of a two-year study sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. Asked what they considered “very important” to them now, 16 percent of the students checked “making a lot of money”; 78 percent said their first goal was “finding a purpose and meaning to my life. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
341:there were many occasions on which I had to skim as rapidly as I could to get through those survey courses that gave us two weeks to finish Don Quixote, ten days for War and Peace, courses designed to produce college graduates who could say they’d read the classics. By then I knew enough to regret reading those books that way. And I promised myself that I would revisit them as soon as I could give them the time and attention they deserved. ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
342:But his graduate advisor, the eminent poverty scholar William Julius Wilson, promptly sent Venkatesh into the field. His assignment: to visit Chicago’s poorest black neighborhoods with a clipboard and a seventy-question, multiple-choice survey. This was the first question on the survey: How do you feel about being black and poor? a. Very bad b. Bad c. Neither bad nor good d. Somewhat good e. Very good ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
343:As a Mark brand ambassador, I became extremely cognizant of the devastating statistics about dating abuse and partner violence via the mPowerment campaign and knew I wanted to help change those statistics. mPowerment by Mark and the Avon Foundation for Women funded the No More study, which explored dating abuse, partner violence, and sexual assault. I was honored to be part of it and report the results of the survey in a Capitol Hill briefing. ~ Ashley Greene, #NFDB
344:Oh, please, no. The tag was a six-moon survey permit for Encantada, a cluster world at the edge of the Han System. It was the kind of tag a xenobioform engineer would need among a crew exploring a new world. He'd seen one once before. Five years ago. When she had left him.
His balance faltered. Vision narrowed. The universe condensed to a name, printed above the tag code.
Mica Sol. Once his. Forever his only.
He could've killed her... ~ Erin Kellison,#NFDB
345:First coming aboard, a new arrival makes a cautious survey of the crew, trying to winnow the affable and good-natured from the surly and truculent. Some of the crewmen will seem easygoing, happy-go-lucky, good-fellows-all; others may appear to be reserved or even aloof. Yet I found that at the end of a voyage these aloof ones were often the persons whom I grew to like and respect the most, while those who seemed so agreeable turned out to be rascals. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
346:Financial literacy is not an end in itself, but a step-by-step process. It begins in childhood and continues throughout a person's life all the way to retirement. Instilling the financial-literacy message in children is especially important, because they will carry it for the rest of their lives. The results of the survey are very encouraging, and we want to do our part to make sure all children develop and strengthen their financial-literacy skills. ~ George Karl, #NFDB
347:Sometimes I imagine that writing is a survey I carry out, asking everyone I encounter, in reality or in fiction: How much of your life is lived to be known by others? To be understood? How much of your life is lived to know and understand others? But like all surveys the questions are simplifications. How much does one trust others to be known, to be understood; how much does one believe in the possibilities of one person’s knowing and understanding another. ~ Yiyun Li, #NFDB
348:There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites—by far the highest number in the survey—report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents’. ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
349:To Newcastle
I met a man the other dayA kindly man, and seriousWho viewed me in a thoughtful way,
And spoke me so, and spoke me thus:
"Oh, dallying's a sad mistake;
'Tis craven to survey the morrow!
Go give your heart, and if it breakA wise companion is Sorrow.
"Oh, live, my child, nor keep your soul
To crowd your coffin when you're dead...."
I asked his work; he dealt in coal,
And shipped it up the Tyne, he said.
~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
350:The thing may sound absurd to you, but you can do it if you will: standing back, as it were, from the vague and purposeless reactions in which most men fritter their vital energies. Then you can survey with a certain calm, a certain detachment, your universe and the possibilities of life within it: can discern too, if you be at all inclined to mystical adventure, the stages of the road along which you must pass on your way towards harmony with the Real. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
351:...he is thinking about thoughts; so many thoughts piled up, such a quantity of half-remembered knowledge, so many emotions brought up from the well to spill out: the unrolling of history - a river into which you can't step twice, a collection of biographies end to end, a hilltop to survey the surrounding plains and so on - but also, more so, the anxieties prompted by the spooling of time and the awareness of its unstoppable nature; and random thoughts... ~ Justin Cartwright, #NFDB
352:Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
353:Ordnance Survey maps in all their shapes and sizes are the most beautiful manifestation of twentieth-century British functional design. Ever since I can remember, I have spent stolen moments, wasted evenings and secret hours studying the mystery and beauty of the Ordnance Survey maps of these islands. The concrete trig points that had originally been used in their creation became almost as powerful in mystical properties for me as standing stones. ˜ Bill Drummond, ~ Mike Parker, #NFDB
354:They found a city steaming with heat—91 degrees on Tuesday, April 27, with four days yet to go until “Straw Hat Day,” Saturday, May 1, when a man could at last break out his summer hats. Men followed this rule. A Times reporter did an impromptu visual survey of Broadway and spotted only two straw hats. “Thousands of sweltering, uncomfortable men plodded along with their winter headgear at all angles on their uncomfortable heads or carried in their hot, moist hands. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
355:When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist—and only 42 percent of British women—I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of “liberation for women” is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? “Vogue,” by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY? ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
356:On February 17, Obama signed the Recovery Act into law. It had squeaked through Congress with only three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. Five years later, a survey of leading American economists chosen for their ideological diversity and eminence in the field, taken by the Initiative on Global Markets, a project run by the University of Chicago, found nearly unanimous consensus that the Recovery Act had achieved its goal of reducing unemployment. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
357:Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that “While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages.” Liberals — even upper-income liberals — are a third less likely to say this. ~ Arthur C Brooks, #NFDB
358:When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42 percent of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY? ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
359:Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble,' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings - every bit of it. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
360:The economic and marketing forces of modern society have engineered an environment promoting decisions that maximize consumption at the long-term cost of well-being,” one survey of these studies, from the Journal of Affective Disorders in 2012, concluded. "In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
361:We learn, for example, that French children are hardly perfect. They have sleep issues and food issues (including picky eating), and when they’re not being schooled in good manners by their parents (nearly half of whom admitted in a 2007 survey to using corporal punishments ranging from a slap on the face to severe beating) they can be downright obnoxious. In fact, a 2011 study ranked them among the world’s worst-behaved schoolchildren, fifth from the bottom on a list of 66 countries. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
362:No adversity is in kind or degree peculiar to us; but if we survey the conditions of other men (of our brethren everywhere, of our neighbours all about us), and compare our case with theirs, we shall find that we have many consorts and associates in adversity, most as ill, many far worse bestead than ourselves; whence it must be a great fondness and perverseness to be displeased that we are not exempted from, but exposed to bear a share in the common troubles and burdens of mankind. ~ Isaac Barrow, #NFDB
363:Global warming activists claim a serious public concern presently exists and the overwhelming majority of scientists agrees humans are creating a global warming crisis. The survey of AMS meteorologists, however, shows no such overwhelming majority exists. Indeed, to the extent we can assign a majority scientific opinion to whether all the necessary components of a global warming crisis exist, the AMS survey shows the majority does not agree humans are creating a global warming crisis. ~ James Taylor, #NFDB
364:The survey of more than 100 waterways downstream from treatment plants and animal feedlots in 30 states found minute amounts of dozens of antibiotics, hormones, pain relievers, cough suppressants, disinfectants and other products. It is not known whether they are harmful to plants, animals or people. The findings were released yesterday on the Web site of the United States Geological Survey, which conducted the research, and in an online journal, Environmental Science and Technology. ~ Andrew Revkin, #NFDB
365:In 2010, UCLA researchers conducted a survey of more than 25,000 people ages 18–75 and found that the majority rated their own attractiveness as about a seven out of ten. This suggests that the average person thinks he is a little better looking than the average person. About a third of the people under 30 rated themselves as somewhere around a nine. That sort of confidence is fun to think about considering that it is impossible for everyone to be better-looking than half the population. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
366:None of these drawings show crowds, of course, though the crowd is surely the signature sight of the city. Instead they focus on the experience of isolation: of people alone or in awkward, uncommunicative couples. It’s the same limited and voyeuristic view that Alfred Hitchcock would later subject James Stewart to in the Hopperesque Rear Window, a film that is likewise about the dangerous visual intimacy of urban living, of being able to survey strangers inside what were once private chambers. ~ Olivia Laing, #NFDB
367:1934 it became apparent that the Germans were swiftly rearming, the leader of the British Labour Party vowed “to close every recruiting station, disband the Army and disarm the Air Force,” and he got his candidate elected by saying so.7 The Peace Ballot, a national survey of public opinion, was distributed throughout Great Britain in 1935 and a majority of those polled stated that while they supported collective national security, they did so only “by all means short of war.” At a time when Hitler was ~ Winston Groom, #NFDB
368:Today it is not alive. What, then, is this experience of humanism? With the above survey I have tried to show you that the experience of humanism is that — as Terence expressed it — “Nothing human is alien to me”; that nothing which exists in any human being does not exist in myself. I am the criminal and I am the saint. I am the child and I am the adult. I am the man who lived a hundred thousand years ago and I am the man who, provided we don't destroy the human race, will live hundred thousand years from now. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
369:Dr. Spencer Eth, who ran the psychiatry department at the now-defunct St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, was curious where survivors had turned for help, and early in 2002, together with some medical students, he conducted a survey of 225 people who had escaped from the Twin Towers. Asked what had been most helpful in overcoming the effects of their experience, the survivors credited acupuncture, massage, yoga, and EMDR, in that order.1 Among rescue workers, massages were particularly popular. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
370:What is forever,' I asked. . . . Forever, it appeared, was a word made up by adults so they would not have to think about endings. . . . A friend who is an attorney told me not that long ago that a recent national survey of legal documents shows that 'forever' lasts about thirty years on average. But, if forever can mean until governments fall or lose interest, what does 700 million years mean when the whole history of governments, the very idea of governments, is subsumed into inconsequence by that span of time? ~ Sue Hubbell, #NFDB
371:Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It's unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
372:Fox News gets to the heart of the Zombie Reagan story:
Well, Jeremy, of course on line polls are not at all scientific, in fact they’re pretty much completely bogus and in this case it’s one that was made up on the spot by a high school student, but we all know that misleading non-information is always better than dead air, so here goes. The earliest survey taken since the rather startling resurrection of the former president is looking awfully good for the challenger and awfully not good for President Obama. ~ John Barnes,#NFDB
373:For a number of years, professors at Duke University conducted a survey in which the chief financial officers of large corporations estimated the returns of the Standard & Poor’s index over the following year. The Duke scholars collected 11,600 such forecasts and examined their accuracy. The conclusion was straightforward: financial officers of large corporations had no clue about the short-term future of the stock market; the correlation between their estimates and the true value was slightly less than zero! ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
374:When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.19 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
375:When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
376:They say the full potential of the human being is called enlightenment, which is infinite consciousness, infinite happiness, zero negativity, zero dying, complete freedom, total fulfillment, and being at one with everything. You can say it's God realization, or you can say you sit at the feet of the Lord as master of all you survey. You could say it's totality, total knowledge, and that you are that totality. This is every human being's birthright: to one day enjoy supreme enlightenment, unity. It's like the big graduation. ~ David Lynch, #NFDB
377:Whilst I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry? It is among the finest inventions of the human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
378:Not only have the country's two main political parties split further apart on such issues, but political feeling also runs deeper than it did in the past. In 1960, when a survey asked American adults whether it would "distrub" them if their child married a member of the other political party, no more than 5 percent of either party answered "yes." But in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 0 percent of Republicans answered "yes." In fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild, #NFDB
379:In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT, suggests that, in the last fifteen years, our tools have begun to shape us and our connection with others, so that we now “expect more from technology and less from each other.” Turkle analyzes detailed interviews with technology users and conducts formal studies on the impact of robots on them. Her studies examine a moving target. A 2010 Nielsen survey reported that the average teen sends more than three thousand text messages a month, and this surely will increase. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
380:The murder of poor Albert Snyder had one other unusual feature: the people responsible were caught. That didn’t actually happen much in America in the 1920s. New York recorded 372 murders in 1927; in 115 of those cases no one was arrested. Where arrests were made, the conviction rate was less than 20 percent. Nationally, according to a survey made by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company—and it is notable that the best records were kept by insurers, not police authorities—two-thirds of America’s murders were unsolved in 1927. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
381:Many feel a civic obligation to pay church tax, up to 1.5 per cent of their salary depending on the municipality, as though this is just another tax that must be paid to keep Denmark the great nation that it is. As a result, the country has a Lutheran state church financed via taxes, but only 28 per cent of Danes believe in any kind of life after death, according to a survey by the country’s Palliative Knowledge Centre (in the US it’s 81 per cent). Just 16 per cent believe in heaven (the figure rises to 88 per cent in the US). ~ Helen Russell, #NFDB
382:If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity. A survey of Hindus, Muslims, and Jews around the world would surely yield similar results, revealing that we, as a species, have grown almost perfectly intoxicated by our myths. How is it that, in this one area of our lives, we have convinced ourselves that our beliefs about the world can float entirely free of reason and evidence? ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
383:The question: where to build such a dam? An initial survey selected a site in an area known as Boulder Canyon, south of Las Vegas. Twenty-five years later, at the outset of the Great Depression, the proposed dam became a possibility with congressional authorization of the “Boulder Canyon Project.” A more detailed analysis showed that Black Canyon, a few miles downstream from Boulder Canyon, had more stable bedrock to support the estimated 7 million tons of concrete that was to be the single largest structure in human history. ~ Jerry Borrowman, #NFDB
384:PRAISE FOR WALTER ISAACSON’S Steve Jobs “This biography is essential reading.” —The New York Times, Holiday Gift Guide “A superbly told story of a superbly lived life.” —The Wall Street Journal “Enthralling.” —The New Yorker “A frank, smart and wholly unsentimental biography . . . a remarkably sharp, hi-res portrait . . . Steve Jobs is more than a good book; it’s an urgently necessary one.” —Time “An encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves.” —Janet Maslin, The ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
385:That I had never heard of such a bird did not surprise me.... But others more experienced also did not know of the Carolina Parakeet. The more I spoke of the bird, the more it seemed that, somehow, its existence had been a chimera. Admittedly, my survey was small and unscientific, but intelligent people who could reel off the names of various dinosaurs and identify sparrows at epic distances could not name the forgotten parakeet. I realized, forcefully, what I suppose I knew abstractly: Histories, like species, can go extinct. ~ Christopher Cokinos, #NFDB
386:No,” Oort said simply. He took off his glasses (Ultraviolet didn’t wear glasses, but it appeared that Englishblokeman did) and cleaned them on the hem of his blazer, shaking his head briskly. “Nope. Incorrect. Bzzzzt. Try again. Not you, not here, not now. I refuse. I disagree. Unsubscribe. Survey says: absolutely not. I 100 percent reject this, and I would like to speak to a supervisor about exchanging the entire situation for something in better condition. This is shit, I won’t be a part of it, you can’t make me. Nil points. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
387:Well for everyone to make a study of astrology for, as indicated, while many individuals have set about to prove the astrological aspects and astrological survey enable one to determine future as well as the past conditions, these are well to the point where the individual understands that these act upon individuals because of their sojourn or correlation of their associations with the environs through which these are shown - see? Rather than the star directing the life, the life of the individual directs the courses of the stars, see? ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
388:If you are receptive and humble, mathematics will lead you by the hand. Again and again, when I have been at a loss how to proceed, I have just had to wait until I have felt the mathematics led me by the hand. It has led me along an unexpected path, a path where new vistas open up, a path leading to new territory, where one can set up a base of operations, from which one can survey the surroundings and plan future progress. ~ Paul Dirac, As quoted in The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (2009) by Graham Farmelo, p. 435, #NFDB
389:We have already shown by references to the contemporary drama that the plea of custom is not sufficient to explain Shakespeare’s attitude to the lower classes, but if we widen our survey to the entire field of English letters in his day, we shall see that he was running counter to all the best traditions of our literature. From the time of Piers Plowman down, the peasant had stood high with the great writers of poetry and prose alike. Chaucer’s famous circle of story-tellers at the Tabard Inn in Southwark was eminently democratic. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
390:Well, I can understand that that must be very comfortable, for if you don't care for anybody or anything you can't be cast into dejection, or become sick with apprehension, or even get into high fidgets. On the other hand, I shouldn't think you could ever be aux anges either. It wouldn't do for me: it would be too flat!" She turned her head to survey him again, and suddenly smiled. "I daresay that is why you are so bored!"
"I am frequently bored," he acknowledged. "Nevertheless, I -er- contrive to keep myself tolerably well amused! ~ Georgette Heyer,#NFDB
391:We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY? ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
392:But isn’t a life based on seeking personal happiness by nature self-centered, even self-indulgent? Not necessarily. In fact, survey after survey has shown that it is unhappy people who tend to be most self-focused and are often socially withdrawn, brooding, and even antagonistic. Happy people, in contrast, are generally found to be more sociable, flexible, and creative and are able to tolerate life’s daily frustrations more easily than unhappy people. And, most important, they are found to be more loving and forgiving than unhappy people. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
393:Once the whittling process was complete, Tom needed to find out roughly how many people were interested in each discussion topic so that he could plan the day accordingly. To that end, the Notes Day Working Group circulated a survey, and what he learned was striking: The number one topic—the one that the most people wanted to talk about—was how to achieve a 12,000 person-week movie. In the end, Tom and his team would arrange seven separate 90-minute sessions on this topic alone. The people who signed up for these sessions weren’t martyrs. The ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
394:It is held to be unsuited to the preeminence of reason that beings who are gifted with it, who through it encompass and survey an infinitude of things and circumstances, should by the present and by the incidents contained in the few years of so brief, fleeting, and uncertain a life, be nonetheless prey to such intense pains, such great fear and suffering as arise from the tumultuous press of desire and avoidance, and supposed that proper application of reason should be able to lift a person up out of all that, to render him invulnerable. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
395:Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy. ~ Roderick Murchison, #NFDB
396:Total retail sales rose 0.7 percent in November, as holiday shopping began, and that came despite a sharp tumble in gasoline prices that reduced the dollar value of sales at gas stations by 0.8 percent. Analysts had expected a rise of only 0.4 percent. Read narrowly, the results show that some survey data suggesting weak post-Thanksgiving Black Friday sales was misleading at best; retail trade groups said at the time that they believed consumers spread their spending more evenly through November than they have in the past, and that appears to hold up. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
397:In her book For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn revealed the results of a professional survey of men that asked this question: With regard to sex, for some men it is sufficient to be sexually gratified whenever they want. For other men it is also important to feel wanted and desired by their wife. How important is it to you to also feel sexually wanted and desired by your wife?5 Feldhahn wrote: This topic earned the highest degree of unanimity of any question: 97 percent of men said “getting enough sex” wasn’t, by itself, enough—they wanted to feel wanted. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
398:One summer in Peter’s home state, Minnesota, he worked as a puppeteer with a mobile puppet stage. He’d hitch the puppet wagon to his car and drive from park to park, entertaining kids. One day the hitch came loose and the wagon tipped over, scattering puppets all across County Road C. The police arrived to survey the scene. “The paperwork on this is going to take a while,” one of them said. Peter, nervous he was going to be late to his next gig, asked why. The cop nodded at the scattered puppet bodies. “We’ve got a lot of casualties here,” he deadpanned. ~ Lauren Graham, #NFDB
399:Additional federal studies are under way to see if any contamination reaches taps or ground water used for drinking, but the program under which they are conducted, the toxic substances hydrology program of the geological survey, is slated to be eliminated under budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration, government officials said... estrogens and similar compounds are increasingly the focus of research by the Environmental Protection Agency and many scientists because of hints that they alter sexual characteristics in fish and other aquatic species. ~ Andrew Revkin, #NFDB
400:This was among Johnson’s most early attainments, for his was not that mere “lip-wisdom which wants experience.” He was not the recluse scholar, unacquainted with the world and its ways, but he could from actual survey describe, with equal fidelity, those who sparkled in the highest order of society, and those who struggled with distress in the lower walks of life. His study was peculiarly man: and his comprehensive and generalizing mind led him to analyze the primary elements of human nature, rather than nicely to pourtray the shades of mixed character. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
401:There are two processes which we adopt consciously or unconsciously when we try to prophesy. We can seek a period in the past whose conditions resemble as closely as possible those of our day, and presume that the sequel to that period will, save for some minor alterations, be similar. Secondly, we can survey the general course of development in our immediate past, and endeavor to prolong it into the near future. The first is the method the historian; the second that of the scientist. Only the second is open to us now, and this only in a partial sphere. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
402:In all our academies we attempt far too much. ... In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
403:The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. ~ Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, #NFDB
404:The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. ~ Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar, #NFDB
405:[W]e go carefully, for cartography itself is not a neutral activity. The drawing of maps is full of colonial echoes. The civilised eye seeks to view the world from above, as something we can stand over and survey. The Uncivilised writer knows the world is, rather, something we are enmeshed in – a patchwork and a framework of places, experiences, sights, smells, sounds. Maps can lead, but can also mislead. Our maps must be the kind sketched in the dust with a stick, washed away by the next rain. They can be read only by those who ask to see them, and they cannot be bought. ~ Paul Kingsnorth, #NFDB
406:Mortgages 18-month low for loan rates The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell this week to 3.89 percent, an 18-month low, from 3.97 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac’s survey of lenders. The average for a 15-year fixed-rate home loan fell to 3.1 percent from 3.17 percent. Initial rates for adjustable mortgages also eased, Freddie Mac said Thursday in its widely watched weekly report. Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft said “underwhelming” economic news was a factor in depressing rates. Home sales and job growth have been weaker than expected, he said. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
407:Checking Interviewers During normal survey conditions, one should look out for major differences between the results obtained by different interviewers. If it is obvious that these differences arise from the fact that they have been interviewing people in different locations with people from different lifestyles and backgrounds, then all may be well. But if interviewers are mostly interviewing people drawn at random from the same universe, their results should be broadly similar. If they are not it can be an indication that one or more of the interviewers are biasing the responses. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
408:A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ
Survey the whole nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves and rapture warms the mind,
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight
The generous pleasure to be charmed with wit
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold and regularly low
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep;
We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not the exactness of peculiar parts,
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, ~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
409:The Pew Economic Mobility Project studied how Americans evaluated their chances at economic betterment, and what they found was shocking. There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites—by far the highest number in the survey—report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents’. In ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
410:In Craig Blomberg’s survey of the Mosaic laws of gleaning, releasing, tithing, and the Jubilee, he concludes that the Biblical attitude toward wealth and possessions does not fit into any of the normal categories of democratic capitalism, or of traditional monarchial feudalism, or of state socialism. The rules for the use of land in the Biblical laws challenge all major contemporary economic models. They “suggest a sharp critique of 1) the statism that disregards the precious treasure of personal rootage, and 2) the untrammeled individualism which secures individuals at the expense of community.”38 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
411:Secondly, bank representatives were observed to exaggerate and misrepresent Know Your Customer (KYC) documentation requirements. We find that 83% of banks required the investigator to bring his PAN Card as primary ID proof, despite the fact that only formal sector employees tend to possess such documentation and that a PAN card is only one of the six acceptable ID proof under KYC norms at the time of the survey. Furthermore, our investigators were required to submit a letter of introduction from a current account-holder in 11 out of the 42 banks (26%), despite presenting complete identity and address proof. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
412:So in addition to being overly reliant on politicians, blacks typically have poor political representation. “Pollsters have long known of the remarkable gap between the leaders and the led in black America,” wrote Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. A 1985 survey found that most blacks favored the death penalty and prayer in public schools while most black leaders opposed these things. Most blacks opposed school busing, while most black leaders favored it. Three times as many blacks opposed abortion rights as their leaders did. Indeed, on many key social issues, blacks are more conservative than whites.31 ~ Jason L Riley, #NFDB
413:The Caucasus mountain range is probably the most variegated ethnological and linguistic area in the world. It is not a melting pot, as has been said, but a refuge area par excellence where small groups have maintained their identity throughout history. The descendants of the Mediaeval Alans, a Scythic Iranian people, live in the north Caucasus today and are called Ossetes. Iranian cultural influences were strong among the Armenians, Georgians and other peoples of the Caucasus and many times in history large parts of this area were under Persian rule. So it well deserves to be mentioned in a survey of Iran. ~ Richard Nelson Frye, #NFDB
414:There was little sense in attempting anything like subtlety, so I donned my bottle green spectacles, focused my supernatural senses, and began a slow survey of the entire place. The energy known as magic exists on a broad spectrum, much like light. Just as light can be split into its colors by a sufficient prism, magical energy can be more clearly distinguished by using the proper tools. The spectacles gave me a chance to view the energy swirling around the crowded room. It was strongly influenced by the presence of human emotion, and various colors had gathered around individuals according to their current humor. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
415:I’ll kill him for you.”
He sounded so sincere, and so accepting of her dysfunctional childhood, that a smile bloomed in Priss’s heart. “Thank you.” She drew him down to her for a longer kiss, one he gladly accepted. “That’s sweet of you, but no.”
His eyes narrowed. “Sweet? I offer to kill a man and you think it’s sweet?”
“You wanted to kill him anyway. And so do I.” The hard on his chest fascinated her, so she concentrated on that. “You’ve never come right out and said so, but I’ve known for a while that you’re a good guy, Trace.”
He gave her a cautious survey. “I’m not sure that accurately describes me. ~ Lori Foster,#NFDB
416:The earliest modern attempt to test prayer’s efficacy was Sir Francis Galton’s innovative but flawed survey in 1872.16 The field languished until the 1960s, when several researchers began clinical and laboratory studies designed to answer two fundamental questions: (1) Do the prayerful, compassionate, healing intentions of humans affect biological functions in remote individuals who may be unaware of these efforts? (2) Can these effects be demonstrated in nonhuman processes, such as microbial growth, specific biochemical reactions, or the function of inanimate objects? The answer to both questions appears to be yes. ~ Ervin Laszlo, #NFDB
417:By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. Therefore, we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable. The basis for any predictions would be represented by biological, psychological or sociological conditions. Yet one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above
such conditions, to grow beyond them.
Man is capable of changing the world for the
better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
418:The most powerful reason given for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that they saved the lives of those who would have died in an invasion of Japan. But the official report of the Strategic Bombing Survey, which interrogated seven hundred Japanese officials right after the war, concluded that the Japanese were on the verge of surrender and would “certainly” have ended the war by December of 1945 even if the bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even without an invasion of Japan. Furthermore, the United States, having broken the Japanese code, knew the Japanese were on the verge of surrender. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
419:Their career goals are very different than those of previous generations. Unlike Baby Boomers or Gen Xers, Millennials don’t see “climbing the career ladder” as the ultimate goal. They want more than a paycheck. They want mentorship and meaning. Survey after survey shows young workers don’t feel an attachment to their employers as their parents did. They dislike structured hierarchies and wish to be part of communities with shared interests and passions. They don’t want to be managed; they want to be inspired. Leaders like Kat Cole motivate young workers because those employees can see themselves in her identity story. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
420:Customers want to make educated purchasing decisions. In one study, 54% of consumers said they wanted knowledgeable store associates more than any other service offering.Yet, more than half (59%) of those surveyed believed themselves to be more knowledgeable than the person paid to be there. 10 The significant distrust in the level of expertise for brand or retail employees, as this survey indicates, is a serious issue and one that retailers must combat. Retailers who position themselves as thought leaders or offer educated and informative information to consumers will have a greater opportunity to gain the trust of consumers ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
421:The survey revealed, in areas quite close to known and even famous and well-visited Mayan sites such as Tikal, more than 60,000 previously unsuspected ancient houses, palaces, defensive walls, fortresses, and other structures as well as quarries, elevated highways connecting urban centers, and complex irrigation and terracing systems that would have been capable of supporting intensive agriculture. Previously scholars had believed that only scattered city-states had existed in an otherwise sparsely populated region, but the Lidar images make it clear, [...] that 'scale and population density had been grossly underestimated. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
422:Each month Cohn brought Trump the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, called JOLTS, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He realized he was being an asshole by rubbing it in because each month was basically the same, but he didn’t care. “Mr. President, can I show this to you?” Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president. “See, the biggest leavers of jobs—people leaving voluntarily—was from manufacturing.” “I don’t get it,” Trump said. Cohn tried to explain: “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay? ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
423:In our hunger for guidance, we were ordinary. The American Freshman Survey, which has followed students since 1966, proves the point. One prompt in the questionnaire asks entering freshmen about “objectives considered to be essential or very important.” In 1967, 86 percent of respondents checked “developing a meaningful philosophy of life,” more than double the number who said “being very well off financially.” Naturally, students looked to professors for moral and worldly understanding. Since then, though, finding meaning and making money have traded places. The first has plummeted to 45 percent; the second has soared to 82 percent. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
424:Nature is not infinite in its resources and not all organisms that are born can survive. When conditions are difficult, parents, especially mothers, must decide who is most likely to survive—including future potential children who may fare better when conditions are better—and sacrifice the rest. Daly and Wilson’s survey turned up these reasons for infanticide: disease, deformity, weakness, a twin when parents have only enough resources for one, an older sibling too close in age for resources to support both, hard economic times, no father to help raise the child, or because the infant was fathered by a different sexual partner. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
425:So designing spreadable value units is a crucial step toward virality. A spreadable value unit may be one that helps to start an interaction on an external network, the way Instagram photos create conversations on Facebook among users intrigued by the images they’ve seen. Or it may create the opportunity to complete an incomplete interaction, the way an unanswered question on Quora demands social feedback in the form of an answer, or a fresh survey on Survey-Monkey invites responses. Making it easy for users to create and disseminate spreadable value units helps you build a platform that has high growth as well as high engagement. ~ Geoffrey G Parker, #NFDB
426:As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the postwar decades. In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely he was to choose an interesting career at a reasonable wage over a job that would merely pay well. Today's schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
427:As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism’s traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the postwar decades. In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely he was to choose an interesting career at a reasonable wage over a job that would merely pay well.4 Today’s schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
428:Vaughn?” she inquired. “One of them. Neil. It’s a family business.” Winsome and Gerry showed their warrant cards and Neil Vaughn invited them inside. The side of an old cardboard box served as a doormat, and they wiped their feet as best they could without reducing it to shreds. Vaughn seemed to be the only person around. After he asked them to sit down, he returned to a desk littered with papers and swiveled his chair to face them. The inside of the trailer was bleak, as such places usually are, and on the pasteboard walls were hung with a girlie calendar curling at the edges, a large chart with written-in squares and an Ordnance Survey ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
429:Wollard looked up from his papers to survey the assembled staff. He had walked in looking at the floor and launched into the greeting immediately. Now, he took a moment to select his next words. “Why are there multiple people missing?” he asked. Kreet raised his hand and said, “Aren’t you supposed to start your question with query?” Wollard regarded Kreet silently, raising an impatient eyebrow. Kreet grimaced, then said, “Query.” “Recognized.” “Aren’t you supposed to start a question with query?” “You’re supposed to. I, as the chair of the meeting, have the power to ask questions at will, as long as they are pertinent to the matter at hand. ~ Scott Meyer, #NFDB
430:Then there’s the issue of cognitive capacity. Deep work is exhausting because it pushes you toward the limit of your abilities. Performance psychologists have extensively studied how much such efforts can be sustained by an individual in a given day.* In their seminal paper on deliberate practice, Anders Ericsson and his collaborators survey these studies. They note that for someone new to such practice (citing, in particular, a child in the early stages of developing an expert-level skill), an hour a day is a reasonable limit. For those familiar with the rigors of such activities, the limit expands to something like four hours, but rarely more. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
431:It was not until 2014, more than two decades after the mastodon's discovery [a mastodon scavenged by humans in the Americas], that the tide decisively turned. Built on improved understanding of processes that incorporate natural uranium and its decay products in fossil bone, a newly enhanced technique, known as 230 Th/U radiometric dating, was now available that could settle the age of the Cerutti deposit once and for all. Deméré therefore sent several of the mastodon bones to the US Geological Survey in Colorado, where geologist Jim Paces, using the updated and refined technique, established beyond reasonable doubt that the bones were buried 130,000 years ago. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
432:So what do they do with their hands? Curiously, the most popular image of the listening psychoanalyst ascribes a notepad to them. When the New York department store Macy’s staged a window display of a psychoanalyst’s office in the 1950s, complete with patient on the couch, the analyst was depicted taking notes. Yet at that time this was by no means a habitual practice, and Edmund Bergler would swiftly publish an article about the myth of the note-taking analyst. Freud had advised against it, and in fact, a survey of analytic literature up to the present day shows that the single most common recorded practice for the listening psychoanalyst is not note-taking but knitting. ~ Darian Leader, #NFDB
433:Patrick Kirch concludes: “By the time of initial contact with Europeans, Hawaiians had taken the older Polynesian concepts of chiefship and rank, and subjected them to a form of hypertrophy, the logical extension of which was that their rulers, their kings, were now held to be divine. This was not simply a quantitative extension of the Ancestral Polynesian ranking system; it was truly a qualitative change by which Hawaiian society had entered a new realm.”138 It appears that nearly all other archaic states experienced the same qualitative change to the extreme forms of inequality that Kirch describes for the Hawaiian kingdoms. Based on his survey of seven early civilizations, ~ Peter Turchin, #NFDB
434:I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time wit the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
435:Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! ~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
436:The academic literature on innovation and creativity is rich with subtle distinctions between innovations and inventions, between different modes of creativity: artistic, scientific, technological. I have deliberately chosen the broadest possible phrasing—good ideas—to suggest the cross-disciplinary vantage point I am trying to occupy. The good ideas in this survey range from software platforms to musical genres to scientific paradigms to new models for government. My premise is that there is as much value to be found in seeking the common properties across all these varied forms of innovation and creativity as there is value to be found in documenting the differences between them. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
437:Twelve months later, when the Iraq survey group, Blair’s inspectors of choice, couldn’t find the weapons either, he changed tack again. Speaking to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, he said: ‘I have to accept we haven’t found them and we may never find them, we don’t know what has happened to them . . . They could have been removed, they could have been hidden, they could have been destroyed.’ The evidential dance was now at full tilt. The lack of evidence for WMD in Iraq, according to Blair, was no longer because troops had not had enough time to find them, or because of the inadequacy of the inspectors: rather, it was because the Iraqi troops had spirited them out of existence. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
438:As we look back and survey the terrain to determine where we’ve been and where we are in relationship to where we’re going, we clearly see that we could not have gotten where we are without coming the way we came. There aren’t any other roads; there aren’t any shortcuts. There’s no way to parachute into this terrain. The landscape ahead is covered with the fragments of broken relationships of people who have tried. They’ve tried to jump into effective relationships without the maturity, the strength of character, to maintain them. But you just can’t do it; you simply have to travel the road. You can’t be successful with other people if you haven’t paid the price of success with yourself. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
439:The more suppressive view of free speech seems to be gaining currency more broadly, especially among younger Americans. According to the 2013 First Amendment Center annual survey, “This year there was a significant increase in those who claimed that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting individual rights.” The older you are, the less likely it is that you believe the First Amendment’s protections are too robust. Only 23 percent of people over sixty and 24 percent of those between forty-six and sixty hold that sentiment. But an astonishing 47 percent of eighteen- to thirty-year-olds say the First Amendment goes too far, and 44 percent of thirty-one- to forty-five-year-olds agree.43 ~ Kirsten Powers, #NFDB
440:A 1992 survey by the Center for Media and Public Affairs revealed that while 81 percent of the country as a whole felt that adultery was wrong, only 49 percent of Hollywood did. While only 4 percent of the country outside of Hollywood had no religious affiliation, 45 percent of Hollywood was areligious. While 76 percent of Americans believed that homosexual acts were wrong, only 20 percent of Hollywood did; while 59 percent of the American public was pro-choice, 97 percent of Hollywood was. As Schiffer stated, “We’re talking about those who by self-selection and ambition run the institutions of popular culture—in contrast to a traditional cultural elite defined by erudition, wisdom, and taste. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
441:When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have'...it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe." To be clear, this is the mayor. Upon reading this quote, I investigated, and can confirm that at the time of this interview he was not wearing one of those helmets that holds beers and has straws that go into your mouth. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
442:Pascal's scientific achievements, therefore, did not give him much confidence in the human condition. When he contemplated the immensity of the universe, he was scared stiff:
'When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quiet lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. ~ Karen Armstrong,#NFDB
443:Key survey results, which showed that Democrats were roughly twice as likely to have been diagnosed with a mental disorder as Republicans, included: post-traumatic stress disorder (Democrats 7.95 percent, Republicans 3.97 percent), ADD/ADHD (Democrats 9.13 percent, Republicans 3.97 percent), anxiety (Democrats 20.84 percent, Republicans 10.26 percent), depression (Democrats 34.43 percent, Republicans 23.51 percent). In fact, in every category polled – dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, Asperger’s/autism, depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, narcissistic personality disorder, anorexia, and bulimia – Democrats reported higher incidences than Republicans, except for dyslexia.37 Nevertheless, ~ David Kupelian, #NFDB
444:The ruined island contains special markers around the borders, to trick the radiation detectors the Silvers use to survey the old battlefields. This is how they protect it, the home of the Scarlet Guard. In Norta, at least. That’s what Farley said, hinting at more bases across the country. And soon, it will be the sanctuary of every Red refugee fleeing the king’s new punishments. Every building we pass looks decrepit, coated in ash and weeds, but upon closer inspection, there’s something much more. Footprints in the dust, a light in a window, the smell of cooking wafting up from a drain. People, Reds, have a city of their own right here, hiding in plain sight. Electricity is scarce but smiles are not. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
445:The Strategic Bombing Survey estimates that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man.” The fire storm at Dresden may have killed more people but not in so short a space of time. More than 100,000 men, women and children died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945; a million were injured, at least 41,000 seriously; a million in all lost their homes. Two thousand tons of incendiaries delivered that punishment—in the modern notation, two kilotons. But the wind, not the weight of bombs alone, created the conflagration, and therefore the efficiency of the slaughter was in some sense still in part an act of God. ~ Richard Rhodes, #NFDB
446:Without warning, a 9.5 Richter scale earthquake began just off the coast of California, near San Francisco. For the U.S. Geologic Survey, there had been no indications of a pending super quake. Seismic monitors were showing no activity for California for the previous six months, which had the scientists concerned, but they weren’t terribly worried about it. The shockwaves from the quake extended into San Francisco itself, but the scientists were shocked when it didn’t extend to Oakland, to any of the towns and cities south of the San Francisco International Airport, or anything from the Golden Gate Bridge northward. Unfortunately, the suddenness of the quake made it too late to warn the citizens of that city. ~ Cliff Ball, #NFDB
447:In a campaign comparable to modern-day corporate denial of climate change, big business and the legislators in its pocket brushed Powell’s analysis aside. Railroads were not about to capitulate to the geologist’s limited vision, and his plans as director of the U.S. Geological Survey to limit western settlement would be undermined by intense political attacks.21 James B. Power, land agent for the Northern Pacific—who had earlier admitted that Dakota was a “barren desert”—dismissed Powell as an elite intellectual, lacking the experience of “practical men.” “No reliance can be placed upon any of his statements as to the agricultural value of any country,” Power said.22 For good measure, he called the geologist “an ass. ~ Caroline Fraser, #NFDB
448:Dirty Jim
THERE was one little Jim,
'Tis reported of him,
And must be to his lasting disgrace,
That he never was seen
With hands at all clean,
Nor yet ever clean was his face.
His friends were much hurt
To see so much dirt,
And often they made him quite clean;
But all was in vain,
He got dirty again,
And not at all fit to be seen.
It gave him no pain
To hear them complain,
Nor his own dirty clothes to survey:
His indolent mind
No pleasure could find
In tidy and wholesome array.
The idle and bad,
Like this little lad,
May love dirty ways, to be sure;
But good boys are seen
To be decent and clean,
Although they are ever so poor.
~ Ann Taylor,#NFDB
449:The language of medicine, with its priorities of safety and survival, was taking over, again. Wilson pointed out angrily that even children are permitted to take more risks than the elderly. They at least get to have swings and jungle gyms. A survey of fifteen hundred assisting living facilities published in 2003 found that only 11 percent offered both privacy and sufficient services to allow frail people to remain in residence. The idea of assisted living as an alternative to nursing homes had all but died. Even the board of Wilson’s own company—having noted how many other companies were taking a less difficult and less costly direction—began questioning her standards and philosophy. She wanted to build smaller buildings, ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
450:While Lounging In A Chair
While lounging in a chair, I looked up at the ceiling
Where, teasing my imagination,
A circle hangs above the quiet lamp,
And spins just like a ghostly shadow.
Within the flicker there's a trace of autumn sunset:
As if, above the rooftop and the garden,
Unable to fly off, afraid to land,
Dark flocks of blackbirds circle. . .
No, it's not wings I hear, but hooves at the front gate!
I hear the trembling hands . . .
How chill the pallor of a lovely face!
How bitter parting's whisper! . .
Lost and in silence, I survey the distant road
Beyond the dimming garden,While the impatient flock of blackbirds,
Unsheltered, circles still.
~ Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet,#NFDB
451:once in a while, we do need a mapmaker who takes the time to survey the system, uncover hidden paths and powerful levers, and share what they learn with the team. Sometimes the mapmaker must endure solitude in search of discovery, but much of this work is social. Our systems are mostly people, which means our expertise is useless without empathy. And so we study users and interview stakeholders, just as Donella would advise. Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves. If it’s a piece of music or a whitewater rapid or a fluctuation in a commodity price, study its beat. If it’s a social system, watch it work. Learn its history. Ask people who’ve been around a long time to tell you what has happened.[17] As ~ Peter Morville, #NFDB
452:Indeed, today, more people than ever before see themselves as addicted or recovering from substance addiction: 1 in 10 American adults—more than 23 million people—said they’d kicked some type of drug or alcohol addiction in their lifetime, in a large national survey conducted in 2012. At least another 23 million currently suffer from some type of substance use disorder. That doesn’t even count the millions who consider themselves addicted to or recovering from behaviors like sex, gambling, or online activities—nor does it include food-related disorders. With the 2013 declaration by the American Medical Association that obesity, like addiction, is a disease, up to one in three Americans may now qualify due to their body weight. ~ Maia Szalavitz, #NFDB
453:SAFARI tents remain zipped, hotel pools are empty, game guides idle among lions and elephants. Tour operators across Africa are reporting the biggest drop in business in living memory. A specialist travel agency, SafariBookings.com, says a survey of 500 operators in September showed a fall in bookings of between 20% and 70%. Since then the trend has accelerated, especially in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. Several American and European agents have stopped offering African tours for the time being. The reason is the outbreak of the Ebola virus in west Africa, which has killed more than 5,000 people. The epidemic is taking place far from the big safari destinations in eastern and southern Africa—as far or farther than the ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
454:A recent UN survey found that agroecology projects in fifty-seven countries have increased crop yields an average of 80 percent, with some being pushed up to 116 percent. One of the most successful of those is the push-pull system, developed to help Kenyan maize farmers deal with pestilence, invasive parasitic weeds, and poor soil conditions. Without getting too technical, push-pull is an intercropping system in which farmers plant specific plants between rows of corn. Some plants release odors that insects find unpleasant. (They “push” insects away.) Others, like sticky molasses grass, “pull” the insects in, acting as a kind of natural flypaper. Using this simple process, farmers have increased crop yields by 100 to 400 percent. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
455:Petra Ral, 10 kills, 48 assists. Oluo Bozado, 39 kills, 9 assists. Eld Jinn, 14 kills, 32 assists. Gunther Schultz, 7 kills, 40 assists. "Come back home alive, and you're a full-fledged member," is the common view in the Survey Corps... but *those people* have lived through hell again and again, producing results all the way. They've learned how to live... When facing a titan, you never know enough. Think all you want. A lot of the time, you're going into a situation you know nothing about. So what you need is to be quick to act... and make tough decisions in worst-case scenarios. Still, that doesn't mean they've got no heart. Even when they had their weapons pointed at you, they had strong feelings. However... they have no regrets. ~ Hajime Isayama, #NFDB
456:We need to return from the self-centred concept of sincerity to the other-centred concept of truth. We are not isolated free choosers, monarchs of all we survey, but benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy. Our current picture of freedom encourages a dream-like facility; whereas what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being; it is through an enriching and deepening of concepts that moral progress takes place. Simone Weil said that morality was a matter of attention not of will. We need a new vocabulary of attention. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
457:I HAVE to stay here. I simply have to. To be honest, too much of my identity comes from possessing this space. As my job used to define me, living here’s all I have left. This apartment makes it OK that I can’t buy Prada’s newest anymore. I can be content going on lousy interviews and begging for positions that pay half of what I used to earn as long as I know at the end of the day my glorious penthouse awaits. The minute I climb into my Jacuzzi tub, all the day’s unpleasantness is rinsed down the drain. When I step onto my deck and survey the city, I feel like anything is possible. This apartment keeps me centered; it keeps me sane. Without this place, I’m just another nobody from Indiana with a worthless state college degree. Before ~ Jen Lancaster, #NFDB
458:Is there any chance the tutor is, you know, gay?” I held my breath, waiting for his answer.
“What, like I hand out a survey?” He laughed when I blinked, worried I’d just offended him. “I’m just messing with ya. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t play for my team. Though if he did, he’d be a little out of my league.” He sucked in and patted his stomach, which was made somewhat flat by his efforts. “Nothing a couple of weeks at the gym and giving up bread for the weekend wouldn’t take care of.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”
He sighed. “I love being a guy. Need to lose five pounds? Go without ketchup for a couple of weeks. Problem. Solved.”
We shouldered our backpacks and trudged up the stairs. “I really hate you right now. ~ Tammara Webber,#NFDB
459:She had been looking all round her again—at the lawn, the great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; and while engaged in this survey she had made room in it for her companions; a comprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye lighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. "I've never seen anything so beautiful as this. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
460:In 2014 a survey conducted by a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment revealed that more than 60 percent of women in Buenos Aires had experienced intimidation from men who catcalled them.18 To a lot of men in Buenos Aires, women’s concern came as a surprise. When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires’s mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn’t possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. “All women like to be told compliments,” he said. “Those who say they’re offended are lying. Even though you’ll say something rude, like ‘What a cute ass you have’ . . . it’s all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It’s almost the reason that men breathe. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
461:THE HOLOGRAPHIC LIFE REVIEW Here the subject feels the presence of, and re-experiences, not only every act but also every thought from his or her life and realizes that all is an energy field that influences others as well. All that has been done and thought seems to be stored. Because of their connection with the memories, emotions, and consciousness of other persons, subjects experience the consequences of their own thoughts, words, and actions for those persons at the very moment when they occurred. They understand that everything one does to others will ultimately be returned to oneself. Patients survey their whole life in one glance; time and space don’t seem to exist during this experience—instantaneously they are where they focus their attention. ~ Ervin Laszlo, #NFDB
462:Consequently, the 20th century witnessed the start of significant grassroots movements to protect workers and limit work hours. Still, the term “work-life balance” wasn’t coined until the mid-1980s when more than half of all married women joined the workforce. To paraphrase Ralph E. Gomory’s preface in the 2005 book Being Together, Working Apart: Dual-Career Families and the Work-Life Balance, we went from a family unit with a breadwinner and a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and no homemaker. Anyone with a pulse knows who got stuck with the extra work in the beginning. However, by the ’90s “work-life balance” had quickly become a common watchword for men too. A LexisNexis survey of the top 100 newspapers and magazines around the world shows a dramatic ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
463:Because tribal foragers are highly mobile and can easily shift between different communities, authority is almost impossible to impose on the unwilling. And even without that option, males who try to take control of the group—or of the food supply—are often countered by coalitions of other males. This is clearly an ancient and adaptive behavior that tends to keep groups together and equitably cared for. In his survey of ancestral-type societies, Boehm found that—in addition to murder and theft—one of the most commonly punished infractions was “failure to share.” Freeloading on the hard work of others and bullying were also high up on the list. Punishments included public ridicule, shunning, and, finally, “assassination of the culprit by the entire group.” A ~ Sebastian Junger, #NFDB
464:Does it matter if you read to your child from an ebook or a print book? Each type of book has its own merit. Ebooks are a huge convenience, easy to download and take on a trip. Dictionary features give children the ability to instantly discover the meanings of new words and concepts. Print books have a different type of physical presence and carry a different feeling, as children themselves have pointed out.SALE Inc. According to another, similar national survey, kids say they prefer ebooks when they’re out and about and when they don’t want their FOR Publ., friends to know what they’re reading, but that print is better for sharNOT ing with friends and reading at bedtime.31 It strikes me as interesting that most children still prefer print books before going to sleep. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
465:One day I said, “Mac, the only way in this world that you can increase your soda fountain volume is to sell to people who don’t take up a stool. Look, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I will give you 200 or 300 containers with covers, however many you need to try this for a month in your store down the street. Now most of your takeout customers will be Walgreen employees from headquarters here, and you can conduct your own marketing survey on them and see how they like it. You get the cups free, so it’s not going to cost you anything to try it.” Finally he agreed. I brought him the cups, and we set the thing up at one end of the soda fountain. It was a big success from the first day. It wasn’t long before McNamarra was more excited about the idea of takeouts than I was. ~ Ray Kroc, #NFDB
466:Franklin wrote a whole essay on the subject and told one of his friends, "I have long been of your opinion, that your legal provision for the poor [in England] is a very great evil, operating as it does to the encouragement of idleness. We have followed your example, and begin now to see our error, and, I hope, shall reform it." 119 A survey of Franklin's views on counter-productive compassion might be summarized as follows: 1. Compassion which gives a drunk the means to increase his drunkenness is counter-productive. 120 2. Compassion which breeds debilitating dependency and weakness is counter-productive. 121 3. Compassion which blunts the desire or necessity to work for a living is counter-productive. 122 4. Compassion which smothers the instinct ~ W Cleon Skousen, #NFDB
467:7.3-magnitude earthquake hits near Papua New Guinea A powerful earthquake struck off the South Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea on Friday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude-7.3 earthquake was located 61 kilometres (38 miles) southwest of the town of Panguna on Bougainville Island. It struck at a depth of 50 kilometres (31 miles). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami. But the agency said quakes of this size can sometimes generate waves that can be destructive to coasts within a few hundred kilometres (miles) of the epicenter. A staffer at the Geophysical Observatory in the capital, Port Moresby, said no reports of damage or unusual wave activity along ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
468:The fully qualified Indian marine archaeologists who had dived on the structure in 1993 had not hesitated in their official report to pronounce it to be man-made with 'courses of masonry' plainly visible -- surely a momentous finding 5 kilometers from the shore at a depth of 23 metres? But far from exciting attention, or ruffling any academic feathers, or attracting funds for an extension of the diving survey to the other apparently man-made mounds that had been spotted bear by on the sea-bed -- and very far indeed from inspiring any Tamil expert to re-evaluate the derided possibility of a factual basis to the Kumari Kandam myth -- the NIO's discovery at Poompuhur had simply been ignored by scholarship, not even reacted to or dismissed, but just widely and generally ignored. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
469:If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color.11 One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students.12 That same survey revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12–17 are more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth.13 Thus ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
470:Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. Therefore, we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable. The basis for any predictions would be represented by biological, psychological or sociological conditions. Yet one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
471:A survey was conducted in 1995 asking the following question: “Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?” The startling results were published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups.39 These results contrast sharply with the reality of drug crime in America. African Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and they constitute roughly the same percentage today. Whites constituted the vast majority of drug users then (and now), but almost no one pictured a white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like. The same group of respondents also perceived the typical drug trafficker as black. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
472:While doing a survey in the area, he came across what looked like the remains of a small pre-Columbian village scattered about an ancient lava bed, called Angamuco, once a settlement of the fierce Purépecha (Tarascan) people, who rivaled the Aztecs in central Mexico from around AD 1000 until the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s. “We thought we could knock out Angamuco in a week,” he recalled. “We just kept going and going and going.” It turned out to be a huge site. In 2010, Fisher used lidar to map Angamuco. The results were perhaps even more astounding than those at Caracol. The images gathered after flying over Angamuco for just forty-five minutes revealed twenty thousand previously unknown archaeological features, including a bizarre pyramid that, seen from above, is shaped like a keyhole ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
473:Abu Midjan
When Father Time swings round his scythe,
Entomb me 'neath the bounteous vine,
So that its juices, red and blithe,
May cheer these thirsty bones of mine.
"Elsewise with tears and bated breath
Should I survey the life to be.
But oh! How should I hail the death
That brings that--vinous grace to me!"
So sung the dauntless Saracen,
Whereat the Prophet-Chief ordains
That, curst of Allah, loathed of men,
The faithless one shall die in chains.
But one vile Christian slave that lay
A prisoner near that prisoner saith:
"God willing, I will plant some day
A vine where liest thou in death."
Lo, over Abu Midjan's grave
With purpling fruit a vine-tree grows;
Where rots the martyred Christian slave
Allah, and only Allah, knows!
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
474:People do not always remember that politics, economics, and social organisation generally, belong in the realm of means, not ends. Our political and social thinking is prone to what may be called the ‘administrator’s fallacy’, by which I mean the habit of looking upon a society as a systematic whole, of a sort that is thought good if it is pleasant to contemplate as a model of order, a planned organism with parts neatly dove-tailed into each other. But a society does not, or at least should not, exist to satisfy an external survey, but to bring a good life to the individuals who compose it. It is in the individuals, not in the whole, that ultimate value is to be sought. A good society is a means to a good life for those who compose it, not something having a separate kind of excellence on its own account. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
475:Two months before the funeral, the real estate website Redfin looked at the statistics and concluded that 83 percent of California's homes, and 100 percent of San Francisco's, were unaffordable on a teacher's salary. What happens to a place where the most vital workers cannot afford to live in it? Displacement has contributed to deaths, particularly of the elderly - and many in their eighties and nineties have been targeted with eviction from their homes of many decades. In the two years since Nieto's death, there have been multiple stories of seniors who died during or immediately after their eviction. A survey reported that 71 percent of the homeless in San Francisco used to be housed there. Losing their homes makes them vulnerable to a host of conditions, some of them deadly. Gentrification can be fatal. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
476:Another reason for lying is simply to mess with surveys. This is a huge problem for any research regarding teenagers, fundamentally complicating our ability to understand this age group. Researchers originally found a correlation between a teenager’s being adopted and a variety of negative behaviors, such as using drugs, drinking alcohol, and skipping school. In subsequent research, they found this correlation was entirely explained by the 19 percent of self-reported adopted teenagers who weren’t actually adopted. Follow-up research has found that a meaningful percent of teenagers tell surveys they are more than seven feet tall, weigh more than four hundred pounds, or have three children. One survey found 99 percent of students who reported having an artificial limb to academic researchers were kidding. ~ Seth Stephens Davidowitz, #NFDB
477:Increasingly, progressive voices in the media are shining a spotlight on the need for new businesses that serve both entrepreneurs and local communities. Yes! Magazine is a leading chronicler of independence from the global economy, with features such as “31 Ways to Jump Start the Local Economy,” “Wendell Berry’s 17 Rules for a Sustainable Economy,” “A Resilient Community,” “Small Banks, Radical Vision,” and other numerous stories on how consumers and householders can become producers of energy and food. Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, in his bestseller The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier, offered both a survey of our nation’s growing economic inequalities and an eloquent argument that such inequalities will lead to increased anxiety, fear, isolation, health failures, and chronic insecurity. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
478:Effort is required to maintain simultaneously in memory several ideas that require separate actions, or that need to be combined according to a rule—rehearsing your shopping list as you enter the supermarket, choosing between the fish and the veal at a restaurant, or combining a surprising result from a survey with the information that the sample was small, for example. System 2 is the only one that can follow rules, compare objects on several attributes, and make deliberate choices between options. The automatic System 1 does not have these capabilities. System 1 detects simple relations (“they are all alike,” “the son is much taller than the father”) and excels at integrating information about one thing, but it does not deal with multiple distinct topics at once, nor is it adept at using purely statistical information. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
479:psychologists have shown that an individual’s choices and behavior can be influenced by “priming” them with particular words, sounds, or other stimuli. Subjects in experiments who read words like “old” and “frail” walk more slowly down the corridor when they leave the lab. Consumers in wine stores are more likely to buy German wine when German music is playing in the background, and French wine when French music is playing. Survey respondents asked about energy drinks are more likely to name Gatorade when they are given a green pen in order to fill out the survey. And shoppers looking to buy a couch online are more likely to opt for an expensive, comfortable-looking couch when the background of the website is of fluffy white clouds, and more likely to buy the harder, cheaper option when the background consists of dollar coins.11 ~ Duncan J Watts, #NFDB
480:You had a jumpship and you gave it away?” Nikki’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Do you have any more?” “Not at present. Oh, look, a General-class cruiser.” Miles reached for it. “My father commanded one of those, once, I believe. Do you have any Betan Survey ships . . . ?” Heads bent together, they laid out the little fleet on the floor. Nikki, Miles was pleased to find, was well-up on all the tech-specs of every ship he owned; he expanded wonderfully, his voice, formerly shy around Miles-the-weird-adult-stranger, growing louder and faster in his unselfconscious enthusiasm as he detailed his machinery. Miles’s stock rose as he was able to claim personal acquaintance with nearly a dozen of the originals for the models, and add a few interesting nonclassified jumpship anecdotes to Nikki’s already impressive fund of knowledge. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
481:We have a legal system that is a flop — a laughingstock,” says Professor Langbein. “We have a legal system which encourages people not to want to do business in this country.” The American legal system isn’t even working for the lawyers. Even though law is now the highest-paid profession, the lawyers aren’t happy. Many say they went to law school hoping to do good, but now find themselves working incredibly long hours doing tedious work that’s often more about money than justice. A survey of California lawyers found most would change careers if they could. Something’s very wrong when America’s brightest young people are choosing a profession many won’t like, where they’re not building something, not making the economic pie bigger, just fighting over who gets which slice, making each slice cost more, and taking our freedom in the process. ~ John Stossel, #NFDB
482:Now consider San Francisco, where the totals are dramatically higher. A study two years ago found that 60,750 placards have been issued to San Francisco residents. And if you include the nine-county Bay Area, that number is 453,830 — a 100 percent increase since 2001. A 2008 survey in San Francisco found that 45 percent of the parking spaces were occupied by cars with disabled placards. Nearly everyone agrees that placard abuse is widespread. We’ve all heard the stories of the guy who pulls into a disabled parking spot, hangs up his placard and then sprints across the parking lot to catch his BART train. The usual response is to call for a crackdown on placard abusers. But that doesn’t work. First, the drivers may not always have obvious disabilities. Second, law enforcement officers shouldn’t be deciding who should or should not qualify. The ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
483:It all fit. The love of power, the focus on Russia to the exclusion of the rest of the world—with an exception made perhaps only for a Napoleon or a Hitler, whose power trumped even their enemy status but who were made relevant by the fact that they had invaded Russia—this and other survey results added up to a totalitarian mind-set. The only consideration that gave Gudkov pause was what seemed like an utter lack of a concept of the future. He had been taught that totalitarianism presupposed the image of a glorious future. But as he researched both Communist and Nazi ideologies, he came to the conclusion that the appeal of the rhetoric in both cases lay in archaic, primitive images: a simple society, a world of “us,” a tribe. Fromm, in fact, rejected the very idea of an image of the future in Nazi ideology and stressed the “worship of the past. ~ Masha Gessen, #NFDB
484:What Ruef discovered was a ringing endorsement of the coffeehouse model of social networking: the most creative individuals in Ruef’s survey consistently had broad social networks that extended outside their organization and involved people from diverse fields of expertise. Diverse, horizontal social networks, in Ruef’s analysis, were three times more innovative than uniform, vertical networks. In groups united by shared values and long-term familiarity, conformity and convention tended to dampen any potential creative sparks. The limited reach of the network meant that interesting concepts from the outside rarely entered the entrepreneur’s consciousness. But the entrepreneurs who built bridges outside their “islands,” as Ruef called them, were able to borrow or co-opt new ideas from these external environments and put them to use in a new context. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
485:Dear Dr. Ortiz— Congratulations on your discovery! We found the object, too, about six months ago and have been studying it in detail for the past few months. It has a few interesting properties that you might find interesting. Most interestingly, it has a satellite, and the orbital solution gives a system mass of about 28% of that of the Pluto-Charon system. It’s still probably the biggest KBO around but it has a sufficiently high albedo that it is not quite as big or massive as Pluto. I’ve got a paper describing the satellite that, ironically, I was planning to submit tomorrow. I will forward the paper to you as I submit it. I am sure that I will get inquiries about your new object from different people; is there [or is there going to be] a website describing your survey or your discovery that I can point people to? Again, congratulations on a very nice discovery! ~ Mike Brown, #NFDB
486:Thoughts In A Zoo
They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours
Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange
Save that his cages have a larger range.
That lion with his lordly, untamed heart
Has in some man his human counterpart,
Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped,
But in the stifling flesh securely trapped.
Gaunt eagle whose raw pinions stain the bars
That prison you, so men cry for the stars!
Some delve down like the mole far underground,
(Their nature is to burrow, not to bound),
Some, like the snake, with changeless slothful eye,
Stir not, but sleep and smoulder where they lie.
Who is most wretched, these caged ones, or we,
Caught in a vastness beyond our sight to see?
~ Countee Cullen,#NFDB
487:In France they start to read Balzac at school, and judging by the number of editions in circulation people apparently continue to read him long after the end of their schooldays. But if there were an official survey on Balzac’s popularity in Italy, I am afraid he would figure very low down the list. Fans of Dickens in Italy are a small elite who whenever they meet start to reminisce about characters and episodes as though talking of people they actually knew. When Michel Butor was teaching in the United States a number of yean ago, he became so tired of people asking him about Émile Zola, whom he had never read, that he made up his mind to read the whole cycle of Rougon-Macquart novels. He discovered that it was entirely different from how he had imagined it: it turned out to be a fabulous, mythological genealogy and cosmogony, which he then described in a brilliant article. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
488:Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs. Rather than being taugh to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others' versions of ourselves. We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else! When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if...
If we had known who we really were. ~ Julia Cameron,#NFDB
489:Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him."
After their survey of the library they went down into the garden, where Candide praised its several beauties.
"I know of nothing in so bad a taste," said the master. "All you see here is merely trifling. After to-morrow I will have it planted with a nobler design."
Well," said Candide to Martin when they had taken their leave, "you will agree that this is the happiest of mortals, for he is above everything he possesses."
"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he is disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed a long while ago that those stomachs are not the best that reject all sorts of food."
"But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties? ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
490:some of the structural drivers of inflation have also weakened. Trade unions have become less powerful. Loss-making state industries have been privatized. But, perhaps most importantly of all, the social constituency with an interest in positive real returns on bonds has grown. In the developed world a rising share of wealth is held in the form of private pension funds and other savings institutions that are required, or at least expected, to hold a high proportion of their assets in the form of government bonds and other fixed income securities. In 2007 a survey of pension funds in eleven major economies revealed that bonds accounted for more than a quarter of their assets, substantially lower than in past decades, but still a substantial share.71 With every passing year, the proportion of the population living off the income from such funds goes up, as the share of retirees increases. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
491:priorities of safety and survival, was taking over, again. Wilson pointed out angrily that even children are permitted to take more risks than the elderly. They at least get to have swings and jungle gyms. A survey of fifteen hundred assisting living facilities published in 2003 found that only 11 percent offered both privacy and sufficient services to allow frail people to remain in residence. The idea of assisted living as an alternative to nursing homes had all but died. Even the board of Wilson’s own company—having noted how many other companies were taking a less difficult and less costly direction—began questioning her standards and philosophy. She wanted to build smaller buildings, in smaller towns where elderly people had no options except nursing homes, and she wanted units for low-income elderly on Medicaid. But the more profitable direction was bigger buildings, in bigger cities, ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
492:Felix Schmidt
It was only a little house of two rooms -Almost like a child's play-house -With scarce five acres of ground around it;
And I had so many children to feed
And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
From bearing children.
One day lawyer Whitney came along
And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
Who owned three thousand acres of land,
Had bought the eighty that adjoined me
In eighteen hundred and seventy-one
For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,
While my father lay in his mortal illness.
So the quarrel arose and I went to law.
But when we came to the proof,
A survey of the land showed clear as day
That Dallman's tax deed covered my ground
And my little house of two rooms.
It served me right for stirring him up.
I lost my case and lost my place.
I left the court room and went to work
As Christian Dallman's tenant.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
493:Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
494:Let Observation with extensive View,
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy Scenes of crowded Life;
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,
O'erspread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,
Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppress'd,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.
Fate wings with ev'ry Wish th' afflictive Dart,
Each Gift of Nature, each Grace of Art,
With fatal Heat impetuous Courage glows,
With fatal Sweetness Elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the Speaker's pow'rful Breath,
And restless Fire precipitates on Death. ~ Samuel Johnson,#NFDB
495:We Americans often say that marriage is hard work. I'm not sure that the Hmong would understand this notion. Life is hard work, of course, and work is very hard work -- I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements - but how does marriage become hard work? Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband - more than anything else - is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order. As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency" or "honesty," or his ability to provide for a family. But that's not enough anymore. Now we want to be INSPIRED by our spouses! Daily! Step to it, honey! ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
496:Much of the cultural divide over abortion grafts readily, but not perfectly, onto tensions over class. Of a large survey of pro-life and pro-choice activists, 94 percent of pro-choice women worked outside of the home, and half of them enjoyed incomes that placed them in the top 10 percent of all working women in the nation. Many were in the most affluent percentiles in the country. In contrast, 63 percent of pro-life advocates did not work outside of the home (and those that did were unmarried). The personal income of pro-life women activists was very low, if there was any at all. The story was similar in terms of education and occupation. Where pro-choice women tended to be well-educated professionals, pro-life activists tended to be housewives or in traditional female occupations. For working-class families, “ family values” was not a political slogan but a belief in sacrifice, fate, belonging, character, and the sanctity of parenthood. ~ Jefferson R Cowie, #NFDB
497:It seems funny to think that healing or coming to terms with loneliness and loss, or with the damage accrued in scenes of closeness, the inevitable wounds, that occur whenever people become entangled with one another, might take place by means of objects. It seems funny, and yet the more I thought about it the more prevalent it was. People make things - make art of things that are akin to art - as a way of expressing their need for contact, or their fear of it; people make objects as a way of coming to terms with shame, with grief. People make objects to strip themselves down, to survey their scars, and people make objects to resist oppression, to create a space in which they can move freely. Art doesn't have to have a reparative function, any more than it has a duty to be beautiful or moral. All the same, there is art that gestures toward repair; that, like Wojnarowicz's stitched loaf of bread, traverses the fragile space between separation and connection. ~ Olivia Laing, #NFDB
498:It seems funny to think that healing or coming to terms with loneliness and loss, or with the damage accrued in scenes of closeness, the inevitable wounds that occur whenever people become entangled with one another, might take place by means of objects. It seems funny, and yet the more I thought about it the more prevalent it was. People make things – make art or things that are akin to art – as a way of expressing their need for contact, or their fear of it; people make objects as a way of coming to terms with shame, with grief. People make objects to strip themselves down, to survey their scars, and people make objects to resist oppression, to create a space in which they can move freely. Art doesn’t have to have a reparative function, any more than it has a duty to be beautiful or moral. All the same, there is art that gestures towards repair; that, like Wojnarowicz’s stitched loaf of bread, traverses the fragile space between separation and connection. ~ Olivia Laing, #NFDB
499:Nurses could wear a sensor that detects heart rate and helps them fight off fatigue on long shifts, Bartow said, or manufacturing companies could strap GPS-enabled smart watches on workers to hassle them if their breaks are too long. It's easy to see how this could quickly become annoying. Sixty-six percent of Millennials and 58 percent of all workers said they would be willing to use wearable technology if it allowed them to do their job better, according to a survey last year by Cornerstone OnDemand. That leaves plenty of people uneasy about it. That resistance could hurt productivity, says Ethan Bernstein, an assistant professor of leadership at Harvard Business School. He has studied the "transparency paradox," which says that production in the workplace can slow down if employees know the bosses are watching. "It will be much harder to see if these are actually improving productivity or if, because people change when they're watched, they produce a different outcome," he said. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
500:There is a field of study called “happiness research,” which tries to analyze what makes people happy. Prof. Michael Hagerty of the University of California at Davis surveyed decades of international happiness research and found that “for the most part, the top-rated countries are small and homogeneous.” As he explained, such countries “have a similar world view and a similar religion, so that it’s easier for them to communicate and to understand each other’s motives.” He also noted that “they don’t have race problems.”
In the conclusion of his 148-country diversity survey Tatu Vanhanen wrote, “It is easier to establish harmonious social relations in ethnically homogeneous societies than in ethnically divided ones because people are more helpful towards each other in ethnically homogeneous societies.”
There can, of course, be many different kinds of division in a country: language, religion, race, class, etc. However, of all these, race seems to be the most difficult to bridge. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
501:This shift in culture has changed us. In the first place, it has made us a bit more materialistic. College students now say they put more value on money and career success. Every year, researchers from UCLA survey a nationwide sample of college freshmen to gauge their values and what they want out of life. In 1966, 80 percent of freshmen said that they were strongly motivated to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. Today, less than half of them say that. In 1966, 42 percent said that becoming rich was an important life goal. By 1990, 74 percent agreed with that statement. Financial security, once seen as a middling value, is now tied as students’ top goal. In 1966, in other words, students felt it was important to at least present themselves as philosophical and meaning-driven people. By 1990, they no longer felt the need to present themselves that way. They felt it perfectly acceptable to say they were primarily interested in money.20 We live in a more individualistic society. If ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
502:The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, founded in 1947 and devoted to promoting and affirming individual initiative and “the American dream,” releases annual back-to-school surveys.48 Its survey for 1998 contrasted two groups of students: the “highly successful” (approximately 18 percent of American students) and the “disillusioned” (approximately 15 percent). The successful students work hard, choose challenging classes, make schoolwork a top priority, get good grades, participate in extracurricular activities, and feel that teachers and administrators care about them and listen to them. According to the association, the successful group in the 1998 survey is 63 percent female and 37 percent male. The disillusioned students are pessimistic about their future, get low grades, and have little contact with teachers. The disillusioned group could accurately be characterized as demoralized. According to the Alger Association, “Nearly seven out of ten are male.”49 ~ Christina Hoff Sommers, #NFDB
503:Loitering With A Vacant Eye
Loitering with a vacant eye
Along the Grecian gallery,
And brooding on my heavy ill,
I met a statue standing still.
Still in marble stone stood he,
And stedfastly he looked at me.
"Well met," I thought the look would say,
"We both were fashioned far away;
We neither knew, when we were young,
These Londoners we live among."
Still he stood and eyed me hard,
An earnest and a grave regard:
"What, lad, drooping with your lot?
I too would be where I am not.
I too survey that endless line
Of men whose thoughts are not as mine.
Years, ere you stood up from rest,
On my neck the collar prest;
Years, when you lay down your ill,
I shall stand and bear it still.
Courage, lad, 'tis not for long:
Stand, quit you like stone, be strong."
So I thought his look would say;
And light on me my trouble lay,
And I stept out in flesh and bone
Manful like the man of stone.
~ Alfred Edward Housman,#NFDB
504:If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life;—to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers' penknife from his father? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
505:Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.
Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid. ~ M John Harrison,#NFDB
506:Based on the findings of a recent qualitative survey carried out in Switzerland, in fact, most of us have up to ten discreet interdependent social identities—identities, the study concludes, which are often in conflict.16 Let’s imagine a middle-aged bank teller living in Pensacola, Florida. He is a father, a son and a husband. He is a Floridian. He is a bank employee. He is also a bicyclist and a recreational runner, and at night, drinking with his friends, he is “the funny one.” He is also a vegetarian, an amateur guitarist, and on weekends he helps coach soccer at his daughter’s high school. Then there are his online identities, including his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram selves. Most surprising is that the man’s ethical mind-set, honesty, sociability and even level of social engagement changes from personality to personality. Imagine that in his professional role, for example, he may be primed to dissembling, or outright deceit, while simultaneously, as a dad, he finds dishonesty repellent. ~ Martin Lindstrom, #NFDB
507:In a world that’s getting ever richer, where cows produce more milk and robots produce more stuff, there’s more room for friends, family, community service, science, art, sports, and all the other things that make life worthwhile. But there’s also more room for bullshit. As long as we continue to be obsessed with work, work, and more work (even as useful activities are further automated or outsourced), the number of superfluous jobs will only continue to grow. Much like the number of managers in the developed world, which has grown over the last thirty years without making us a dime richer. On the contrary, studies show that countries with more managers are actually less productive and innovative.15 In a survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, half said they felt their job had no “meaning and significance,” and an equal number were unable to relate to their company’s mission.16 Another recent poll revealed that as many as 37% of British workers think they have a bullshit job.17 ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
508:But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must still remain uncertain whether all the excellences of the work can justly be ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel when we find him a stupid mechanic who imitated others, and copied an art which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labor lost; many fruitless trials made; and a slow but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. In such subjects, who can determine where the truth, nay, who can conjecture where the probability lies, amidst a great number of hypotheses which may be proposed, and a still greater which may be imagined? ~ David Hume, #NFDB
509:The curious advantage of being able to survey the span of someone else’s life, from start to finish, can seem peremptory, high-handed, forward. Grief doesn’t seem entitlement enough for the arrogation of the divine powers of beginning and ending. We are uneasy with such omniscience. We do not possess it with regard to our own lives. But if this ability to see the whole of a life is God-like it also augurs a revolt against God: once a life is contained, made final, as if flattened within the pages of a diary, it becomes a smaller, contracted thing. It is just a life, one of millions, as arbitrary as everyone else’s, a named tenancy that will soon become a nameless one; a life that we know, with horror, will be thoroughly forgotten within a few generations. At the very moment we play at being God, we also work against God, hurl down the script, refuse the terms of the drama, appalled by the meaninglessness and ephemerality of existence. Death gives birth to the first question—Why?—and seems to kill all the answers. ~ James Wood, #NFDB
510:Add to this the species of government which prevails over nine tenths of the globe, which is despotism: a government, as Locke justly observes, altogether "vile and miserable," and "more to be deprecated than anarchy itself."(2*) Certainly every man who takes a dispassionate survey of this picture will feel himself inclined to pause respecting the necessity of the havoc which is thus made of his species, and to question whether the established methods for protecting mankind against the caprices of each other are the best that can be devised. He will be at a loss which of the two to pronounce most worthy of regret, the misery that is inflicted, or the depravity by which it is produced. If this be the unalterable allotment of our nature, the eminence of our rational faculties must be considered as rather an abortion than a substantial benefit; and we shall not fail to lament that, while in some respects we are elevated above the brutes, we are in so many important ones destined for ever to remain their inferiors. ~ William Godwin, #NFDB
511:Only after something is done do we truly realise it cannot be undone. Never had a night seemed to me so ill-omened; never had a celebration seemed to me so unjust, so cruel. The music drifting on the breeze sounded like an incantation that conjured me like a demon. I felt excluded from the joy of these people as they laughed and danced. I thought about the terrible waste my life had become … How? How could I have come so close to happiness and not had the courage to seize it with both hands? What terrible sin had I committed that I was forced to watch love seep though my fingers like blood from a wound? What is love when all it can do is survey the damage? What are its myths and legends, its victories and its miracles if a lover is not prepared to rise above, to brave the thunderbolt, to renounce eternal happiness for one kiss, one embrace, one moment with his beloved? Regret coursed through my veins like a poisonous sap, swelled my heart with loathsome fury. I hated myself, this useless burden abandoned by the roadside. ~ Yasmina Khadra, #NFDB
512:Consider individuals, survey men in general; there is none whose life does not look forward to the morrow. "What harm is there in this," you ask? Infinite harm; for such persons do not live, but are preparing to live. They postpone everything. Even if we paid strict attention, life would soon get ahead of us; but as we are now, life finds us lingering and passes us by as if it belonged to another, and though it ends on the final day, it perishes every day. But I must not exceed the bounds of a letter, which ought not to fill the reader's left hand. So I shall postpone to another day our case against the hair-splitters, those over-subtle fellows who make argumentation supreme instead of subordinate. Farewell. Letter XLVI - On a New Book by Lucilius I received the book of yours which you promised me. I opened it hastily with the idea of glancing over it at leisure; for I meant only to taste the volume. But by its own charm the book coaxed me into traversing it more at length. You may understand from this fact how eloquent it was; ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
513:Self proclamation of authoritative titles is a common phenomenon among religious and/or occult sect leaders. A cursory survey of this primarily 20th century phenomenon will instantly reveal a multitude of self-declared Masters, High Priests, gurus, Ipsissimi, Bhaghwani, etc.. I am pleased that I cannot count myself among such types. Legitimate religious teachers and scholars know that a genuine spiritual leader is one whose calling to lead is first noticed by those outside of him or herself based on certain qualities, abilities, and actions and then must subsequently be accepted by the individual in question as his or her destiny. This contrasts with those whose will to lead is born simply out of the mundane wish to be a leader. In such cases the goal being to reap the rewards a title brings without the hard work and the innate, manifest qualities which validate the position; in short what might be considered a 'false prophet'."
--“From the Eye of the Storm” (Zeena's column for the SLM) Volume II – Winter Issue (2003): “One Year Later... ~ Zeena Schreck,#NFDB
514:Yet there was no doubt that Theodore Roosevelt was peculiarly qualified to be President of all the people. Few, if any Americans could match the breadth of his intellect and the strength of his character. A random survey of his achievements might show him mastering German, French, and the contrasted dialects of Harvard and Dakota Territory; assembling fossil skeletons with paleontological skill; fighting for an amateur boxing championship; transcribing birdsong into a private system of phonetics; chasing boat thieves with a star on his breast and Tolstoy in his pocket; founding a finance club, a stockmen's association, and a hunting-conservation society; reading some twenty thousand books and writing fifteen of his own; climbing the Matterhorn; promulgating a flying machine; and becoming a world authority on North American game mammals. If the sum of all these facets of experience added up to more than a geometric whole - implying excess construction somewhere, planes piling upon planes - then only he, presumably, could view the polygon entire. ~ Edmund Morris, #NFDB
515:Whether you approve or not,” he told Cam and Leo, “I’m going to propose to your sister. The choice is hers. And if she accepts, no power on earth will stop me from marrying her. I understand your concerns, so let me assure you that she will want for nothing. She’ll be protected, cherished, even spoiled.” “You have no bloody idea how to make her happy,” Cam said quietly. “Rohan,” Harry said with a faint smile, “I excel at making people happy—or at least making them think they are.” He paused to survey their set faces. “Are you going to forbid me to speak to her?” he asked in a tone of polite interest. “No,” Leo said. “Poppy’s not a child, nor a pet. If she wants to speak to you, she shall. But be aware that, whatever you say or do in the effort to convince her to marry you, it will be counterweighed by the opinions of her family.” “And there’s one more thing to be aware of,” Cam said, with a wintry softness that disguised all hint of feeling. “If you succeed in marrying her, we’re not losing a sister. You’re gaining an entire family—who will protect her at any cost. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
516:Yet there was a momentary hint of blue sky, and even this bit of light was enough to release a flash of diamonds across the wide landscape, so oddly disfigured by its snowy adventure. Usually the snow stopped at that hour of the day, as if for a quick survey of what had been achieved thus far; the rare days of sunshine seemed to serve much the same purpose—the flurries died down and the sun’s direct glare attempted to melt the luscious, pure surface of drifted new snow. It was a fairy-tale world, child-like and funny. Boughs of trees adorned with thick pillows, so fluffy someone must have plumped them up; the ground a series of humps and mounds, beneath which slinking underbrush or outcrops of rock lay hidden; a landscape of crouching, cowering gnomes in droll disguises—it was comic to behold, straight out of a book of fairy tales. But if there was something roguish and fantastic about the immediate vicinity through which you laboriously made your way, the towering statues of snow-clad Alps, gazing down from the distance, awakened in you feelings of the sublime and holy. ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
517:A brief survey of Mere Christianity supplies the following list: becoming a Christian (passing over from life to death) is like joining a campaign of sabotage, like falling at someone’s feet or putting yourself in someone’s hands, like taking on board fuel or food, like laying down your rebel arms and surrendering, saying sorry, laying yourself open, turning full speed astern; it is like killing part of yourself, like learning to walk or to write, like buying God a present with his own money; it is like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer’s hand, like a tin soldier or a statue coming alive, like waking after a long sleep, like getting close to someone or becoming infected, like dressing up or pretending or playing; it is like emerging from the womb or hatching from an egg; it is like a compass needle swinging to north, or a cottage being made into a palace, or a field being plowed and resown, or a horse turning into a Pegasus, or a greenhouse roof becoming bright in the sunlight; it is like coming around from anesthetic, like coming in out of the wind, like going home. ~ Holly Ordway, #NFDB
518:After a time, my hand had become as skilled as my eyes. So if I was drawing a very fine tree, it felt as if my hand was moving without me directly it. As I watched the pencil race across the page, I would look on it in amazement, as if the drawing were the proof of another presence, as if someone else had taken up residence in my body. As I marveled at his work aspiring to become his equal, another part of my brain was busy inspecting the curves of the branches, the placement of mountains, the composition as a whole, reflecting that I had created this scene on a blank piece of paper. My mind was at the tip of my pen, acting before I could think; at the same time it could survey what I had already done. This second line of perception, this ability to analyse my progress, was the pleasure this small artist felt when he looked at the discovery of his courage and freedom. To step outside myself , to know the second person who had taken up residence inside me, was to retrace the dividing line that appeared as my pencil slipped across the paper, like a boy sledding in the snow. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
519:The Christian writer will feel that in the greatest depth of vision, moral judgment will be implicit, and that when we are invited to represent the country according to survey, what we are asked to do is to separate mystery from manners and judgment from vision, in order to produce something a little more palatable to the modern temper. We are asked to form our consciences in the light of statistics, which is to establish the relative as absolute. For many this may be a convenience, since we don't live in an age of settled belief; but it cannot be a convenience, it cannot even be possible, for the writer who is a Catholic. He will feel that any long-continued service to it will produce a soggy, formless, and sentimental literature, one that will provide a sense of spiritual purpose for those who connect the spirit with romanticism and a sense of joy for those who confuse that virtue with satisfaction. The storyteller is concerned with what is; but if what is is what can be determined by survey, then the disciples of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Gallup are sufficient for the day thereof. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
520:Get up, brat, and for the lord's sake, smooth your hair! You look the most complete romp!'
Miss Wantage did her best to comply with this direction, but without any marked degree of success. Fortunately, the exigencies of the particular mode of hairdressing affected by his lordship obliged him to carry a comb upon his person. He produced this, dragged it through the soft, tangled curls, tied the hood-strings under Hero's chin, and, after a critical survey, said that it would answer well enough. Miss Wantage smiled trustfully up at him, and the Viscount made a discovery. 'You look just like a kitten!'
She laughed. 'No, do I, Sherry?'
'Yes, you do. I think it's your silly little nose,' said the Viscount, flicking it with a careless forefinger. 'That, or the trick you have of staring at a fellow with your eyes wide open. I think I shall call you Kitten. It suits you better than Hero, which I always thought a nonsensical name for a girl.'
'Oh, it is the greatest affliction to me!' she exclaimed. 'You can have no notion, Sherry! I would much rather you should call me Kitten. ~ Georgette Heyer,#NFDB
521:The most widely cited figure for the number of women suffering from Female Sexual Dysfunction comes from 1999: according to this, some 43 per cent of all women have a medical problem around their sex drive.27 This survey was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), one of the most influential journals in the world. It looked at questionnaire data asking about things like lack of desire for sex, poor lubrication, anxiety over sexual performance, and so on. If you answered ‘yes’ to any one of these questions, you were labelled as having Female Sexual Dysfunction. For the avoidance of any doubt about the influence of this paper, it has – as of a sunny evening in March 2012 – been cited 1,691 times. That is a spectacular number of citations. At the time, no financial interest was declared by the study’s authors. Six months later, after criticism in the New York Times, two of the three authors declared consulting and advisory work for Pfizer.28 The company was gearing up to launch Viagra for the female market at this time, and had lots to gain from more women being labelled as having a medical sexual problem. ~ Ben Goldacre, #NFDB
522:there is something which seems to me to be an...erroneous and dangerous assumption, namely, that which I call "pan-determinism." By that I mean the view of man which disregards his capacity to take a stand toward any conditions whatsoever. Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at nay instant. Therefore, we can predict his future only within the large framework of a statistical survey referring to a whole group; the individual personality, however, remains essentially unpredictable. The basis for any predictions would be represented by biological, psychological or sociological conditions. Yet one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
523:A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. ~ John Berger,#NFDB
524:Leaving controversial issues aside, the first and main purpose of this book may be summed up by a phrase of Laplace: “If we were able to make an exact catalogue of all particles and forces which are active in a speck of dust, the laws of the universe at large would hold no more mysteries for us”. On a medium-sized school globe the State of Israel occupies not much more space than a speck of dust; and yet there is hardly a political, social or cultural problem whose prototype cannot be found in it, and found in a rare concentration and intensity. The very smallness of this country of about three-quarters of a million souls makes it easy to survey trends which in other nations appear confused and diluted by size. The fact that it so often was in the past, and is again in the present, in the focus of global conflicts and passions, makes the speck of dust glow in a phosphorescent light. The fact that it is a State of Jews, and of Jews of the most conscious and intense type, makes the microscopic processes in this microscopic country reflect laws of universal validity: for Jewry is not a question of race—“it is the human condition carried to its extreme”. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
525:Florida is full of long-range, unending road jobs that break the backs, pocketbooks, and hearts of the roadside business. The primitive, inefficient, childlike Mexicans somehow manage to survey, engineer, and complete eighty miles of high-speed divided highway through raw mountains and across raging torrents in six months. But the big highway contractors in Florida take a year and a half turning fifteen miles of two-lane road across absolutely flat country into four-lane divided highway.
The difference is in American know-how. It's know-how in the tax problems, and how to solve them. The State Road Department says a half-year contract will cost the State ten million, and a one-year contract will cost nine, and a year-and-a-half deadline will go for eight. Then Doakes can take on three or four big jobs simultaneously, and lease the equipment from a captive corporation. and listlessly move the equipment from job to job, and spread it out to gain the biggest profit. The only signs of frantic activity can be two or three men with cement brooms who look at first like scarecrows but, when watched carefully, can be perceived to move, much like the minute hand on a clock. ~ John D MacDonald,#NFDB
526:Life Contains Inevitable Difficulties Life is not only short, but difficult. There are times of great joy, love, triumph, and delight, moments when we are beside ourselves with happiness. But there are also times of inevitable sorrow: of sickness and loss, of grief and despair. There are also incomprehensible amounts of unnecessary sorrow: of senseless oppression and torment, slaughter and suffering. None of us escapes life unscathed. It is crucial to recognize this and not gloss over the inevitable difficulties of life, because “If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.” This is why religious scholar Jacob Needleman concluded, from his survey of world religions: The perception of the suffering inherent in the human condition, the perception of man’s inhumanity to man: this moment of awareness has been spoken of in all traditions as a tremendous moment. It is a tremendous moment because it is the recognition of suffering—both ours and the world’s—which gives birth to both compassion and the urge to awaken. These motives propel us to spiritual practice and thereby eventually allow us to escape suffering and to relieve the suffering of others. Our ~ Roger Walsh, #NFDB
527:But while these are all important determinants in explaining the tide of anti-Muslim sentiment that has washed over Europe and North America in recent years, there is another, more fundamental factor that must be addressed. It involves a 2010 poll showing that nearly a quarter of Americans continue to believe that President Barack Obama is himself a Muslim, a 10 percent jump from a similar survey taken in 2008. Among registered Republicans, the number is nearly 40 percent; among self-described Tea Party members, it is upward of 60 percent. In fact, polls consistently show that the more one disagrees with President Obama’s policies on, say, healthcare or financial regulation, the more likely one is to consider him a Muslim. Simply put, Islam in the United States has become otherized. It has become a receptacle into which can be tossed all the angst and apprehension people feel about the faltering economy, about the new and unfamiliar political order, about the shifting cultural, racial, and religious landscapes that have fundamentally altered the world. Across Europe and North America, whatever is fearful, whatever is foreign, whatever is alien and unsafe is being tagged with the label ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
528:T.A.H.
YES, he was that, or that, as you prefer,—
Did so and so, though, faith, it was n’t all;
Lived like a fool, or a philosopher,
And had whatever’s needful to a fall.
As rough inflections on a planet merge
In the true bend of the gigantic sphere,
Nor mar the perfect circle of its verge,
So in the survey of his worth the small
Asperities of spirit disappear,
Lost in the grander curves of character.
He lately was hit hard; none knew but I
The strength and terror of that ghastly stroke,—
Not even herself. He uttered not a cry,
But set his teeth and made a revelry;
Drank like a devil,—staining sometimes red
The goblet ’s edge; diced with his conscience; spread,
Like Sisyphus, a feast for Death, and spoke
His welcome in a tongue so long forgot
That even his ancient guest remembered not
What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend,
Still conjugating with each failing sense
The verb “to die” in every mood and tense,
Pursued his awful humor to the end.
When, like a stormy dawn, the crimson broke
From his white lips, he smiled and mutely bled,
And, having meanly lived, is grandly dead.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
529:We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don't understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn't. The five of us, huddled together shoulder to shoulder over the bima, read the words aloud slowly, and the congregation, these old friends and acquaintances and strangers, all respond, and for reasons I can't begin to articulate, it feels like something is actually happening. It's got nothing to do with God or souls, just the palpable sense of goodwill and support emanating in waves from the pews around us, and I can't help but be moved by it. When we reach the end of the page, and the last "amen" has been said, I'm sorry that' it's over. I could stay up here a while longer. And as we step down to make our way back to the pews, a quick survey of the sadness in my family's wet eyes tells me that I'm not the only one who feels that way. I don't feel any closer to my father than I did before, but for a moment there I was comforted, and that's more than I expected. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
530:The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms. In the survey of exchange students conducted for this book, about half of U.S. and international students said that American math teachers were more likely to praise their work than math teachers abroad. (Fewer than 10 percent said that their international teachers were more likely to praise.) That finding was particularly ironic, given that American students scored below average for the developed world in math. It also suggested that whatever the intent of American teachers, their praise was probably not always specific, authentic, and rare. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
531:The Mower's Song
My Mind was once the true survey
Of all these Medows fresh and gay;
And in the greenness of the Grass
Did see its Hopes as in a Glass;
When Juliana came, and she
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.
But these, while I with Sorrow pine,
Grew more luxuriant still and fine;
That not one Blade of Grass you spy'd,
But had a Flower on either side;
When Juliana came, and She
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.
Unthankful Meadows, could you so
A fellowship so true forego,
And in your gawdy May-games meet,
While I lay trodden under feet?
When Juliana came , and She
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.
But what you in Compassion ought,
Shall now by my Revenge be wrought:
And Flow'rs, and Grass, and I and all,
Will in one common Ruine fall.
For Juliana comes, and She
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.
And thus, ye Meadows, which have been
Companions of my thoughts more green,
Shall now the Heraldry become
With which I shall adorn my Tomb;
For Juliana comes, and She
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.
~ Andrew Marvell,#NFDB
532:The Old Survey
Our money's all spent, to the deuce went it!
The landlord, he looks glum,
On the tap-room wall, in a very bad scrawl,
He has chalked to us a sum.
But a glass we'll take, ere the grey dawn break,
And then saddle up and away
Theodolite-tum, theodolite-ti, theodolite-too-ral-ay.
With a measured beat fall our horses' feet,
Galloping side by side;
When the money's done, and we've had our fun,
We all are bound to ride.
O'er the far-off plain we'll drag the chain,
And mark the settler's way
Theodolite-tum, theodolite-ti, theodolite-too-ral-ay.
We'll range from the creeks to the mountain peaks,
And traverse far below;
Where foot never trod, we'll mark with a rod
The limits of endless snow;
Each lofty crag we'll plant with a flag,
To flash in the sun's bright ray
Theodolite-tum, theodolite-ti, theodolite-too-ral-ay.
Till with cash hard-earned once more returned,
At "The Beaver" bars we'll shout;
And the very bad scrawl that's against the wall
Ourselves shall see wiped out.
Such were the ways in the good old days!
The days of the old survey!
Theodolite-tum, theodolite-ti, theodolite-too-ral-ay.
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
533:Finally, the survey findings also lent a helping hand to those men who wanted to engage in some heartfelt wooing, by identifying the gestures that women view as most, and least, romantic. The top-ten list of gestures is shown below, along with the percentage of women who assigned each gesture maximum marks on the “how romantic is this” scale. Cover her eyes and lead her to a lovely surprise—40 percent Whisk her away somewhere exciting for the weekend—40 percent Write a song or poem about her—28 percent Tell her that she is the most wonderful woman that you have ever met—25 percent Run her a relaxing bath after she has had a bad day at work—22 percent Send her a romantic text or e-mail, or leave a note around the house—22 percent Wake her up with breakfast in bed—22 percent Offer her a coat when she is cold—18 percent Send her a large bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates at her workplace—16 percent Make her a mix CD of her favorite music—12 percent Interestingly, it seems that gestures that reflect a form of escapism and surprise top the list, followed by those that reflect thoughtfulness, with blatant acts of materialism trailing in last place—scientific evidence, perhaps, that when it comes to romance, it really is the thought that counts. ~ Richard Wiseman, #NFDB
534:Critics are also overwhelmingly male—one survey of film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes found only 22 percent of the critics afforded “top critic” status were female.14 More recently, of course, we have become accustomed to a second set of gatekeepers: our friends and family and even random strangers we’ve decided to follow on social media, as well as “peer” reviewers on sites like Goodreads and IMDb. But peer review sites are easily skewed by a motivated minority with a mission (see the Ghostbusters reboot and the handful of manbabies dedicated to its ruination) or by more stubborn and pervasive implicit biases, which most users aren’t even aware they have. (The data crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.com found that male peer reviewers regularly drag down aggregate review scores for TV shows aimed at women, but the reverse isn’t true.)15 As for the social networks we choose? They’re usually plagued by homophily, which is a fancy way to say that it’s human nature to want to hang out with people who make us feel comfortable, and usually those are people who remind us of us. Without active and careful intervention on our part, we can easily be left with an online life that tells us only things we already agree with and recommends media to us that doesn’t challenge our existing worldview. ~ Jaclyn Friedman, #NFDB
535:Cohn assembled every piece of economic data available to show that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories.
Each month Cohn brought Trump the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, called JOLTS, conducted y the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He realized he was being an asshole by rubbing it in because each month was basically the same, but he didn't care.
"Mr. President, can I show this to you?" Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president. "See, the biggest leavers of jobs--people leaving voluntarily--was from manufacturing."
"I don't get it," Trump said.
Cohn tried to explain: "I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay?"
Cohn added, "People don't want to stand in front of a 2,000 degree blast furnace. People don't want to go into coal mines and get black lung. For the same dollars or equal ollars, they're going to choose something else."
Trump wasn't buying it.
Severl times Cohn just asked the president, "Why do you have these views?"
"I just do," Trump replied. "I've had these views for 30 years."
"That doesn't mean they're right," Cohn said. "I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn't mean I was right. ~ Bob Woodward,#NFDB
536:Not all historians of philosophy have the same goals and attitudes, and I for one see no good reason for disqualifying any of the contenders. Some insist on placing their thinkers in the historical context in which they wrote, which means, for instance, learning a lot of seventeenth-century science if you really want to understand Descartes, and a lot of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political history if you really want to understand Locke or Hume, and always, of course, a lot of the philosophy of their lesser contemporaries as well. Why bother with the also-rans? There’s a good reason. I found I never really appreciated many of the painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries until I visited European museums where I could see room after room full of second-rate paintings of the same genres. If all you ever see is the good stuff—which is all you see in the introductory survey courses, and in the top museums—it’s very hard to see just how wonderful the good stuff is. Do you know the difference between a good library and a great library? A good library has all the good books. A great library has all the books. If you really want to understand a great philosopher, you have to spend some time looking at the less great contemporaries and predecessors that are left in the shadows of the masters. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
537:Consider consultant Clay Herbert, who is an expert in running crowd-funding campaigns for technology start-ups: a specialty that attracts a lot of correspondents hoping to glean some helpful advice. As a Forbes.com article on sender filters reports, “At some point, the number of people reaching out exceeded [Herbert’s] capacity, so he created filters that put the onus on the person asking for help.” Though he started from a similar motivation as me, Herbert’s filters ended up taking a different form. To contact him, you must first consult an FAQ to make sure your question has not already been answered (which was the case for a lot of the messages Herbert was processing before his filters were in place). If you make it through this FAQ sieve, he then asks you to fill out a survey that allows him to further screen for connections that seem particularly relevant to his expertise. For those who make it past this step, Herbert enforces a small fee you must pay before communicating with him. This fee is not about making extra money, but is instead about selecting for individuals who are serious about receiving and acting on advice. Herbert’s filters still enable him to help people and encounter interesting opportunities. But at the same time, they have reduced his incoming communication to a level he can easily handle. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
538:Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity. ~ Peter Singer, #NFDB
539:In retrospect, I think our view of market expectations was too dependent on our survey of securities dealers. Futures markets gave us a reliable read of where markets thought the federal funds rate was going—but not for our securities purchases. For that, economists at the New York Fed asked their counterparts at the securities firms, who paid careful attention to every nuance of Fed policymakers’ public statements. In effect, our PhD economists surveyed their PhD economists. It was a little like looking in a mirror. It didn’t tell us what the rank-and-file traders were thinking. Many traders, apparently, didn’t pay much attention to their economists and were betting our purchases would continue more or less indefinitely. Some called it “QE-ternity” or “QE-infinity.” Their assumption was unreasonable and entirely inconsistent with what we had been saying. Nevertheless, some investors had evidently established market positions based on it. Now, like Metternich, they looked at our statements about securities purchases and asked, “What do they mean by that?” Their conclusion, despite the plain meaning of what I said at the press conference, was that we were signaling an earlier increase in our federal funds rate target. They sold their Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities, driving up long-term interest rates. ~ Ben S Bernanke, #NFDB
540:The cortex, that is, is as subject to remapping through attention as it is through the changes in sensory input described in our survey of neuroplasticity. In addition, in all three of the cortical systems where scientists have documented neuroplasticity—the primary auditory cortex, somatosensory cortex, and motor cortex—the variable determining whether or not the brain changes is not the sensory input itself but, crucially, the attentional state of the animal. In 1993 Merzenich showed that passive stimulation alone simply did not cut it. He and his students repeatedly exposed monkeys to specific sound frequencies. When the monkeys were trained to pay attention, the result was the expected tonotopic reorganization of the auditory cortex: the representation of the repeatedly heard frequency expanded. But when the monkeys were distracted by another task, and so were paying little or no attention to the tones piped into their ears, no such tonotopic expansion occurred. Inputs that the monkey does not pay attention to fail to produce long-term cortical changes; closely attended behaviors and inputs do. Let me repeat: when stimuli identical to those that induce plastic changes in an attending brain are instead delivered to a nonattending brain, there is no induction of cortical plasticity. Attention, in other words, must be paid. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
541:When we survey the wretched conditions of man, under the monarchical and hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is necessary.
What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only, and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition and happiness. the romantic and barbarous distinction of men into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and his obedience can be only to the laws. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
542:Zev’s heart thumped wildly, and he somehow managed to
increase his speed, running faster than he’d ever previously managed.
Jonah was a big kid, almost as big as Zev. And he was strong. But
shifters were stronger than humans, even when wearing their human
skins. And with three of them surrounding Jonah, he didn’t stand a
chance. Hell, even very few shifters would manage to come out
victorious against those odds.
The sounds of fists hitting bodies intermingled with shouting
ratcheted Zev’s anxiety even higher. Just as he was about to turn the
corner, the noise stopped. That unexpected silence increased the fear
that racked Zev’s body to such high proportions that he thought he
might vomit.
“Get away from….”
Zev’s warning stuck in his throat as he finally managed to get
around the edge of the building to survey the scene in front of him.
Brian was lying on the ground, cradling his arm. A shifter who was two
years older than Zev was flat on his back with his eyes closed. The
third shifter who’d threatened Jonah was holding his nose, trying to
block the blood that poured out from between his fingers. And in the
center of the damage stood Jonah, his fists clenched, face sweaty, blond
hair disheveled, and expression fierce. ~ Cardeno C,#NFDB
543:How can man know himself? It is a dark, mysterious business: if a hare has seven skins, a man may skin himself seventy times seven times without being able to say, “Now that is truly you; that is no longer your outside.” It is also an agonizing, hazardous undertaking thus to dig into oneself, to climb down toughly and directly into the tunnels of one’s being. How easy it is thereby to give oneself such injuries as no doctor can heal. Moreover, why should it even be necessary given that everything bears witness to our being — our friendships and animosities, our glances and handshakes, our memories and all that we forget, our books as well as our pens. For the most important inquiry, however, there is a method. Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: “What have you truly loved thus far? What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?” Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self. Compare these objects, see how they complement, enlarge, outdo, transfigure one another; how they form a ladder on whose steps you have been climbing up to yourself so far; for your true self does not lie buried deep within you, but rather rises immeasurably high above you, or at least above what you commonly take to be your I. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
544:The manner in which animals learn has been much studied in recent years, with a great deal of patient observation and experiment. Certain results have been obtained as regards the kinds ofproblems that have been investigated, but on general principles there is still much controversy. One may say broadly that all the animals that have been carefully observed have behaved so as to confirm the philosophy in which the observer believed before his observations began. Nay, more, they have all displayed the national characteristics of the observer. Animals studied by Americans rush about frantically, with an incredible display of hustle and pep, and at last achieve the desired result by chance. Animals observed by Germans sit still and think,
and at last evolve the solution out of their inner consciousness. To the plain man, such as the present writer, this situation is discouraging. I observe, however, that the type ofproblem which a man naturally sets to an animal depends upon his own philosophy, and this probably accounts for the differences in the results. The animal responds to one type of problem in one way and to another in another; therefore the results obtained by different investigators, though different, are not incompatible. But it remains necessary to remember that no one investigator is to be trusted to give a survey of the whole field.
-Bertrand Russell, Outline of Philosophy, 192731 ~ Geert Hofstede,#NFDB
545:Brumby's Run
It lies beyond the Western Pines
Towards the sinking sun,
And not a survey mark defines
The bounds of "Brumby's Run".
On odds and ends of mountain land,
On tracks of range and rock
Where no one else can make a stand,
Old Brumby rears his stock.
A wild, unhandled lot they are
Of every shape and breed.
They venture out 'neath moon and star
Along the flats to feed;
But when the dawn makes pink the sky
And steals along the plain,
The Brumby horses turn and fly
Towards the hills again.
The traveller by the mountain-track
May hear their hoof-beats pass,
And catch a glimpse of brown and black
Dim shadows on the grass.
The eager stockhorse pricks his ears
And lifts his head on high
In wild excitement when he hears
The Brumby mob go by.
Old Brumby asks no price or fee
O'er all his wide domains:
The man who yards his stock is free
To keep them for his pains.
So, off to scour the mountain-side
With eager eyes aglow,
To strongholds where the wild mobs hide
The gully-rakers go.
86
A rush of horses through the trees,
A red shirt making play;
A sound of stockwhips on the breeze,
They vanish far away!
Ah, me! before our day is done
We long with bitter pain
To ride once more on Brumby's Run
And yard his mob again.
A.B. (Banjo) Paterson
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
546:A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.
...
...
Every woman's presence regulates what is and is not 'permissible' within her presence. Every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation - is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotion of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger. If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake.
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision : a sight. ~ John Berger,#NFDB
547:It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task
which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always looking for,
and often finding, patterns. Now I said that an intelligence canjump out of
its task, but that does not mean that it always will. However, a little prompt-
ing will often suffice. For example, a human being who is reading a book
may grow sleepy. Instead of continuing to read until the book is finished,
he is just as likely to put the book aside and turn off the light. He has
stepped "out of the system" and yet it seems the most natural thing in the
world to us. Or, suppose person A is watching television when person B
comes in the room, and shows evident displeasure with the situation.
Person A may think he understands the problem, and try to remedy it by
exiting the present system (that television program), and flipping the chan-
nel knob, looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical
concept of what it is to "exit the system"-namely to turn the television off!
Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision
to perceive a system which governs many peoples' lives, a system which had
never before even been recognized as a system; then such people often
devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there,
and that it ought to be exited from! ~ Douglas R Hofstadter,#NFDB
548:There are quite a number of novel developments intended to meet the needs of a general theory of systems. We may enumerate them in brief survey:
Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior.
Information theory, introducing the concept of information as a quantity measurable by an expression isomorphic to negative entropy in physics, and developing the principles of its transmission.
Game theory, analyzing in a novel mathematical framework, rational competition between two or more antagonists for maximum gain and minimum loss.
Decision theory, similarly analyzing rational choices, within human organizations, based upon examination of a given situation and its possible outcomes.
Topology or relational mathematics, including non-metrical fields such as network and graph theory.
Factor analysis, i.e., isolation by way of mathematical analysis, of factors in multivariable phenomena in psychology and other fields
General system theory in the narrower sense (G.S.T.), trying to derive from a general definition of “system” as complex of interacting components, concepts characteristic of organized wholes such as interaction, sum, mechanization, centralization, competition, finality, etc., and to apply them to concrete phenomena. ~ Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory,#NFDB
549:Trick-cyclist or assuager of discontents, whatever his title, the psychiatrist had now passed into history, joining the necromancers, sorcerers and other practitioners of the black sciences. The Mental Freedom legislation enacted ten years earlier by the ultraconservative UW government had banned the profession outright and enshrined the individual’s freedom to be insane if he wanted to, provided he paid the full civil consequences for any infringements of the law. That was the catch, the hidden object of the MF laws. What had begun as a popular reaction against ‘subliminal living’ and the uncontrolled extension of techniques of mass manipulation for political and economic ends had quickly developed into a systematic attack on the psychological sciences. Over-permissive courts of law with their condoning of delinquency, pseudo-enlightened penal reformers, ‘Victims of society’, the psychologist and his patient all came under fierce attack. Discharging their self-hate and anxiety onto a convenient scapegoat, the new rulers, and the great majority electing them, outlawed all forms of psychic control, from the innocent market survey to lobotomy. The mentally ill were on their own, spared pity and consideration, made to pay to the hilt for their failings. The sacred cow of the community was the psychotic, free to wander where he wanted, drooling on the doorsteps, sleeping on sidewalks, and woe betide anyone who tried to help him. ~ J G Ballard, #NFDB
550:People are too emotional about communism, or rather, about their own Communist Parties, to think about a subject that one day will be a subject for sociologists. Which is, the social activities that go on as a direct or indirect result of the existence of a Communist Party. People or groups of people who don’t even know it have been inspired, or animated, or given a new push into life because of the Communist Party, and this is true of all countries where there has been even a tiny Communist Party. In our own small town, a year after Russia entered the war, and the left had recovered because of it, there had come into existence (apart from the direct activities of the Party which is not what I am talking about) a small orchestra, readers’ circles, two dramatic groups, a film society, an amateur survey of the conditions of urban African children which, when it was published, stirred the white conscience and was the beginning of a long-overdue sense of guilt, and half a dozen discussion groups on African problems. For the first time in its existence there was something like a cultural life in that town. And it was enjoyed by hundreds of people who knew of the communists only as a group of people to hate. And of course a good many of these phenomena were disapproved of by the communists themselves, then at their most energetic and dogmatic. Yet the communists had inspired them because a dedicated faith in humanity spreads ripples in all directions. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
551:Looks like you’ve been busy,” he said as he set down the pail to survey the room.
“You found water!”
“There was a stream close by.” His gaze fixed on what she held in her hand. “I see you found my brandy.”
Refusing to be embarrassed, she walked over to hand the flask to him. “I did indeed.” She shot him a mischievous glance as he drank some. “Who would guess that the estimable Mr. Pinter, so high in the instep, drinks strong spirits?”
He scowled at her. “A little brandy on a cold day never hurt anyone. And I’m not high in the instep.”
“Oh? Didn’t you tell Gabe only last week that most lords were only good for redistributing funds from their estates into all the gaming hells and brothels in London, and ignoring their duty to God and country?”
When he flushed, she felt a twinge of conscience, but only a twinge. He looked so charming when he was flustered.
“I wasn’t implying that your family…”
“It’s all right,” she said, taking pity on him. He had saved her life, after all. “You have good reason to be high in the instep. And you’re not far wrong, in any case-there are many lords who are a blight upon society.”
He was quiet a long moment. “I hope you realize that I don’t think that of your brothers. Or your brother-in-law. They’re fine men.”
“Thank you.”
Removing his surtout, he walked over to hang it on top of her cloak, then stood there warming his hands at the fire. “I wish I could say the same about your cousins. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
552:E-mails really can get people into political or legal trouble, as Graham himself notes by raising questions about Clinton. “Did she communicate on behalf of Clinton Foundation as secretary of state?” he asked Mr. Todd on “Meet the Press.” “Did she call the terrorist attack in Benghazi a terrorist attack in real time? I want to know.” And e-mail really can get in the way of people’s time for strategic thinking or face-to-face communication. The question, of course, is whether those challenges mean one shouldn’t do e-mail at all. Plenty of people feel they don’t have much choice. Facebook or texts and mobile apps may have eroded its importance, but e-mail is still the channel for a lot of information. “E-mail and search remain the backbone of the Internet (roughly six in ten online adults engage in each of these activities on a typical day),” a 2012 Pew Research Center report concluded. And 91 percent of Internet users say they use e-mail, according to the 2011 survey data in the report. So in that light, Graham really is in rarefied company. Still, in another sense he may be representative of a not-tiny minority of Americans who choose not to participate in one facet or another of the digital revolution, and are perfectly happy with that. For example, the Pew research found that among the roughly 15 percent of Americans are not Internet-connected, lack of money or access isn’t the main reason. Bigger factors are doubts about whether it’s really vital or a waste of time. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
553:Thomas A. Kochan, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has probably researched corporate diversity more extensively than anyone. His conclusion after a five-year study? “The diversity industry is built on sand.” Prof. Kochan initially contacted 20 major companies that have publicly committed themselves to diversity, and was astonished to find that not one had done a serious study of how diversity increased profits or improved operations. He learned that managers are afraid that race-related research could bring on lawsuits, but that another reason they do not look for results is “because people simply want to believe that diversity works.”
Like other researchers, he found “the negative consequences of diversity, such as higher turnover and greater conflict in the workplace,” and concluded that even if the best managers were able to overcome these problems there was no evidence diversity leads to greater profits.
“The business case rhetoric for diversity is simply naive and overdone,” he says, noting that the estimated $8 billion a year spent on diversity training did not even protect businesses from discrimination suits, much less increase profits.
Common sense suggests that it is hard to get dissimilar people to work together. Indeed, a large-scale survey called the National Study of the Changing Workforce found that more than half of all workers said they preferred to work with people who were not only the same race as themselves, but had the same education and were the same sex. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
554:Even if we admit that running-survey and compass techniques were somehow being used on ships to produce sea-charts as early as the thirteenth century (which most historians of science would rule out) we still come against the unexplained enigma of the miraculous and fully formed de novo appearance of the Carta Pisane. As we've seen, not a single chart pre-dates it that demonstrates in any way the gradual build-up of coastal profiles across the whole extent of the Mediterranean that must have occurred before a likeness as perfect as this could have been resolved.
It is possible, of course, through the vicissitudes of history, that all the evidence for the prior evolution of portolans before the Carta Pisane has simply been lost. If that were the case, however -- in other words if the Carta Pisane is a snapshot of a certain moment in the development of an evolving genre of maps, and if we accept that all earlier 'snap-shots' have been lost, wouldn't we nevertheless expect that such an 'evolving genre' would have continued to evolve after the date of the earliest surviving example?
Whether we set the date of the Pisane between 1270 and 1290 [...] or a little later -- between 1295 and 1300 -- as other scholars have argued, we've seen that there was no significant evolution afterwards.
Now kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the enigmatic Pisane is an unsigned chart and scholars have no idea who the cartographer might have been. ~ Graham Hancock,#NFDB
555:To The King On His Navy
Where'er thy navy spreads her canvas wings,
Homage to thee, and peace to all, she brings:
The French and Spaniard, when thy flags appear,
Forget their hatred, and consent to fear.
So Jove from Ida did both hosts survey,
And when he pleas'd to thunder, part the fray.
Ships heretofore in seas like fishes sped,
The mightiest still upon the smallest fed:
Thou on the deep imposest nobler laws,
And by that justice hast remov'd the cause
Of those rude tempests, which, for rapine sent,
Too oft, alas, involv'd the innocent.
Now shall the ocean, as thy Thames, be free
From both those fates, of storms and piracy.
But we most happy, who can fear no force
But winged troops, or Pegasean horse:
'Tis not so hard for greedy foes to spoil
Another nation, as to touch our soil.
Should Nature's self invade the world again,
And o'er the centre spread the liquid main,
Thy power were safe; and her destructive hand
Would but enlarge the bounds of thy command:
Thy dreadful fleet would style thee lord of all,
And ride in triumph o'er the drowned ball:
Those towers of oak o'er fertile plains might go,
And visit mountains, where they once did grow.
The world's restorer once could not endure,
That finish'd Babel should those men secure,
Whose pride design'd that fabric to have stood
Above the reach of any second flood:
To thee His chosen, more indulgent, He
Dares trust such power with so much piety.
~ Edmund Waller,#NFDB
556:They suspected that children learned best through undirected free play—and that a child’s psyche was sensitive and fragile. During the 1980s and 1990s, American parents and teachers had been bombarded by claims that children’s self-esteem needed to be protected from competition (and reality) in order for them to succeed. Despite a lack of evidence, the self-esteem movement took hold in the United States in a way that it did not in most of the world. So, it was understandable that PTA parents focused their energies on the nonacademic side of their children’s school. They dutifully sold cupcakes at the bake sales and helped coach the soccer teams. They doled out praise and trophies at a rate unmatched in other countries. They were their kids’ boosters, their number-one fans. These were the parents that Kim’s principal in Oklahoma praised as highly involved. And PTA parents certainly contributed to the school’s culture, budget, and sense of community. However, there was not much evidence that PTA parents helped their children become critical thinkers. In most of the countries where parents took the PISA survey, parents who participated in a PTA had teenagers who performed worse in reading. Korean parenting, by contrast, were coaches. Coach parents cared deeply about their children, too. Yet they spent less time attending school events and more time training their children at home: reading to them, quizzing them on their multiplication tables while they were cooking dinner, and pushing them to try harder. They saw education as one of their jobs. ~ Amanda Ripley, #NFDB
557:No special privilege has been granted to Marxist historiography as such. Despite the changes of recent decades, the great bulk of serious historical work in the 20th century has been written by historians foreign to Marxism. Historical materialism is not a finished science; nor have all its practitioners been of a similar calibre. There are fields of historiography which are dominated by Marxist research; there are more, in which non-Marxist contributions are superior in quality and quantity to Marxist; and there are perhaps even more, where no Marxist interventions exist at all. The only permissible criterion of discrimination, in a comparative survey which must consider works coming from such different horizons, is their intrinsic solidity and intelligence. Maximum awareness and respect for the scholarship of historians outside the boundaries of Marxism is not incompatible with rigorous pursuit of a Marxist historical enquiry: it is a condition of it. Conversely, Marx and Engels themselves can never be taken simply at their word: the errors of their writings on the past should not be evaded or ignored, but identified and criticized. To do so is not to depart from historical materialism, but to rejoin it. There is no place for any fideism in rational knowledge, which is necessarily cumulative; and the greatness of the founders of new sciences has never been proof against misjudgments or myths, any more than it has been impaired by them. To take ‘liberties’ with the signature of Marx is in this sense merely to enter into the freedom of Marxism. ~ Perry Anderson, #NFDB
558:Go away.” I stick my elbow in his ribs and force him to step back. “Sit on the couch and keep your hands to yourself,” I instruct, then follow him to the sofa and grab my Dating and Sex for Dummies books off the coffee table and shove them into my sock drawer while he laughs. “You’re making me miss my show,” I gripe as I toss things into the suitcase.
“Your show? You sound like you’re eighty.” He glances at the TV behind me then back to me. “Murder on Mason Lane,” he says. “It was the neighbor. She was committing Medicare fraud using the victim’s deceased wife’s information. He caught on so she killed him.”
I gasp. “You spoiler! You spoiling spoiler who spoils!” Then I shrug. “This is a new episode. You don’t even know that. It’s the daughter. She killed him. I’ve had her pegged since the first commercial break.”
“You’re cute.”
“Just you wait,” I tell him, very satisfied with myself. I’m really good at guessing whodunnit.
“Sorry, you murder nerd, I worked on this case two years ago. It’s the neighbor.”
“Really?” I drop my makeup bag into the suitcase and check to see if he’s teasing me.
“I swear. I’ll tell you all the good shit the show left out once we’re on the plane.”
I survey Boyd with interest. I do have a lot of questions. “I thought you were in cyber crimes, not murder.”
“Murder isn’t a department,” he replies, shaking his head at me.
“You know what I mean.”
“Most crimes have a cyber component to them these days. There’s always a cyber trail.”
Shit, that’s hot. ~ Jana Aston,#NFDB
559:Schools have tried just about anything to try to calm racial tensions: professional mediation, multi-cultural training, diversity celebrations, anger-management classes, and a host of other interventions. In 2004, the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, in Riverside County, California, even considered a rule that would have forbidden any student to “form or openly participate in groups that tend to exclude, or create the impression of the exclusion of, other students.” The school board narrowly rejected the proposal when it was pointed out that the ban would have prohibited membership in the Hispanic group, La Raza, and could have been read to forbid playing rap music around white students.
Absurd measures like this show how desperate schools are to solve the race problem. A 2003 survey found that 5.4 percent of high-school students had stayed home at least once during the previous month because they were physically afraid. This was an increase over 4.4 percent ten years earlier. Racial violence was undoubtedly an important factor.
The circumstances under which some of our least advantaged citizens must try to get an education are nothing short of scandalous. Is it a wonder their test scores are low, that many drop out, that they fail to see the value of an education? How many times must school race riots be put down by SWAT teams before school authorities realize that this may be a problem that will not be cured with sensitivity training? The purpose of schools is to educate, not to force on children integration of a kind their parents do not even practice. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
560:Past the despairing wail
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!
Elysian life survey!
There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads,
His merry west-winds blithely leads
The ever-blooming May!
Through gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the hours,
In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers,
And truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day.
And joy to-day and joy to-morrow,
But wafts the airy soul aloft;
The very name is lost to sorrow,
And pain is rapture tuned more exquisitely soft.
Here the pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb,
And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim,
The load he shall bear never more;
Here the mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams,
Lulled with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams,
The fields, when the harvest is o'er.
Here, he, whose ears drank in the battle roar,
Whose banners streamed upon the startled wind
A thunder-storm,before whose thunder tread
The mountains trembled,in soft sleep reclined,
By the sweet brook that o'er its pebbly bed
In silver plays, and murmurs to the shore,
Hears the stern clangor of wild spears no more!
Here the true spouse the lost-beloved regains,
And on the enamelled couch of summer-plains
Mingles sweet kisses with the zephyr's breath.
Here, crowned at last, love never knows decay,
Living through ages its one bridal day,
Safe from the stroke of death!
~ Friedrich Schiller, Elysium
,#NFDB
561:As children, we fear the dark. Anything might be out. here. The unknown troubles us. Ironically, it is our fate to live in the dark. This unexpected finding of science is only about three centuries old. Head out from the Earth in any direction you choose, and—after an initial flash of blue and a longer wait while the Sun fades—you are surrounded by blackness, punctuated only here and there by the faint and distant stars. Even after we are grown, the darkness retains its power to frighten us. And so there are those who say we should not inquire too closely into who else might be living in that darkness. Better not to know, they say. There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Of this immense multitude, could it be that our humdrum Sun is the only one with an inhabited planet? Maybe. Maybe the origin of life or intelligence is exceedingly improbable. Or maybe civilizations arise all the time, but wipe themselves out as soon as they are able. Or, here and there, peppered across space, orbiting other suns, maybe there are worlds something like our own, on which other beings gaze up and wonder as we do about who else lives in the dark…Life is a comparative rarity. You can survey dozens of worlds and find that on only one of them does life arise and evolve and persist… If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage—or to the advantage of the human species… In our time we’ve crossed the Solar System and sent four ships to the stars… But we continue to search for inhabitants. We can’t help it. Life looks for life. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
562:Because the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug offenders are released, they are generally returned to racially segregated ghetto communities--the places they call home. In many cities, the re-entry phenomenon is highly concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods. According to one study, during a twelve-year period, the number of prisoners returning home to "core counties"--those counties that contain the inner city of a metropolitan area--tripled. The effects are felt throughout the United States. In interviews with one hundred residents of two Tallahassee, Florida communities, researchers found that nearly every one of them had experienced or expected to experience the return of a family member from prison. Similarly, a survey of families living in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago found that the majority of residents either had a family member in prison or expected one to return from prison within the next two years. Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side are ex-offenders, saddled for life with a criminal record. The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for drug offenses. These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons. As Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in these ghetto neighborhoods, "It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
563:Mountains have long been a geography for pilgrimage, place where people have been humbled and strengthened, they are symbols of the sacred center. Many have traveled to them in order to find the concentrated energy of Earth and to realize the strength of unimpeded space. Viewing a mountain at a distance or walking around its body we can see its shape, know its profile, survey its surrounds. The closer you come to the mountain the more it disappears, the mountain begins to lose its shape as you near it, its body begins to spread out over the landscape losing itself to itself. On climbing the mountain the mountain continues to vanish. It vanishes in the detail of each step, its crown is buried in space, its body is buried in the breath. On reaching the mountain summit we can ask, “What has been attained?” - The top of the mountain? Big view? But the mountain has already disappeared. Going down the mountain we can ask, “What has been attained?” Going down the mountain the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain disappears, the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain is realized. Mountain’s realization comes through the details of the breath, mountain appears in each step. Mountain then lives inside our bones, inside our heart-drum. It stands like a huge mother in the atmosphere of our minds. Mountain draws ancestors together in the form of clouds. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the raining of the past. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the winds of the future. Mountain mother is a birth gate that joins the above and below, she is a prayer house, she is a mountain. Mountain is a mountain. ~ Joan Halifax, #NFDB
564:Many researchers have sought the secret of successful education by identifying the most successful schools in the hope of discovering what distinguishes them from others. One of the conclusions of this research is that the most successful schools, on average, are small. In a survey of 1,662 schools in Pennsylvania, for instance, 6 of the top 50 were small, which is an overrepresentation by a factor of 4. These data encouraged the Gates Foundation to make a substantial investment in the creation of small schools, sometimes by splitting large schools into smaller units. At least half a dozen other prominent institutions, such as the Annenberg Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust, joined the effort, as did the U.S. Department of Education’s Smaller Learning Communities Program. This probably makes intuitive sense to you. It is easy to construct a causal story that explains how small schools are able to provide superior education and thus produce high-achieving scholars by giving them more personal attention and encouragement than they could get in larger schools. Unfortunately, the causal analysis is pointless because the facts are wrong. If the statisticians who reported to the Gates Foundation had asked about the characteristics of the worst schools, they would have found that bad schools also tend to be smaller than average. The truth is that small schools are not better on average; they are simply more variable. If anything, say Wainer and Zwerling, large schools tend to produce better results, especially in higher grades where a variety of curricular options is valuable. Thanks to recent advances in cognitive psychology, ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
565:Although Israel is targeted by terrorists much more frequently than the United States, Israelis do not live in fear of terrorism. A 2012 survey of Israeli Jews found that only 16 percent described terrorism as their greatest fear81—no more than the number who said they were worried about Israel’s education system. No Israeli politician would say outright that he tolerates small-scale terrorism, but that’s essentially what the country does. It tolerates it because the alternative—having everyone be paralyzed by fear—is incapacitating and in line with the terrorists’ goals. A key element in the country’s strategy is making life as normal as possible for people after an attack occurs. For instance, police typically try to clear the scene of an attack within four hours of a bomb going off,82 letting everyone get back to work, errands, or even leisure. Small-scale terrorism is treated more like crime than an existential threat. What Israel certainly does not tolerate is the potential for large-scale terrorism (as might be made more likely, for instance, by one of their neighbors acquiring weapons of mass destruction). There is some evidence that their approach is successful: Israel is the one country that has been able to bend Clauset’s curve. If we plot the fatality tolls from terrorist incidents in Israel using the power-law method (figure 13-8), we find that there have been significantly fewer large-scale terror attacks than the power-law would predict; no incident since 1979 has killed more than two hundred people. The fact that Israel’s power-law graph looks so distinct is evidence that our strategic choices do make some difference. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
566:The intriguing history of American applied toponymy includes a few notoriously unpopular sweeping decisions a year after President Benjamin Harrison created the Board on Geographic Names in 1890. Harrison acted at the behest of several government agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was responsible for mapping the nation's coastline, harbors, and coastal waterways. Troubled by inconsistencies in spelling, board members voted to replace centre with center, drop the ugh from names ending in orough, and shorten the suffix burgh to burg. Overnight, Centreview (in Mississippi) became Centerview, Isleborough (in Maine) became Isleboro, and Pittsburgh (in Pennsylvania) lost its final h and a lot of civic pride. The city was chartered in 1816 as Pittsburg, but the Post Office Department added the extra letter sometime later. Although both spellings were used locally and the shorter version had been the official name, many Pittsburghers complained bitterly about the cost of reprinting stationery and repainting signs. Making the spelling consistent with Harrisburg, they argued, was hardly a good reason for truncating the Iron City's moniker--although Harrisburg was the state capital, it was a smaller and economically less important place. Local officials protested that the board had exceeded its authority. The twenty-year crusade to restore the final h bore fruit in 1911, when the board reversed itself--but only for Pittsburgh. In 1916 the board reaffirmed its blanket change of centre, borough, and burgh as well as its right to make exceptions for Pittsburgh and other places with an entrenched local usage. ~ Mark Monmonier, #NFDB
567:To My Lord Colrane
In Answer to his Complemental Verses sent me under the Name of CLEANOR.
Long my dull Muse in heavy slumbers lay,
Indulging Sloth, and to soft Ease gave way,
Her Fill of Rest resolving to enjoy,
Or fancying little worthy her employ.
When Noble Cleanors obliging Strains
Her, the neglected Lyre to tune, constrains.
Confus'd at first, she rais'd her drowsie Head,
Ponder'd a while, then pleas'd, forsook her Bed.
Survey'd each Line with Fancy richly fraught,
Re-read, and then revolv'd them in her Thought.
And can it be? she said, and can it be?
That 'mong the Great Ones I a Poet see?
The Great Ones? who their Ill-spent time devide,
'Twixt dang'rous Politicks, and formal Pride,
Destructive Vice, expensive Vanity,
In worse Ways yet, if Worse there any be:
Leave to Inferiours the despised Arts,
Let their Retainers be the Men of Parts.
But here with Wonder and with Joy I find,
I'th' Noble Born, a no less Noble Mind;
One, who on Ancestors, does not rely
For Fame, in Merit, as in Title, high!
The Severe Godess thus approv'd the Laies:
Yet too much pleas'd, alas, with her own Praise.
But to vain Pride, My Muse, cease to give place,
Virgils immortal Numbers once did grace
A Smother'd Gnat: by high Applause is shown,
If undeserv'd, the Praisers worth alone:
Nor that you should believ'r, is't always meant,
'Tis often for Instruction only sent,
To praise men to Amendment, and display,
By its Perfection, where their Weakness lay.
This Use of these Applauding Numbers make
Them for Example, not Encomium, take.
58
~ Anne Killigrew,#NFDB
568:There is a tree. At the downhill edge of a long, narrow field in the western foothills of the La Sal Mountains -- southeastern Utah. A particular tree. A juniper. Large for its species -- maybe twenty feet tall and two feet in diameter. For perhaps three hundred years this tree has stood its ground. Flourishing in good seasons, and holding on in bad times. "Beautiful" is not a word that comes to mind when one first sees it. No naturalist would photograph it as exemplary of its kind. Twisted by wind, split and charred by lightning, scarred by brushfires, chewed on by insects, and pecked by birds. Human beings have stripped long strings of bark from its trunk, stapled barbed wire to it in using it as a corner post for a fence line, and nailed signs on it on three sides: NO HUNTING; NO TRESPASSING; PLEASE CLOSE THE GATE. In commandeering this tree as a corner stake for claims of rights and property, miners and ranchers have hacked signs and symbols in its bark, and left Day-Glo orange survey tape tied to its branches. Now it serves as one side of a gate between an alfalfa field and open range. No matter what, in drought, flood heat and cold, it has continued. There is rot and death in it near the ground. But at the greening tips of its upper branches and in its berrylike seed cones, there is yet the outreach of life.
I respect this old juniper tree. For its age, yes. And for its steadfastness in taking whatever is thrown at it. That it has been useful in a practical way beyond itself counts for much, as well. Most of all, I admire its capacity for self-healing beyond all accidents and assaults. There is a will in it -- toward continuing to be, come what may. ~ Robert Fulghum,#NFDB
569:The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. This is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).
A statistical survey recently revealed that amount my European students, 25 percent showed a more-or-less marked degree of existential vacuum. Among my American students it is not 25 but 60 percent.
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
570:In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that’s all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us, ~ Robert Shea, #NFDB
571:As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone ~ Cordelia Fine, #NFDB
572:Now consider the tortoise and the eagle. The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat. And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger. And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap… And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle. And then the eagle lets go. And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises. But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection. One day a tortoise will learn how to fly. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
573:Nothing At All In The Paper Today
Nothing at all in the paper today!
Only a murder somewhere or other;
A girl who has put her child away,
Not being a wife as well as a mother;
Or a drunken husband beating a wife,
With the neighbors lying awake to listen,
Scarce aware he has taken a life,
Till in at the window the dawn rays glisten.
But that is all in the regular way-There's nothing at all in the paper today.
Nothing at all in the paper today!
To be sure, there's a woman died of starvation,
Fell down in the street, as so many may
In this very prosperous Christian nation;
Or two young girls, with some inward grief
Maddened, have plunged into the inky waters;
Or father has learnt that his son's a thief,
Or mother been robbed of one of her daughters.
Things that occur in their regular way-There's nothing at all in the paper today.
There's nothing at all in the paper today,
Unless you care about things in the city-How great rich rogues for their crimes must pay
(Though all gentility cries out, 'Pity!')
Like the meanest shop-boy that robs a till.
There's a case today, if I'm not forgetting,
The lad only 'borrowed'--as such lads will-To pay some money he lost in betting;
But there's nothing in this that's out of the way-There's nothing at all in the paper today!
Nothing at all in the paper today
But the births and bankruptcies, deaths and marriages,
But life's events in the old survey
With Virtue begging, and Vice in carriages;
And kindly hearts under ermine gowns,
And wicked breasts under hodden gray;
207
For goodness belongs not only to clowns,
And o'er others than lords does sin bear sway.
But what do I read? 'Drowned! wrecked!' Did I say
There was nothing at all in the paper today?
~ Anonymous Americas,#NFDB
574:Raquel laughed, and David joined her. They sounded slightly manic. “You’re free now,” he said.
“Of all of it,” she answered, and I looked up to see them locked in a gaze I’d previously only observed between actors on Easton Heights—one filled with all the things unspoken over the years, all the betrayals and fears and pain left behind in favor of overwhelming love. It was beautiful.
Oh, who am I kidding, it was awkward as all heck and I didn’t have time for it. “Okay! So, you may have noticed Lend is in the kitchen.”
“Mmm hmm,” Raquel answered, reaching up to smooth down a stray piece of David’s hair.
“Yeah, that’d be the big faerie curse.”
“Farie curse?” She actually turned toward me; David took both her hands in his.
“Yup. Really funny one, too. See, any time Lend and I are in the same room or can see each other or could actually, you know, touch, he falls fast asleep.”
“Oh,” Raquel frowned.
“So I need your help. You know all the names of the IPCA controlled faeries, right?”
She nodded, her frown deepening.
“Well, it was a dark faerie curse, so I figure we need a dark faerie to undo it. So you call an Unseelie faerie, we give him or her a named command to break the curse, ta-da, we can double-date!”
“Wait, who can double-date?” Lend asked.
“I’ll let your dad tell you. So. Faerie?”
Raquel heaved a sigh, along the lines of her famous things never get easier, do they? sign, and, boy, I agreed with her.
“To be honest, I don’t know which court most of the faeries belong to.”
“You don’t? How can you not know? It seems like pretty vital information to me. You know, ‘Are you a member of the evil court kidnapping humans and plotting world domination, or a member of the moderately less evil court who just wants to get the crap off the planet?’ sort of a survey when you get them. ~ Kiersten White,#NFDB
575:An indication that greed reflects the perception rather than the reality of scarcity is that rich people tend to be less generous than poor people. In my experience, poor people quite often lend or give each other small sums that, proportionally speaking, would be the equivalent of half a rich person's net worth. Extensive research backs up this observation.
A large 2002 survey by Independent Sector, a nonprofit research organization, found that Americans making less than $25,000 gave 4.2 percent of their income to charity, as opposed to 2.7 percent for people making over $100,000. More recently, Paul Piff, a social psychologist at University of California-Berkeley, found that "lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth." Piff found that when research subjects were given money to anonymously distribute between themselves and a partner (who would never know their identity), their generosity correlated inversely to the socioeconomic status.
While it is tempting to conclude from this that greedy people become wealthy, an equally plausible interpretation is that wealth makes people greedy. Why would this be? In a context of abundance greed is silly; only in a context of scarcity is it rational. The wealthy perceive scarcity where there is none. They also worry more than anybody else about money. Could it be that money itself causes the perception of scarcity? Could it be that money, nearly synonymous with security, ironically brings the opposite? The answer to both these questions is yes. On the individual level, rich people have a lot more "invested" in their money and are less able to let go of it. (To let go easily reflects an attitude of abundance.) On the systemic level, as we shall see, scarcity is also built in to money, a direct result of the way it is created and circulated. ~ Charles Eisenstein,#NFDB
576:February 4 MORNING “The love of the Lord.” — Hosea 3:1 BELIEVER, look back through all thine experience, and think of the way whereby the Lord thy God has led thee in the wilderness, and how He hath fed and clothed thee every day — how He hath borne with thine ill manners — how He hath put up with all thy murmurings, and all thy longings after the flesh-pots of Egypt — how He has opened the rock to supply thee, and fed thee with manna that came down from heaven. Think of how His grace has been sufficient for thee in all thy troubles — how His blood has been a pardon to thee in all thy sins — how His rod and His staff have comforted thee. When thou hast thus looked back upon the love of the Lord, then let faith survey His love in the future, for remember that Christ’s covenant and blood have something more in them than the past. He who has loved thee and pardoned thee, shall never cease to love and pardon. He is Alpha, and He shall be Omega also: He is first, and He shall be last. Therefore, bethink thee, when thou shalt pass through the valley of the shadow of death, thou needest fear no evil, for He is with thee. When thou shalt stand in the cold floods of Jordan, thou needest not fear, for death cannot separate thee from His love; and when thou shalt come into the mysteries of eternity thou needest not tremble, “For I am persuaded, that neither death; nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Now, soul, is not thy love refreshed? Does not this make thee love Jesus? Doth not a flight through illimitable plains of the ether of love inflame thy heart and compel thee to delight thyself in the Lord thy God? Surely as we meditate on “the love of the Lord,” our hearts burn within us, and we long to love Him more. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
577:Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on. "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that's all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us," he concluded, strongly emphasizing the last clause, staring at Drake, not at the professor. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
578:She heard nothing but experienced a sensation that prickled along her spine like a warm touch caressing her skin. Slowly, with the care of prey beneath a predator's survey, she turned her head- and met the gaze of the elegant gentleman lounging at the door.
In her travels, she had seen many a striking and charming man, but none had been as handsome as this- and all had been more charming. This man was a statue in stark black and white, hewn from rugged granite and adolescent dreams. His face wasn't really handsome; his nose was thin and crooked, his eyes heavy lidded, his cheekbones broad, stark and hollowed. But he wielded a quality of power, of toughness, that made Eleanor want to huddle into a shivering, cowardly little ball.
Then he smiled, and she caught her breath in awe. His mouth... his glorious, sensual mouth. His lips were wide, too wide, and broad, too broad. His teeth were white, clean, strong as a wolf's. He looked like a man seldom amused by life, but he was amused by her, and she realized in a rush of mortification that she remained standing on the stool, reading one of his books and lost to the grave realities of her situation. The reality that stated she was an imposter, sent to mollify this man until the real duchess could arrive.
Mollify? Him? Not likely. Nothing would mollify him. Nothing except... well, whatever it was he wanted. And she wasn't fool enough to think she knew what that was.
The immediate reality was that she would somehow have to step down onto the floor and of necessity expose her ankles to his gaze. It wasn't as if he wouldn't look. He was looking now, observing her figure with an appreciation all the more impressive for its subtlety. His gaze flicked along her spine, along her backside, and down her legs with such concentration that she formed the impression he knew very well what she looked like clad only in her chemise- and that was an unnerving sensation. ~ Christina Dodd,#NFDB
579:So, absent the chance to make every job applicant work as hard as a college applicant, is there some quick, clever, cheap way of weeding out bad employees before they are hired? Zappos has come up with one such trick. You will recall from the last chapter that Zappos, the online shoe store, has a variety of unorthodox ideas about how a business can be run. You may also recall that its customer-service reps are central to the firm’s success. So even though the job might pay only $11 an hour, Zappos wants to know that each new employee is fully committed to the company’s ethos. That’s where “The Offer” comes in. When new employees are in the onboarding period—they’ve already been screened, offered a job, and completed a few weeks of training—Zappos offers them a chance to quit. Even better, quitters will be paid for their training time and also get a bonus representing their first month’s salary—roughly $2,000—just for quitting! All they have to do is go through an exit interview and surrender their eligibility to be rehired at Zappos. Doesn’t that sound nuts? What kind of company would offer a new employee $2,000 to not work? A clever company. “It’s really putting the employee in the position of ‘Do you care more about money or do you care more about this culture and the company?’ ” says Tony Hsieh, the company’s CEO. “And if they care more about the easy money, then we probably aren’t the right fit for them.” Hsieh figured that any worker who would take the easy $2,000 was the kind of worker who would end up costing Zappos a lot more in the long run. By one industry estimate, it costs an average of roughly $4,000 to replace a single employee, and one recent survey of 2,500 companies found that a single bad hire can cost more than $25,000 in lost productivity, lower morale, and the like. So Zappos decided to pay a measly $2,000 up front and let the bad hires weed themselves out before they took root. As of this writing, fewer than 1 percent of new hires at Zappos accept “The Offer. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
580:And, as inflation has fallen, so bonds have rallied in what has been one of the great bond bull markets of modern history. Even more remarkably, despite the spectacular Argentine default – not to mention Russia’s in 1998 – the spreads on emerging market bonds have trended steadily downwards, reaching lows in early 2007 that had not been seen since before the First World War, implying an almost unshakeable confidence in the economic future. Rumours of the death of Mr Bond have clearly proved to be exaggerated. Inflation has come down partly because many of the items we buy, from clothes to computers, have got cheaper as a result of technological innovation and the relocation of production to low-wage economies in Asia. It has also been reduced because of a worldwide transformation in monetary policy, which began with the monetarist-inspired increases in short-term rates implemented by the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continued with the spread of central bank independence and explicit targets in the 1990s. Just as importantly, as the Argentine case shows, some of the structural drivers of inflation have also weakened. Trade unions have become less powerful. Loss-making state industries have been privatized. But, perhaps most importantly of all, the social constituency with an interest in positive real returns on bonds has grown. In the developed world a rising share of wealth is held in the form of private pension funds and other savings institutions that are required, or at least expected, to hold a high proportion of their assets in the form of government bonds and other fixed income securities. In 2007 a survey of pension funds in eleven major economies revealed that bonds accounted for more than a quarter of their assets, substantially lower than in past decades, but still a substantial share.71 With every passing year, the proportion of the population living off the income from such funds goes up, as the share of retirees increases. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
581:January 27 MORNING “And of his fulness have all we received.” — John 1:16 THESE words tell us that there is a fulness in Christ. There is a fulness of essential Deity, for “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead.” There is a fulness of perfect manhood, for in Him, bodily, that Godhead was revealed. There is a fulness of atoning efficacy in His blood, for “the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” There is a fulness of justifying righteousness in His life, for “there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” There is a fulness of divine prevalence in His plea, for “He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him; seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” There is a fulness of victory in His death, for through death He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil. There is a fulness of efficacy in His resurrection from the dead, for by it “we are begotten again unto a lively hope.” There is a fulness of triumph in His ascension, for “when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and received gifts for men.” There is a fulness of blessings of every sort and shape; a fulness of grace to pardon, of grace to regenerate, of grace to sanctify, of grace to preserve, and of grace to perfect. There is a fulness at all times; a fulness of comfort in affliction; a fulness of guidance in prosperity. A fulness of every divine attribute, of wisdom, of power, of love; a fulness which it were impossible to survey, much less to explore. “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.” Oh, what a fulness must this be of which all receive! Fulness, indeed, must there be when the stream is always flowing, and yet the well springs up as free, as rich, as full as ever. Come, believer, and get all thy need supplied; ask largely, and thou shalt receive largely, for this “fulness” is inexhaustible, and is treasured up where all the needy may reach it, even in Jesus, Immanuel — God with us. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
582:The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination. ~ Ralph Barton Perry, The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918), #NFDB
583:There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhs
of human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even register
their names, why was that. When the government finally built camps it only allowed for six thousand families to remain in the state, dispersing the
others around the country where they would be invisible and impotent, why was that. The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi, Mishriwallah, Nagrota were built
on the banks and beds of nullahas, dry seasonal waterways, and when the water came the camps were flooded, why was that. The ministers of the
government made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internal
migrants whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that. The tents provided for the refugees to live in were often uninspected and
leaking and the monsoon rains came through, why was that. When the one-room tenements called ORTs were built to replace the tents they too
leaked profusely, why was that. There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensaries
lacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe five
thousand deaths because of intense heat and humidity because of snake bites and gastroenteritis and dengue fever and stress diabetes and
kidney ailments and tuberculosis and psychoneurosis and there was not a single health survey conducted by the government why was that and the
pandits of Kashmir were left to rot in their slum camps, to rot while the army and the insurgency fought over the bloodied and broken valley, to
dream of return, to die while dreaming of return, to die after the dream of return died so that they could not even die dreaming of it, why was that why
was that why was that why was that why was that. ~ Salman Rushdie,#NFDB
584:The conflicts described [...]—school and prison violence, racial power struggles, discrimination lawsuits, language barriers, religious differences, a complex and unforgiving racial etiquette—are direct consequences of diversity. Whatever their leaders may tell them, ordinary Americans have not failed to notice this. A 2007 poll asked non-whites whether “racial tension” in the United States is either a “very important problem,” “somewhat important,” or not a problem at all. No less than 93 percent of Hispanics thought it was very or somewhat important (79 percent said “very important”), 92 percent of blacks thought it was very or somewhat important (65 percent said “very important”), and 73 percent of Asians thought it was very or somewhat important (37 percent said “very important”). When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “There is a lot of discrimination against my community in the United States,” 92 percent of blacks, 85 percent of Hispanics, and 57 percent of Asians agreed.
Many Americans do not expect things to get much better. A 2004 Gallup poll asked, “Do you think that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem for the United States, or that a solution will eventually be worked out?” Fifty-seven percent of blacks, 44 percent of whites and 42 percent of Hispanics said black-white relations would always be a problem. In 2010, only 36 percent of voters thought relations were improving between blacks and whites; among blacks only 13 percent saw improvement.
Nor, as we have seen, are relations bad only between whites and non-whites. A 2007 survey found that 61 percent of Hispanics, 54 percent of Asians, and 47 percent of blacks would rather do business with whites than with members of the other two groups.
According to a 2010 Rasmussen poll, 50 percent of voters thought relations were getting worse between whites and Hispanics; only 21 percent thought they were getting better. The same poll found that 34 percent of voters thought black-Hispanic relations were deteriorating while only 16 percent thought they were improving. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
585:While I was deep in my fantasy, in yet another episode of perfect timing, Marlboro Man called from the road.
“Hey,” he said, the mid-1990s spotty cell phone service only emphasizing the raspy charm of his voice.
“Oh! Just the person I want to talk to,” I said, grabbing paper and a pen. “I have a question for you--”
“I bought your wedding present today,” Marlboro Man interrupted.
“Huh?” I said, caught off guard. “Wedding present?” For someone steeped in the proper way of doing things, I was ashamed that a wedding gift for Marlboro Man had never crossed my mind.
“Yep,” he said. “And you need to hurry up and marry me so I can give it to you.”
I giggled. “So…what is it?” I asked. I couldn’t even imagine. I hoped it wasn’t a tennis bracelet.
“You have to marry me to find out,” he answered.
Yikes. What was it? Wasn’t the wedding ring itself supposed to be the present? That’s what I’d been banking on. What would I ever get him? Cuff links? An Italian leather briefcase? A Montblanc pen? What do you give a man who rides a horse to work every day?
“So, woman,” Marlboro Man said, changing the subject, “what did you want to ask me?”
“Oh!” I said, focusing my thoughts back to the reception. “Okay, I need you to name your absolute favorite foods in the entire world.”
He paused. “Why?”
“I’m just taking a survey,” I answered.
“Hmmm…” He thought for a minute. “Probably steak.”
Duh. “Well, besides steak,” I said.
“Steak,” he repeated.
“And what else?” I asked.
“Well…steak is pretty good,” he answered.
“Okay,” I responded. “I understand that you like steak. But I need a little more to work with here.”
“But why?” he asked.
“Because I’m taking a survey,” I repeated.
Marlboro Man chuckled. “Okay, but I’m really hungry right now, and I’m three hours from home.”
“I’ll factor that in,” I said.
“Biscuits and gravy…tenderloin…chocolate cake…barbecue ribs…scrambled eggs,” he said, rattling off his favorite comfort foods.
Bingo, I thought, smiling.
“Now, hurry up and marry me,” he commanded. “I’m tired of waiting on you.”
I loved it when he was bossy. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
586:Love Elegy, To Laura
Too heedless friend, why thus augment the flame
That glows resistless in my beating breast?
Why with thy praises grace his fatal name,
Who robs thy Emma's hapless heart of rest?
Why needest thou dwell on Henry's graceful ease;
Why praise the timid worth his glance reveals;
Why speak enraptured of his power to please,
Whose power to wound my aching bosom feels?
Say not, "That gentle voice was formed for love,"
Nor in his eyes such sweet expression see;
Say not, that tenderness those glances prove,
Which never fix with tenderness on me.
Too well my Henry's charms I've numbered o'er,
And thus to end the fond survey is mine:
His heart will own some brighter fair one's power;
Think not, lost Emma, he can e'er be thine.
Yet why despair? Though Beauty's boasted rose
On others' cheeks in livelier colours shine,
The tender heart that in my bosom glows
The palm of fondness will to none resign.
Though brighter radiance beams in others' eyes,
By shape, by colour formed the soul to steal;
If Love's expression Henry's heart can prize,
Then, Henry's heart the power of mine must feel.
Yet vain the hope: "Fond maid, thy love suppress,"
Calm Reason cries; "go, learn to check the sigh:
But, if resolved to love in rash excess,
Seek out some lonely shade, despair, and die!"
Then, Laura, bid to Henry's praise farewel!
Forget his merit, and my hopeless flame;
On the dear theme no more ill-judging dwell,
And from thy memory blot his fatal name.
22
But if I urge this plaintive prayer in vain,
Bid execrations on that name attend;
And him, my Laura, view with cold disdain,
Who sees unmoved the sorrows of thy friend.
Say, such the scorn, the pride of Henry's breast,
It cannot Love's endearing softness share,
Say, vice degrades....Hold! slight my wild request,
Nor by such calumny my fury dare.
No....from my frantic wishes still appeal,
Declare that Henry is from error free;
Or the keen hate for him I bade thee feel,
My wayward heart will learn to feel for thee.
~ Amelia Opie,#NFDB
587:Unnecessary Creation gives you the freedom to explore new possibilities and follow impractical curiosities. Some of the most frustrated creative pros I’ve encountered are those who expect their day job to allow them to fully express their creativity and satisfy their curiosity. They push against the boundaries set by their manager or client and fret continuously that their best work never finds its way into the end product because of restrictions and compromises. A 2012 survey sponsored by Adobe revealed that nearly 75 percent of workers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan felt they weren’t living up to their creative potential. (In the United States, the number was closer to 82 percent!) Obviously, there’s a gap between what many creatives actually do each day and what they feel they are capable of doing given more resources or less bureaucracy. But those limitations aren’t likely to change in the context of an organization, where there is little tolerance for risk and resources are scarcer than ever. If day-to-day project work is the only work that you are engaging in, it follows that you’re going to get frustrated. To break the cycle, keep a running list of projects you’d like to attempt in your spare time, and set aside a specific time each week (or each day) to make progress on that list. Sometimes this feels very inefficient in the moment, especially when there are so many other urgent priorities screaming for your attention, but it can be a key part of keeping your creative energy flowing for your day-to-day work. You’ll also want to get a notebook to record questions that you’d like to pursue, ideas that you have, or experiments that you’d like to try. Then you can use your pre-defined Unnecessary Creation time to play with these ideas. As Steven Johnson explains in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, “A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons—thousands of them—fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind.”18 ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
588:from The Emigrants: A Poem
[Disillusion with the French Revolution]
So many years have passed,
Since, on my native hills, I learned to gaze
On these delightful landscapes; and those years
Have taught me so much sorrow, that my soul
Feels not the joy reviving Nature brings;
But, in dark retrospect, dejected dwells
On human follies, and on human woes.—
What is the promise of the infant year,
The lively verdure, or the bursting blooms,
To those, who shrink from horrors such as War
Spreads o'er the affrighted world? With swimming eye,
Back on the past they throw their mournful looks,
And see the Temple, which they fondly hoped
Reason would raise to Liberty, destroyed
By ruffian hands; while, on the ruined mass,
Flushed with hot blood, the Fiend of Discord sits
In savage triumph; mocking every plea
Of policy and justice, as she shows
The headless corse of one, whose only crime
Was being born a Monarch—Mercy turns,
From spectacle so dire, her swollen eyes;
And Liberty, with calm, unruffled brow
Magnanimous, as conscious of her strength
In Reason's panoply, scorns to distain
Her righteous cause with carnage, and resigns
To Fraud and Anarchy the infuriate crowd.—
What is the promise of the infant year
To those, who (while the poor but peaceful hind
Pens, unmolested, the increasing flock
Of his rich master in this sea-fenced isle)
Survey, in neighboring countries, scenes that make
The sick heart shudder; and the man, who thinks,
Blush for his species? There the trumpet's voice
Drowns the soft warbling of the woodland choir;
And violets, lurking in their turfy beds
Beneath the flowering thorn, are stained with blood.
There fall, at once, the spoiler and the spoiled;
48
While War, wide-ravaging, annihilates
The hope of cultivation; gives to Fiends,
The meager, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,
The blasted land—There, taunting in the van
Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;
And, in the ranks, "Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
Crouch for employment."
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
589:We have to decide how to start our research,” Ashley said. “Like, should we look for information on the whole town, or just one specific area. Roo and I decided we should all focus on the Brickway.”
“You decided we should all focus on the Brickway,” Roo mumbled, popping the tab on her can.
Gage nodded. “Ashley’s right. If this is a walking tour, some kids in our class might not want to walk very far.”
“If, in fact, anybody wants to walk on this tour at all,” Parker couldn’t help adding. “Come on…we’re not really going to do this ghost stuff, are we?”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “Well then, maybe we should have transportation. Maybe we could use our cars?”
“Our cars? Etienne and I are the only ones with wheels.”
“What a perfectly brilliant idea, Ash.” Roo shot her sister a bland look. “Ghost BMW. No…wait. Ghost Truck. I’m all tingly with dread.”
“Or Ghost SUV?” Despite Ashley’s wounded expression, Parker clasped his hands beseechingly at Gage. “Oh, pretty please, can we use your mom’s minivan?”
Ashley’s lips tightened. “Parker, this is serious!”
“Look, I know it’s half our grade.” Easing back down, he took a swig of beer and tried to reason with her. “But let’s face it--the whole thing’s pretty stupid. And impossible.”
“It’s not stupid. And why is it impossible? All we have to do is research old places that might be haunted.”
“And just how do you propose we do that? Oh wait, I know--let’s just knock on people’s doors. Excuse me, we’re doing a survey--are there any creepy ghosts living in your house? Ash, come on. We can’t force things to be haunted just so they can be close enough to walk to.”
A disappointed silence fell. For several minutes everyone seemed lost in thought, till Etienne unfolded himself from the tree.
“Don’t y’all know anything about your own town?” He walked over to the cooler and pulled out a beer. To Miranda, who watched him, he moved with all the grace and stealth of a predatory cat.
“Well, I’m not going to flunk this project,” Ashley said crossly, “just because Parker’s an idiot.”
Roo promptly frowned. “Where’s your compassion? Parker can’t help being an idiot. ~ Richie Tankersley Cusick,#NFDB
590:Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it.
What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.
How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.
All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you. ~ Bill Bryson,#NFDB
591:Optimists Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person—you already feel fortunate. An optimistic attitude is largely inherited, and it is part of a general disposition for well-being, which may also include a preference for seeing the bright side of everything. If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future income, are more likely to remarry after divorce (the classic “triumph of hope over experience”), and are more prone to bet on individual stocks. Of course, the blessings of optimism are offered only to individuals who are only mildly biased and who are able to “accentuate the positive” without losing track of reality. Optimistic individuals play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the political and military leaders—not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge. They are probably optimistic by temperament; a survey of founders of small businesses concluded that entrepreneurs are more sanguine than midlevel managers about life in general. Their experiences of success have confirmed their faith in their judgment and in their ability to control events. Their self-confidence is reinforced by the admiration of others. This reasoning leads to a hypothesis: the people who have the greatest influence on the lives of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks than they realize. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
592:We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY? These days, however, I am much calmer-since I realized that it's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor-biting down on a wooden spoon so as not to disturb the men's card game-before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail-giving daily wail against feminism-amuse me. They paid you 1,600 pounds for that, dear, I think. And I bet it' going into your bank account and not your husband's. The more women argue, loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges. Because for all that people have tried to abuse it and disown it, "feminism" is still the word we need...We need the only word we have ever had to describe "making the world equal for men and women". Women's reluctance to use it sends out a really bad signal. Imagine if, in the 1960's, it had become fashionable for black people to say they "weren't into" civil rights. "No, I'm not into Civil Rights! That Martin Luther King is too shouty. He just needs to chill out, to be honest." But then, I do understand why women started to reject the word feminism. It ended up being invoked in so many baffling inappropriate contexts that you'd presume it was some spectacularly unappealing combination of misandry, misery, and hypocrisy, which stood for ugly clothes, constant anger, and, let's face it, no fucking...Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
593:The sound of Alex revving his motorcycle brings my attention back to him. “Don’t be afraid of what they think.”
I take in the sight of him, from his ripped jeans and leather jacket to the red and black bandana he just tied on top of his head. His gang colors.
I should be terrified. Then I remember how he was with Shelley yesterday.
To hell with it.
I shift my book bag around to my back and straddle his motorcycle.
“Hold on tight,” he says, pulling my hands around his waist. The simple feel of his strong hands resting on top of mine is intensely intimate. I wonder if he’s feeling these emotions, too, but dismiss the thought. Alex Fuentes is a hard guy. Experienced. The mere touch of hands isn’t going to make his stomach flutter.
He deliberately brushes the tips of his fingers over mine before reaching for the handlebars. Oh. My. God. What am I getting myself into?
As we speed away from the school parking lot, I grab Alex’s rock-hard abs tighter. The sped of the motorcycle scares me. I feel light-headed, like I’m riding a roller coaster with no lap bar.
The motorcycle stops at a red light. I lean back.
I hear him chuckle when he guns the engine once more as the light turns green. I clutch his waist and bury my face in his back.
When he finally stops and puts the kickstand down, I survey my surroundings. I’ve never been on his street. The homes are so…small. Most are one level. A cat can’t fit in the space between them. As hard as I try to fight it, sorrow settles in the pit of my stomach.
My house is at least seven, maybe even eight or nine times Alex’s home’s size. I know this side of town is poor, but…
“This was a mistake,” Alex says. “I’ll take you home.”
“Why?”
“Among other things, the look of disgust on your face.”
“I’m not disgusted. I guess I feel sorry--”
“Don’t ever pity me,” he warns. “I’m poor, not homeless.”
“Then are you going to invite me in? The guys across the street are gawking at the white girl.”
“Actually, around here you’re a ‘snow girl.’”
“I hate snow,” I say.
His lips quirk up into a grin. “Not for the weather, querida. For your snow-white skin. Just follow me and don’t stare at the neighbors, even if they stare at you. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
594:We said that if you don't quench those flames at once, they will spread all over the world; you thought we were maniacs. At present we have the mania of trying to tell you about the killing, by hot steam, mass-electrocution and live burial of the total Jewish population of Europe. So far three million have died.
It is the greatest mass-killing in recorded history; and it goes on daily, hourly, as regularly as the ticking of your watch. I have photographs before me on the desk while I am writing this, and that accounts for my emotion and bitterness. People died to smuggle them out of Poland; they thought it was worth while.
The facts have been published in pamphlets, White Books, newspapers, magazines and what not. But the other day I met one of the best-known American journalists over here. He told me that in the course of some recent public opinion survey nine out of ten average American citizens, when asked whether they believed that the Nazis commit atrocities, answered that it was all propaganda lies, and that they didn't believe a word of it.
As to this country, I have been lecturing now for three years to the troops and their attitude is the same. They don't believe in concentration camps, they don't believe in the starved children of Greece, in the shot hostages of France, in the mass-graves of Poland; they have never heard of Lidice, Treblinka or Belzec; you can convince them for an hour, then they shake themselves, their mental self-defence begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity has returned like a reflex temporarily weakened by a shock.
Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly we must suffer from some morbid obsession, whereas the others are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptom of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a phantasy world. So, perhaps, it is the other way round: perhaps it is we, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotics who totter about in a screened phantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts. Were it not so, this war would have been avoided, and those murdered within sight of your day-dreaming eyes would still be alive. ~ Arthur Koestler,#NFDB
595:the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds. Life is a pounding surf that wears away our rock-solid certainty. The surf always wins. Slowly but surely. Eventually. It may be best to ride the waves rather than resist them. What are your one or two biggest obstacles to staying Christian? What are those roadblocks you keep running into? What are those issues that won’t go away and make you wonder why you keep on believing at all? These are questions I asked on a survey I gave on my blog in the summer of 2013. Nothing fancy. I just asked some questions and waited to see what would happen. In the days to come, I was overwhelmed with comments and e-mails from readers, many anonymous, with bracingly honest answers often expressed through the tears of relentless and unnerving personal suffering. I didn’t do a statistical analysis (who has the time, plus I don’t know how), but the responses fell into five categories. 1. The Bible portrays God as violent, reactive, vengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral, mean, and petty. 2. The Bible and science collide on too many things to think that the Bible has anything to say to us today about the big questions of life. 3. In the face of injustice and heinous suffering in the world, God seems disinterested or perhaps unable to do anything about it. 4. In our ever-shrinking world, it is very difficult to hold on to any notion that Christianity is the only path to God. 5. Christians treat each other so badly and in such harmful ways that it calls into question the validity of Christianity—or even whether God exists. These five categories struck me as exactly right—at least, they match up with my experience. And I’d bet good money they resonate with a lot of us. All five categories have one big thing in common: “Faith in God no longer makes sense to me.” Understanding, correct thinking, knowing what you believe—these were once true of their faith, but no longer are. Because life happened. A faith that promises to provide firm answers and relieve our doubt is a faith that will not hold up to the challenges and tragedies of life. Only deep trust can hold up. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
596:I went straight upstairs to my bedroom after Marlboro Man and I said good night. I had to finish packing…and I had to tend to my face, which was causing me more discomfort by the minute. I looked in the bathroom mirror; my face was sunburn red. Irritated. Inflamed. Oh no. What had Prison Matron Cindy done to me? What should I do? I washed my face with cool water and a gentle cleaner and looked in the mirror. It was worse. I looked like a freako lobster face. It would be a great match for the cherry red suit I planned to wear to the rehearsal dinner the next night.
But my white dress for Saturday? That was another story.
I slept like a log and woke up early the next morning, opening my eyes and forgetting for a blissful four seconds about the facial trauma I’d endured the day before. I quickly brought my hands to my face; it felt tight and rough. I leaped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, flipping on the light and looking in the mirror to survey the state of my face.
The redness had subsided; I noticed that immediately. This was a good development. Encouraging. But upon closer examination, I could see the beginning stages of pruney lines around my chin and nose. My stomach lurched; it was the day of the rehearsal. It was the day I’d see not just my friends and family who, I was certain, would love me no matter what grotesque skin condition I’d contracted since the last time we saw one another, but also many, many people I’d never met before--ranching neighbors, cousins, business associates, and college friends of Marlboro Man’s. I wasn’t thrilled at the possibility that their first impression of me might be something that involved scales. I wanted to be fresh. Dewy. Resplendent. Not rough and dry and irritated. Not now. Not this weekend.
I examined the damage in the mirror and deduced that the plutonium Cindy the Prison Matron had swabbed on my face the day before had actually been some kind of acid peel. The burn came first. Logic would follow that what my face would want to do next would be to, well, peel. This could be bad. This could be real, real bad. What if I could speed along that process? Maybe if I could feed the beast’s desire to slough, it would leave me alone--at least for the next forty-eight hours.
All I wanted was forty-eight hours. I didn’t think it was too much to ask. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB
597:And by the early 1970s our little parable of Sam and Sweetie is exactly what happened to the North American Golden Retriever. One field-trial dog, Holway Barty, and two show dogs, Misty Morn’s Sunset and Cummings’ Gold-Rush Charlie, won dozens of blue ribbons between them. They were not only gorgeous champions; they had wonderful personalities. Consequently, hundreds of people wanted these dogs’ genes to come into their lines, and over many matings during the 1970s the genes of these three dogs were flung far and wide throughout the North American Golden Retriever population, until by 2010 Misty Morn’s Sunset alone had 95,539 registered descendants, his number of unregistered ones unknown. Today hundreds of thousands of North American Golden Retrievers are descended from these three champions and have received both their sweet dispositions and their hidden time bombs. Unfortunately for these Golden Retrievers, and for the people who love them, one of these time bombs happens to be cancer. To be fair, a so-called cancer gene cannot be traced directly to a few famous sires, but using these sires so often increases the chance of recessive genes meeting—for good and for ill. Today, in the United States, 61.4 percent of Golden Retrievers die of cancer, according to a survey conducted by the Golden Retriever Club of America and the Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine. In Great Britain, a Kennel Club survey found almost exactly the same result, if we consider that those British dogs—loosely diagnosed as dying of “old age” and “cardiac conditions” and never having been autopsied—might really be dying of a variety of cancers, including hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of the lining of the blood vessels and the spleen. This sad history of the Golden Retriever’s narrowing gene pool has played out across dozens of other breeds and is one of the reasons that so many of our dogs spend a lot more time in veterinarians’ offices than they should and die sooner than they might. In genetic terms, it comes down to the ever-increasing chance that both copies of any given gene are derived from the same ancestor, a probability expressed by a number called the coefficient of inbreeding. Discovered in 1922 by the American geneticist Sewall Wright, the coefficient of inbreeding ranges from 0 to 100 percent and rises as animals become more inbred. ~ Ted Kerasote, #NFDB
598:In the face of this vision, Powell put forth another. What was needed above all else, Powell believed, was to know the land, to understand the land, and to react accordingly. This had practical consequences: while a cow might properly graze on a half-acre in the lush East, it would require fifty times that amount of land in most of the West. It followed that the standard acreage of settlement should be different, and it followed that settlement should take into account sources of water. Powell’s goal with his survey was to clearly map out the western lands, to determine what land could be realistically used for agriculture, which meant also determining where irrigation dams should be placed for best effect. In other words, his goal, to use Wendell Berry’s phrase, was to think about “land use” and to do so on a massive scale. Specifically, Powell wanted to think out the uses of land that would be the most beneficial and fruitful for the human beings living there, and for the entire ecosystem (though that word did not yet exist). From the Mormons, Powell learned how “salutary co-operation could be as a way of life, how much less wasteful than competition.” In the late 1880s, Powell wrote a General Plan for land use in the West that “reached to embrace the related problems of land, water, erosion, floods, soil conservation, even the new one of hydroelectric power” that was based on “the settled belief in the worth of the small farmer and the necessity of protecting him both from speculators and from natural conditions he did not understand and could not combat.” It was a methodical, sensible, scientific approach, essentially a declaration of interdependence between the people and their land, and the miracle is that it came very close to passing into law. But of course it met with fierce opposition from those who stood to profit from exploitation, from the boosters and boomers and politicians who thought it “unpatriotic” to describe the West as dry. After all, how dare he call their garden a desert? What right did he have to come in and determine what only free individuals should? Powell was attacked in the papers, slandered in Congress. According to Stegner, Congressman Thomas M. Patterson of Colorado referred to Powell as “this revolutionist,” and the overall attack on Powell “distinguished itself for bombast and ignorance and bad faith. ~ David Gessner, #NFDB
599:I lift the lid of the chest. Inside, the air is musty and stale, held hostage for years in its three-foot-by-four-foot tomb. I lean in to survey the contents cautiously, then pull out a stack of old photos tied with twine. On top is a photo of a couple on their wedding day. She's a young bride, wearing one of those 1950's netted veils. He looks older, distinguished- sort of like Cary Grant or Gregory Peck in the old black-and-white movies I used to watch with my grandmother. I set the stack down and turn back to the chest, where I find a notebook, filled with handwritten recipes. The page for Cinnamon Rolls is labeled "Dex's Favorite." 'Dex.' I wonder if he's the man in the photo.
There are two ticket stubs from 1959, one to a Frank Sinatra concert, another to the movie 'An Affair to Remember.' A single shriveled rosebud rests on a white handkerchief. A corsage? When I lift it into my hand, it disintegrates; the petals crinkle into tiny pieces that fall onto the living room carpet. At the bottom of the chest is what looks like a wedding dress. It's yellowed and moth-eaten, but I imagine it was once stark white and beautiful. As I lift it, I can hear the lace swishing as if to say, "Ahh." Whoever wore it was very petite. The waist circumference is tiny. A pair of long white gloves falls to the floor. They must have been tucked inside the dress. I refold the finery and set the ensemble back inside.
Whose things are these? And why have they been left here? I thumb through the recipe book. All cookies, cakes, desserts. She must have loved to bake. I tuck the book back inside the chest, along with the photographs after I've retied the twine, which is when I notice a book tucked into the corner. It's an old paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' I've read a little of Hemingway over the years- 'A Moveable Feast' and some of his later work- but not this one. I flip through the book and notice that one page is dog-eared. I open to it and see a line that has been underscored. "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."
I look out to the lake, letting the words sink in. 'Is that what I'm trying to do? Get away from myself?' I stare at the line in the book again and wonder if it resonated with the woman who underlined it so many years ago. Did she have her own secret pain? 'Was she trying to escape it just like me? ~ Sarah Jio,#NFDB
600:When he had ate his fill, and proceeded from the urgent first cup and necessary second to the voluntary third which might be toyed with at leisure, without any particular outcry seeming to suggest he should be on his guard, he leant back, spread the city’s news before him, and, by glances between the items, took a longer survey of the room. Session of the Common Council. Vinegars, Malts, and Spirituous Liquors, Available on Best Terms. Had he been on familiar ground, he would have been able to tell at a glance what particular group of citizens in the great empire of coffee this house aspired to serve: whether it was the place for poetry or gluttony, philosophy or marine insurance, the Indies trade or the meat-porters’ burial club. Ships Landing. Ships Departed. Long Island Estate of Mr De Kyper, with Standing Timber, to be Sold at Auction. But the prints on the yellowed walls were a mixture. Some maps, some satires, some ballads, some bawdy, alongside the inevitable picture of the King: pop-eyed George reigning over a lukewarm graphical gruel, neither one thing nor t’other. Albany Letter, Relating to the Behaviour of the Mohawks. Sermon, Upon the Dedication of the Monument to the Late Revd. Vesey. Leases to be Let: Bouwerij, Out Ward, Environs of Rutgers’ Farm. And the company? River Cargos Landed. Escaped Negro Wench: Reward Offered. – All he could glean was an impression generally businesslike, perhaps intersown with law. Dramatic Rendition of the Classics, to be Performed by the Celebrated Mrs Tomlinson. Poem, ‘Hail Liberty, Sweet Succor of a Briton’s Breast’, Offered by ‘Urbanus’ on the Occasion of His Majesty’s Birthday. Over there there were maps on the table, and a contract a-signing; and a ring of men in merchants’ buff-and-grey quizzing one in advocate’s black-and-bands. But some of the clients had the wind-scoured countenance of mariners, and some were boys joshing one another. Proceedings of the Court of Judicature of the Province of New-York. Poor Law Assessment. Carriage Rates. Principal Goods at Mart, Prices Current. Here he pulled out a printed paper of his own from an inner pocket, and made comparison of certain figures, running his left and right forefingers down the columns together. Telescopes and Spy-Glasses Ground. Regimental Orders. Dinner of the Hungarian Club. Perhaps there were simply too few temples here to coffee, for them to specialise as he was used. ~ Francis Spufford, #NFDB
601:The Beasts In The Tower
Within the precincts of this yard,
Each in his narrow confines barred,
Dwells every beast that can be found
On Afric or on Indian ground.
How different was the life they led
In those wild haunts where they were bred,
To this tame servitude and fear,
Enslaved by man, they suffer here!
In that uneasy close recess
Couches a sleeping lioness;
That next den holds a bear; the next
A wolf, by hunger ever vext;
There, fiercer from the keeper's lashes
His teeth the fell hyena gnashes;
That creature on whose back abound
Black spots upon a yellow ground,
A panther is, the fairest beast
That haunteth in the spacious East.
He underneath a fair outside
Does cruelty and treachery hide.
That cat-like beast that to and fro
Restless as fire does ever go,
As if his courage did resent
His limbs in such confinement pent,
That should their prey in forests take,
And make the Indian jungles quake,
A tiger is. Observe how sleek
And glossy smooth his coat: no streak
On satin ever matched the pride
Of that which marks his furry hide.
How strong his muscles! he with ease
Upon the tallest man could seize,
In his large mouth away could bear him,
And into thousand pieces tear him:
Yet cabined so securely here,
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The smallest infant need not fear.
That lordly creature next to him
A lion is. Survey each limb.
Observe the texture of his claws,
The massy thickness of those jaws;
His mane that sweeps the ground in length,
Like Samson's locks, betokening strength.
In force and swiftness he excels
Each beast that in the forest dwells;
The savage tribes him king confess
Throughout the howling wilderness.
Woe to the hapless neighbourhood,
When he is pressed by want of food!
Of man, or child, of bull, or horse,
He makes his prey; such is his force.
A waste behind him he creates,
Whole villages depopulates.
Yet here within appointed lines
How small a grate his rage confines!
This place methinks resembleth well
The world itself in which we dwell.
Perils and snares on every ground
Like these wild beasts beset us round.
But Providence their rage restrains,
Our heavenly Keeper sets them chains;
His goodness saveth every hour
His darlings from the lion's power.
~ Charles Lamb,#NFDB
602:The alienation of Americans from the democratic process has also eroded knowledge of the most basic facts about our constitutional architecture of checks and balances. When the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a broad survey on our Constitution, released in September 2006, they found that more than a third of the respondents believed the executive branch has the final say on all issues and can overrule the legislative and judicial branches. Barely half—53 percent—believed that the president was required to follow a Supreme Court decision with which he disagreed. Similarly, only 55 percent of those questioned believed that the Supreme Court had the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. Another study found that the majority of respondents did not know that Congress—rather than the president—has the power to declare war. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute conducted a study in 2005 of what our nation’s college students knew about the Constitution, American government, and American history that provoked the American Political Science Association Task Force on Civic Education to pronounce that it is “axiomatic that current levels of political knowledge, political engagement, and political enthusiasm are so low as to threaten the vitality and stability of democratic politics in the United States.” The study found that less than half of college students “recognized that the line ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ is from the Declaration of Independence.” They also found that “an overwhelming majority, 72.8 percent, could not correctly identify the source of the idea of ‘a wall of separation’ between church and state.” When the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation conducted a survey of high school students to determine their feelings toward the First Amendment, they found that “after the text of the First Amendment was read to students, more than a third of them (35 percent) thought that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Nearly a quarter (21 percent) did not know enough about the First Amendment to even give an opinion. Of those who did express an opinion, an even higher percentage (44 percent) agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” The survey revealed that “nearly three-fourths” of high school students “either don’t know how they feel about [the First Amendment] or they take it for granted. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
603:One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern would go something like this: • The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon—I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. • The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or female, they will not be as strict with their children as their parents were with them. • The next generation (Sophia and Lulu’s) is the one I spend nights lying awake worrying about. Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. Even as children they will own many hardcover books (an almost criminal luxury from the point of view of immigrant parents). They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses.They may or may not attend private schools, but in either case they will expect expensive, brand-name clothes. Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation ~ Amy Chua, #NFDB
604:growing, like a storm on the horizon, gathering, the echo of thunder distant but present. For whatever reason, it doesn’t affect me. I am certain that there is something out there, waiting for us. We press on, into the darkness, barreling at maximum speed, the three nuclear warheads on our ship armed and ready. I feel like Ahab hunting the white whale. I am a man possessed. When I launched into space aboard the Pax, my life was empty. I didn’t know Emma. My brother was a stranger to me. I had no family, no friends. Only Oscar. Now I have something to lose. Something to live for. Something to fight for. My time in space has changed me. When I left Earth the first time, I was still the rebel scientist the world had cast out. I felt like an outsider, a renegade. Now I have become a leader. I’ve learned to read people, to try to understand them. That was my mistake before. I trudged ahead with my vision of the world, believing the world would follow me. But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you. Every morning, the crew gathers on the bridge. Oscar and Emma strap in on each side of me and we sit around the table and everyone gives their departmental updates. The ship is operating at peak efficiency. So is the crew. Except for the elephant in the room. “As you know,” I begin, “we are still on course for Ceres. We have not ordered the other ships in the Spartan fleet to alter course. The fact that the survey drones have found nothing, changes nothing. Our enemy is advanced. Sufficiently advanced to alter our drones and hide itself. With that said, we should discuss the possibility that there is, in fact, nothing out there on Ceres. We need to prepare for that eventuality.” Heinrich surveys the rest of the crew before speaking. “It could be a trap.” He’s always to the point. I like that about him. “Yes,” I reply, “it could be. The entity, or harvester, or whatever is out there, could be manufacturing the solar cells elsewhere—deeper in the solar system, or from another asteroid in the belt. It could be sending the solar cells to Ceres and then toward the sun, making them look as though they were manufactured on Ceres. There could be a massive bomb or attack drones waiting for us at Ceres.” “We could split our fleet, ~ A G Riddle, #NFDB
605:In 2005, when Congress still depended on Communist votes for a majority in Parliament, a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed, assuring any household in the countryside a hundred days labour a year at the legal minimum wage on public works, with at least a third of these jobs for women. It is work for pay, rather than a direct cash transfer scheme as in Brazil, to minimize the danger of money going to those who are not actually the poor, and so ensure it reaches only those willing to do the work. Denounced by all right-thinking opinion as debilitating charity behind a façade of make-work, it was greeted by the middle-class like ‘a wet dog at a glamorous party’, in the words of one of its architects, the Belgian-Indian economist Jean Drèze. Unlike the Bolsa Família in Brazil, the application of NREGA was left to state governments rather than the centre, so its impact has been very uneven and incomplete, wages often paid lower than the legal minimum, for days many fewer than a hundred.75 Works performed are not always durable, and as with all other social programmes in India, funds are liable to local malversation. But in scale NREGA now represents the largest entitlement programme in the world, reaching some 40 million rural households, a quarter of the total in the country. Over half of these dalit or adivasi, and 48 per cent of its beneficiaries are women – double their share of casual labour in the private sector. Such is the demand for employment by NREGA in the countryside that it far outruns supply. A National Survey Sample for 2009–2010 has revealed that 45 per cent of all rural households wanted the work it offers, of whom only 56 per cent got it.76 What NREGA has started to do, in the formulation Drèze has taken from Ambedkar, is break the dictatorship of the private employer in the countryside, helping by its example to raise wages even of non-recipients. Since inception, its annual cost has risen from $2.5 to over $8 billion, a token of its popularity. This remains less than 1 per cent of GDP, and the great majority of rural labourers in the private sector are still not paid the minimum wage due them. Conceived outside the party system, and accepted by Congress only when it had little expectation of winning the elections of 2004, the Act eventually had such popular demand behind it that the Lok Sabha adopted it nem con. Three years later, with typical dishonesty, the Manmohan regime renamed it as ‘Gandhian’ to fool the masses that Congress inspired it. ~ Perry Anderson, #NFDB
606:Lines Written At Norwich On The First News Of Peace
What means that wild and joyful cry?
Why do yon crowds in mean attire
Throw thus their ragged arms on high?
In want what can such joy inspire?
And why on every face I meet
Now beams a smile, now drops a tear?
Like longloved friends, lo! strangers greet, . . . .
Each to his fellow man seems dear.
In one warm glow of christian love
Forgot all proud distinctions seem;
The rich, the poor, together rove;
Their eyes with answering kindness beam . . . .
Blest sound! blest sight! . . . . But pray ye pause
And bid my eager wonder cease;
Of joy like this, say, what's the cause?. . . .
A thousand voices answer . . . . 'PEACE!'
O sound most welcome to my heart!
Tidings for which I've sighed for years!
But ill would words my joy impart;
Let me my rapture speak in tears.
Ye patient poor, from wonder free
Your signs of joy I now survey,
And hope your sallow cheeks to see
Once more the bloom of health display.
Of those poor babes that on your knees
Imploring food have vainly hung,
You'll soon each craving want appease, . . . .
For Plenty comes with Peace along.
And you, fond parents, faithful wives,
Who've long for sons and husbands feared,
Peace now shall save their precious lives;
They come by danger more endeared.
17
But why, to all these transports dead,
Steals yon shrunk form from forth the throng?
Has she not heard the tidings spread?
Tell her these shouts to Peace belong . . . .
'Talk not of Peace, . . . . the sound I hate,'
The mourner with a sigh replied;
'Alas! Peace comes for me too late, . . . .
For my brave boy in Egypt died!'
Poor mourner! at thy tale of grief
The crowd was mute and sad awhile;
But e'en compassion's tears are brief
When general transport claims a smile.
Full soon they checked the tender sigh
Their glowing hearts to pity gave;
But, while the mourner yet was nigh,
They warmly blessed the slaughtered brave: . . . .
And from all hearts, as sad she passed,
This virtuous prayer her sorrow draws: . . . .
'Grant, Heaven, those tears may be the last
That war, detested war, shall cause! . . . .
Oh! if with pure ambition fraught
All nations join this virtuous prayer,
If they, by late experience taught,
No longer wish to slay, but spare, . . . .
Then hostile bands on War's red plain
For conquest have not vainly burned,
Nor then through long long years in vain
Have thousands died and millions mourned.
~ Amelia Opie,#NFDB
607:The 49-year-old Bryant, who resembles a cereal box character himself with his wide eyes, toothy smile, and elongated chin, blames Kellogg's financial woes on the changing tastes of fickle breakfast eaters. The company flourished in the Baby Boom era, when fathers went off to work and mothers stayed behind to tend to three or four children. For these women, cereal must have been heaven-sent. They could pour everybody a bowl of Corn Flakes, leave a milk carton out, and be done with breakfast, except for the dishes. Now Americans have fewer children. Both parents often work and no longer have time to linger over a serving of Apple Jacks and the local newspaper. Many people grab something on the way to work and devour it in their cars or at their desks while checking e-mail. “For a while, breakfast cereal was convenience food,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. “But convenience is relative. It's more convenient to grab a breakfast bar, yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a breakfast sandwich at some fast-food place than to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal.” People who still eat breakfast at home favor more laborintensive breakfasts, according to a recent Nielsen survey. They spend more time at the stove, preparing oatmeal (sales were up 3.5 percent in the first half of 2014) and eggs (up 7 percent last year). They're putting their toasters to work, heating up frozen waffles, French toast, and pancakes (sales of these foods were up 4.5 percent in the last five years). This last inclination should be helping Kellogg: It owns Eggo frozen waffles. But Eggo sales weren't enough to offset its slumping U.S. cereal numbers. “There has just been a massive fragmentation of the breakfast occasion,” says Julian Mellentin, director of food analysis at research firm New Nutrition Business. And Kellogg faces a more ominous trend at the table. As Americans become more healthconscious, they're shying away from the kind of processed food baked in Kellogg's four U.S. cereal factories. They tend to be averse to carbohydrates, which is a problem for a company selling cereal derived from corn, oats, and rice. “They basically have a carb-heavy portfolio,” says Robert Dickerson, senior packagedfood analyst at Consumer Edge. If such discerning shoppers still eat cereal, they prefer the gluten-free kind, sales of which are up 22 percent, according to Nielsen. There's also growing suspicion of packagedfood companies that fill their products with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For these breakfast eaters, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam may seem less like friendly childhood avatars and more like malevolent sugar traffickers. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
608:The same lesson can be learned from one of the most widely read books in history: the Bible. What is the Bible “about”? Different people will of course answer that question differently. But we could all agree the Bible contains perhaps the most influential set of rules in human history: the Ten Commandments. They became the foundation of not only the Judeo-Christian tradition but of many societies at large. So surely most of us can recite the Ten Commandments front to back, back to front, and every way in between, right? All right then, go ahead and name the Ten Commandments. We’ll give you a minute to jog your memory . . . . . . . . . . . . Okay, here they are: 1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. 2. You shall have no other gods before Me. 3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. 4. Remember the Sabbath day, to make it holy. 5. Honor your father and your mother. 6. You shall not murder. 7. You shall not commit adultery. 8. You shall not steal. 9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor your neighbor’s wife . . . nor any thing that is your neighbor’s. How did you do? Probably not so well. But don’t worry—most people don’t. A recent survey found that only 14 percent of U.S. adults could recall all Ten Commandments; only 71 percent could name even one commandment. (The three best-remembered commandments were numbers 6, 8, and 10—murder, stealing, and coveting—while number 2, forbidding false gods, was in last place.) Maybe, you’re thinking, this says less about biblical rules than how bad our memories are. But consider this: in the same survey, 25 percent of the respondents could name the seven principal ingredients of a Big Mac, while 35 percent could name all six kids from The Brady Bunch. If we have such a hard time recalling the most famous set of rules from perhaps the most famous book in history, what do we remember from the Bible? The stories. We remember that Eve fed Adam a forbidden apple and that one of their sons, Cain, murdered the other, Abel. We remember that Moses parted the Red Sea in order to lead the Israelites out of slavery. We remember that Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his own son on a mountain—and we even remember that King Solomon settled a maternity dispute by threatening to slice a baby in half. These are the stories we tell again and again and again, even those of us who aren’t remotely “religious.” Why? Because they stick with us; they move us; they persuade us to consider the constancy and frailties of the human experience in a way that mere rules cannot. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
609:I once read the most widely understood word in the whole world is ‘OK’, followed by ‘Coke’, as in cola. I think they should do the survey again, this time checking for ‘Game Over’.
Game Over is my favorite thing about playing video games. Actually, I should qualify that. It’s the split second before Game Over that’s my favorite thing.
Streetfighter II - an oldie but goldie - with Leo controlling Ryu. Ryu’s his best character because he’s a good all-rounder - great defensive moves, pretty quick, and once he’s on an offensive roll, he’s unstoppable. Theo’s controlling Blanka. Blanka’s faster than Ryu, but he’s really only good on attack. The way to win with Blanka is to get in the other player’s face and just never let up. Flying kick, leg-sweep, spin attack, head-bite. Daze them into submission.
Both players are down to the end of their energy bars. One more hit and they’re down, so they’re both being cagey. They’re hanging back at opposite ends of the screen, waiting for the other guy to make the first move. Leo takes the initiative. He sends off a fireball to force Theo into blocking, then jumps in with a flying kick to knock Blanka’s green head off. But as he’s moving through the air he hears a soft tapping. Theo’s tapping the punch button on his control pad. He’s charging up an electricity defense so when Ryu’s foot makes contact with Blanka’s head it’s going to be Ryu who gets KO’d with 10,000 volts charging through his system.
This is the split second before Game Over.
Leo’s heard the noise. He knows he’s fucked. He has time to blurt ‘I’m toast’ before Ryu is lit up and thrown backwards across the screen, flashing like a Christmas tree, a charred skeleton. Toast.
The split second is the moment you comprehend you’re just about to die. Different people react to it in different ways. Some swear and rage. Some sigh or gasp. Some scream. I’ve heard a lot of screams over the twelve years I’ve been addicted to video games.
I’m sure that this moment provides a rare insight into the way people react just before they really do die. The game taps into something pure and beyond affectations. As Leo hears the tapping he blurts, ‘I’m toast.’ He says it quickly, with resignation and understanding. If he were driving down the M1 and saw a car spinning into his path I think he’d in react the same way.
Personally, I’m a rager. I fling my joypad across the floor, eyes clenched shut, head thrown back, a torrent of abuse pouring from my lips.
A couple of years ago I had a game called Alien 3. It had a great feature. When you ran out of lives you’d get a photo-realistic picture of the Alien with saliva dripping from its jaws, and a digitized voice would bleat, ‘Game over, man!’
I really used to love that. ~ Alex Garland,#NFDB
610:She thrust the pink box she was holding into Mr. Rutherford’s hands before she opened up her reticule and pulled out a fistful of coins. Counting them out very precisely, she stopped counting when she reached three dollars, sixty-two cents. Handing Mr. Rutherford the coins, she then took back the pink box, completely ignoring the scowl Mr. Rutherford was now sending her. “This is not the amount of money I quoted you for the skates, Miss . . . ?” “Miss Griswold,” Permilia supplied as she opened up the box and began rummaging through the thin paper that covered her skates. Mr. Rutherford’s brows drew together. “Surely you’re not related to Mr. George Griswold, are you?” “He’s my father,” Permilia returned before she frowned and lifted out what appeared to be some type of printed form, one that had a small pencil attached to it with a maroon ribbon. “What is this?” Mr. Rutherford returned the frown, looking as if he wanted to discuss something besides the form Permilia was now waving his way, but he finally relented—although he did so with a somewhat heavy sigh. “It’s a survey, and I would be ever so grateful if you and Miss Radcliff would take a few moments to fill it out, returning it after you’re done to a member of my staff, many of whom can be found offering hot chocolate for a mere five cents at a stand we’ve erected by the side of the lake. I’m trying to determine which styles of skates my customers prefer, and after I’m armed with that information, I’ll be better prepared to stock my store next year with the best possible products.” “Far be it from me to point out the obvious, Mr. Rutherford, but one has to wonder about your audacity,” Permilia said. “It’s confounding to me that you’re so successful in business, especially since not only are you overcharging your customers for the skates today, you also expect those very customers to extend you a service by taking time out of their day to fill out a survey for you. And then, to top matters off nicely, instead of extending those customers a free cup of hot chocolate for their time and effort, you’re charging them for that as well.” “I’m a businessman, Miss Griswold—as is your father, if I need remind you. I’m sure he’d understand exactly what my strategy is here today, as well as agree with that strategy.” Permilia stuck her nose into the air. “You may very well be right, Mr. Rutherford, but . . .” She thrust the box back into his hands. “Since I’m unwilling to pay more than I’ve already given you for these skates, I’ll take my money back, if you please.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mr. Rutherford said, thrusting the box right back at Permilia. “Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I have other customers to attend to.” With that, he sent Wilhelmina a nod, scowled at Permilia, and strode through the snow back to his cash register. ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
611:Their [girls] sexual energy, their evaluation of adolescent boys and other girls goes thwarted, deflected back upon the girls, unspoken, and their searching hungry gazed returned to their own bodies. The questions, Whom do I desire? Why? What will I do about it? are turned around: Would I desire myself? Why?...Why not? What can I do about it?
The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, become estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it. Sex is held hostage by beauty and its ransom terms are engraved in girls' minds early and deeply with instruments more beautiful that those which advertisers or pornographers know how to use: literature, poetry, painting, and film.
This outside-in perspective on their own sexuality leads to the confusion that is at the heart of the myth. Women come to confuse sexual looking with being looked at sexually ("Clairol...it's the look you want"); many confuse sexually feeling with being sexually felt ("Gillete razors...the way a woman wants to feel"); many confuse desiring with being desirable. "My first sexual memory," a woman tells me, "was when I first shaved my legs, and when I ran my hand down the smooth skin I felt how it would feel to someone else's hand." Women say that when they lost weight they "feel sexier" but the nerve endings in the clitoris and nipples don't multiply with weight loss. Women tell me they're jealous of the men who get so much pleasure out of the female body that they imagine being inside the male body that is inside their own so that they can vicariously experience desire.
Could it be then that women's famous slowness of arousal to men's, complex fantasy life, the lack of pleasure many experience in intercourse, is related to this cultural negation of sexual imagery that affirms the female point of view, the culture prohibition against seeing men's bodies as instruments of pleasure? Could it be related to the taboo against representing intercourse as an opportunity for a straight woman actively to pursue, grasp, savor, and consume the male body for her satisfaction, as much as she is pursued, grasped, savored, and consumed for his? ~ Naomi Wolf,#NFDB
612:Norse Nature
(In Ringerike During The Student Meeting Of 1869)
We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway, fair to see.
Let sweetly the tones go twining
In colors so softly shining
On mountain, forest, fjord, and shore,
'Neath heaven's azure arching o'er.
The warmth of the nation's heart,
The depth, the strength, its songs impart,
Here opens its eyes to greet you,
Rejoicing just now to meet you,
And giving, grateful for the chance,
In love a self-revealing glance.
Here wakened our history first,
Here Halfdan dreamed of greatness erst,
In vision of hope beholding
The kingdom's future unfolding,
And
Nore
stood and summons gave,
While forth to conquest called the wave.
Here singing we must unroll
Of our dear land the pictured scroll!
Let calm turn to storm of wildness,
Bring might into bonds of mildness:
Then Norsemen mustering, each shall see
This is our land's whole history.
To them first our way we wing,
The hundred harbors in the spring,
Where follow fond love and yearning,
When sea-ward the ships are turning.
For Norway's weal pure prayers exhale
From sixty thousand men that sail.
86
See sloping the skerried coasts,
With gulls and whales and fishing-posts,
And vessels in shelter riding,
While boats o'er the sea are gliding,
And nets in fjord and seines in sound,
And white with spawn the ocean's ground.
See Lofoten's tumult grand,
Where tow'ring cliffs in ocean stand,
Whose summits the fogs are cleaving,
Beneath them the surges heaving,
And all is darkness, mystery, dread,
But 'mid the tumult sails are spread.
Here ships of the Arctic sea;
Through snow and gloom their course must be;
Commands from the masthead falling
The boats toward the ice are calling;
And shot on shot and seal on seal,
And souls and bodies strong as steel.
On mountains we now shall guest,
When eventide to all brings rest,
In dairy on highland meadow,
On hay-field 'neath slanting shadow,
While to the alphorn's tender tone
Great Nature's voice responds alone.
But quickly we must away,
If a11 the land we would survey,The mines of our metal treasures,
The hills of our hunters' pleasures,
The foam-white river's rush and noise,
The timber-driver's foot-sure poise.
Returning, we linger here,
These valleys broad to us are dear,
Whose men in their faithful living
To Norway are honor giving;
Their fathers, strong in brain and brawn,
Lent luster to our morning-dawn.
87
We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway fair to see.
Our present to labor binds us,
Each how of the past reminds us,
Our future shall be sure and bright,
As God we trust and do the right.
~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson,#NFDB
613:A Real Motorcycle
Unspeakable. The word that fills up the
poem, that the head
tries to excise.
At 6 a.m., the wet lion. Its sewn plush face
on the porch rail in the rain.
Heavy rains later, & maybe a thunderstorm.
12 or 13 degrees.
Inside: an iris, candle, poster of the
many-breasted Artemis in a stone hat
from Anatolia
A little pedal steel guitar
A photograph of her at a table by the sea,
her shoulder blocked by the red geranium.
The sea tho invisible can be smelled by the casual watcher
Incredible salt air
in my throat when I see her.
'Suddenly you discover that you'll spend your entire life
in disorder; it's all that you have; you must learn to live
with it.'
Four tanks, & the human white-shirted body
stopped on June 5 in Place Tian an Men.
Or 'a red pullover K-Way.' There is not much time left
to say these things. The urgency of that,
desire that dogged the body all winter
& has scarcely left,
now awaits the lilacs, their small white bunches.
Gaily.
As if their posies will light up
the curious old intentional bruise.
10
Adjective, adjective, adjective, noun!
Or just, lilac moon.
What we must, & cannot, excise from the head.
Her hand holding, oh, The New Path to the Waterfall?
Or the time I walked in too quickly, looked up
at her shirtless, grinning.
Pulling her down into the front of me, silly!
Sitting down sudden to make a lap for her...
Kissing the back of her leg.
Actually the leg kiss was a dream, later enacted
we laughed at it,
why didn't you do it
she said
when you thought of it.
The excisable thought, later
desired or
necessary.
Or shuddered at, in memory.
Later, it is repeated for the cameras
with such unease.
& now, stuck in the head.
Like running the motorcycle full-tilt into the hay bales.
What is the motorcycle doing in the poem
A. said.
It's an image, E. said back.
It's a crash in the head, she said.
It's a real motorcycle.
11
Afterthought 1
0 excise this: her back turned,
she concentrates on something
in a kitchen sink,
& I sit behind her,
running my fingers on
the table edge.
0 excise this.
Afterthought 2
& after, excise, excise.
If the source of the pain could be located
using geological survey equipment.
Into the sedimentary layers, the slippage,
the surge of the igneous intrusion.
Or the flat bottom of the former sea
I grew up on,
Running the motorcycle into the round
bay bales.
Hay grass poking the skin.
The back wet.
Hey, I shouted,
Her back turned to me, its location
now visible only in the head.
When I can't stand it,
I invent anything, even memories.
She gets up, hair stuck with hay.
I invented this. Yeow.
~ Erin Mouré,#NFDB
614:A Poem For The Birth-Day Of The Right Honble The
Lady Catharine Tufton
'Tis fit SERENA shou'd be sung.
High-born SERENA, Fair and Young,
Shou'd be of ev'ry Muse and Voice
The pleasing, and applauded Choice.
But as the Meanest of the Show
Do First in all Processions go:
So, let my Steps pursue that Swain
The humblest of th' inspired Train;
Whose well-meant Verse did just appear,
To lead on the preceding Year:
So let my Pen, the next in Fame,
Now wait on fair SERENA's Name;
The second Tribute gladly pay,
And hail this blest returning Day.
But let it not attempt to raise
Or rightly speak SERENA's Praise:
Since with more ease we might declare
How Great her Predecessors were;
How Great that more distinguish'd Peer,
To whom she owes her Being here;
In whom our Britain lets us see
What once they were, and still shou'd be;
As, when the earliest Race was drown'd,
Some Patterns, from amongst them found,
Were kept to shew succeeding Times
Their Excellence without their Crimes:
More easily we might express
What Vertues do her Mother dress;
What does her Form and Mind adorn,
Of whom th' engaging Nymph was born;
What Piety, what generous Love,
Does the enlarged Bosom move
Of Her, whose Fav'rite she appears,
Who more than as a Niece endears.
Such full Perfections obvious lie,
And strike, at first, a Poet's Eye.
Deep Lines of Honour all can hit,
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Or mark out a superior Wit;
Consummate Goodness all can show,
And where such Graces shine below:
But the more tender Strokes to trace,
T' express the Promise of a Face,
When but the Dawnings of the Mind
We from the Air unripen'd find;
Which alt'ring, as new Moments rise,
The Pen or Pencil's Art defies;
When Flesh and Blood in Youth appears,
Polish'd like what our Marble wears;
Fresh as that Shade of op'ning Green,
Which first upon our Groves is seen;
Enliven'd by a harmless Fire,
And brighten'd by each gay Desire;
These nicer Touches wou'd demand
A Cowley's or a Waller's Hand,
T'explain, with undisputed Art,
What 'tis affects th'enlighten'd Heart,
When ev'ry darker Thought gives way,
Whilst blooming Beauty we survey;
To shew how All, that's soft and sweet,
Does in the fair SERENA meet;
To tell us, with a sure Presage,
The Charms of her maturer Age.
When Hothfeild shall (as heretofore {4}
From its far-sought and virtuous Store
It Families of great Renown
Did with illustrious Hymens crown)
When Hothfeild shall such Treasure know,
As fair SERENA to bestow:
Then shou'd some Muse of loftier Wing
The Triumphs of that Season sing;
Describe the Pains, the Hopes, the Fears
Of noble Youths, th'ambitious Cares
Of Fathers, the long-fram'd Design,
To add such Splendour to their Line,
Whilst all shall strive for such a Bride
So Educated, and Ally'd.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
615:For as long as statistics have been kept, blacks have had higher crime rates than whites. Containing crime is one of the top priorities of any society, so it is perplexing that the United States has added to its crime problem through immigration. Hispanics, who have been by far the most numerous post-1965 immigrant group, commit crimes at rates lower than blacks but higher than whites.
Some people claim that all population groups commit crimes at the same rates, and that racial differences in incarceration rates reflect police and justice system bias. This view is wrong. The US Department of Justice carefully tracks murder, which is the violent crime for which racial data on victim and perpetrator are most complete. In 2005, the department noted that blacks were six times more likely than whites to be victims of murder and seven times more likely to commit murder.
There are similar differences for other crimes. The United States regularly conducts a huge, 100,000-person crime study known as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in which Americans are asked to describe the crimes of which they have been victim during the year, and to indicate race of perpetrator. NCVS figures are therefore a reliable indication of the racial distribution of violent criminals. The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is another huge database that records the races of all suspects reported to the police as well as those arrested by police. Both these data sets prove that blacks commit a vastly disproportionate amount of violent crime. In fact, blacks are arrested less frequently than would be expected from reports by crime victims of the race of perpetrator. Racial differences in arrest rates reflect racial differences in crime rates, not police bias.
Justice Department figures show that blacks commit crimes and are incarcerated at roughly 7.2 times the white rate, and Hispanics at 2.9 times the white rate. (Asians are the least crime-prone group in America, and are incarcerated at only 22 percent of the white rate.) Robbery or “mugging” shows the greatest disparities, with blacks offending at 15 times and Hispanics at just over four times the white rate.
There are practically no crimes blacks and Hispanics do not commit at higher rates than whites, whether it is larceny, car theft, drug offenses, burglary, rape, or alcohol offenses. Even for white collar crimes—fraud, racketeering, bribery/conflict of interest, embezzlement—blacks are incarcerated at three to five times the white rate, and Hispanics at about twice the white rate.
Racial differences in crime rates are such an embarrassment they can interfere with law enforcement. In 2010 the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority had a problem with scores of young people openly beating fares—which cuts into revenue and demoralizes other riders. It considered a crackdown, but decided against it. The scoff-laws were overwhelmingly black, and the transit authority did not have the stomach to take any action that would fall heavily on minorities. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
616:The God's View-Point
Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,
The wisest and the best of men,
Betook him to the place where sat
With folded feet upon a mat
Of precious stones beneath a palm,
In sweet and everlasting calm,
That ancient and immortal gent,
The God of Rational Content.
As tranquil and unmoved as Fate,
The deity reposed in state,
With palm to palm and sole to sole,
And beaded breast and beetling jowl,
And belly spread upon his thighs,
And costly diamonds for eyes.
As Chunder Sen approached and knelt
To show the reverence he felt;
Then beat his head upon the sod
To prove his fealty to the god;
And then by gestures signified
The other sentiments inside;
The god's right eye (as Chunder Sen,
The wisest and the best of men,
Half-fancied) grew by just a thought
More narrow than it truly ought.
Yet still that prince of devotees,
Persistent upon bended knees
And elbows bored into the earth,
Declared the god's exceeding worth,
And begged his favor. Then at last,
Within that cavernous and vast
Thoracic space was heard a sound
Like that of water underground
A gurgling note that found a vent
At mouth of that Immortal Gent
In such a chuckle as no ear
Had e'er been privileged to hear!
Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,
The wisest, greatest, best of men,
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Heard with a natural surprise
That mighty midriff improvise.
And greater yet the marvel was
When from between those massive jaws
Fell words to make the views more plain
The god was pleased to entertain:
'Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,'
So ran the rede in speech of men
'Foremost of mortals in assent
To creed of Rational Content,
Why come you here to impetrate
A blessing on your scurvy pate?
Can you not rationally be
Content without disturbing me?
Can you not take a hint-a wink
Of what of all this rot I think?
Is laughter lost upon you quite,
To check you in your pious rite?
What! know you not we gods protest
That all religion is a jest?
You take me seriously?-you
About me make a great ado
(When I but wish to be alone)
With attitudes supine and prone,
With genuflexions and with prayers,
And putting on of solemn airs,
To draw my mind from the survey
Of Rational Content away!
Learn once for all, if learn you can,
This truth, significant to man:
A pious person is by odds
The one most hateful to the gods.'
Then stretching forth his great right hand,
Which shadowed all that sunny land,
That deity bestowed a touch
Which Chunder Sen not overmuch
Enjoyed-a touch divine that made
The sufferer hear stars! They played
And sang as on Creation's morn
When spheric harmony was born.
Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,
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The most astonished man of men,
Fell straight asleep, and when he woke
The deity nor moved nor spoke,
But sat beneath that ancient palm
In sweet and everlasting calm.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
617:Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7). ~ Eric Siegel, #NFDB
618:An Invitation To Dafnis
When such a day, blesst the Arcadian plaine,
Warm without Sun, and shady without rain,
Fann'd by an air, that scarsly bent the flowers,
Or wav'd the woodbines, on the summer bowers,
The Nymphs disorder'd beauty cou'd not fear,
Nor ruffling winds uncurl'd the Shepheards hair,
On the fresh grasse, they trod their measures light,
And a long Evening made, from noon, to night.
Come then my Dafnis, from those cares descend
Which better may the winter season spend.
Come, and the pleasures of the feilds, survey,
And throo' the groves, with your Ardelia stray.
Reading the softest Poetry, refuse,
To veiw the subjects of each rural muse;
Nor lett the busy compasses go round,
When faery Cercles better mark the ground.
Rich Colours on the Vellum cease to lay,
When ev'ry lawne much nobler can display,
When on the daz'ling poppy may be seen
A glowing red, exceeding your carmine;
And for the blew that o're the Sea is borne,
A brighter rises in our standing corn.
Come then, my Dafnis, and the feilds survey,
And throo' the groves, with your Ardelia stray.
Come, and lett Sansons World, no more engage,
Altho' he gives a Kingdom in a page;
O're all the Vniverse his lines may goe,
And not a clime, like temp'rate brittan show,
Come then, my Dafnis, and her feilds survey,
And throo' the groves, with your Ardelia stray.
Nor plead that you're immur'd, and cannot yield,
That mighty Bastions keep you from the feild,
Think not tho' lodg'd in Mons, or in Namur,
You're from my dangerous attacks secure.
No, Louis shall his falling Conquests fear,
When by succeeding Courriers he shall hear
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Appollo, and the Muses, are drawn down,
To storm each fort, and take in ev'ry Town.
Vauban, the Orphean Lyre, to mind shall call,
That drew the stones to the old Theban Wall,
And make no doubt, if itt against him play,
They, from his works, will fly as fast away,
Which to prevent, he shall to peace persuade,
Of strong, confederate Syllables, affraid.
Come then, my Dafnis, and the fields survey,
And throo' the Groves, with your Ardelia stray.
Come, and attend, how as we walk along,
Each chearfull bird, shall treat us with a song,
Nott such as Fopps compose, where witt, nor art,
Nor plainer Nature, ever bear a part;
The Cristall springs, shall murmure as we passe,
But not like Courtiers, sinking to disgrace;
Nor, shall the louder Rivers, in their fall,
Like unpaid Saylers, or hoarse Pleaders brawle;
But all shall form a concert to delight,
And all to peace, and all to love envite.
Come then, my Dafnis, and the feilds survey,
And throo' the Groves, with your Ardelia stray.
As Baucis and Philemon spent their lives,
Of husbands he, the happyest she, of wives,
When throo' the painted meads, their way they sought,
Harmlesse in act, and unperplext in thought,
Lett us my Dafnis, rural joys persue,
And Courts, or Camps, not ev'n in fancy view.
So, lett us throo' the Groves, my Dafnis stray,
And so, the pleasures of the feilds, survey.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
619:Elegy
'DARK gathering clouds involve the threatening skies,
The sea heaves conscious of the impending gloom,
Deep, hollow murmurs from the cliffs arise;
They come--the Spirits of the Tempest come!
'Oh! may such terrors mark the approaching night
As reign'd on that these streaming eyes deplore!
Flash, ye red fires of heaven, with fatal light,
And with conflicting winds ye waters roar!
'Loud and more loud, ye foaming billows, burst!
Ye warring elements, more fiercely rave!
Till the wide waves o'erwhelm the spot accurst
'Where ruthless Avarice finds a quiet grave!' '
Thus with clasp'd hands, wild looks, and streaming hair,
While shrieks of horror broke her trembling speech,
A wretched maid--the victim of despair,
Survey'd the threatening storm and desert beech.
Then to the tomb where now the father slept
Whose rugged nature bade her sorrows flow,
Frantic she turn'd--and beat her breast and wept,
Invoking vengeance on the dust below.
'Lo! rising there above each humbler heap,
Yon cypher'd stones his name and wealth relate,
Who gave his son--remorseless--to the deep,
While I, his living victim, curse my fate.
'Oh, my lost love! no tomb is placed for thee,
That may to strangers' eyes thy worth impart;
Thou hast no grave but in the stormy sea,
And no memorial but this breaking heart.
'Forth to the world, a widow'd wanderer driven,
I pour to winds and waves the unheeded tear,
Try with vain effort to submit to Heaven,
And fruitless call on him--'who cannot hear.'
'Oh! might I fondly clasp him once again,
While o'er my head the infuriate billows pour,
Forget in death this agonizing pain,
And feel his father's cruelty no more!
'Part, raging waters! part, and show beneath,
In your dread caves, his pale and mangled form;
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Now, while the demons of despair and death
Ride on the blast, and urge the howling storm:
'Lo! by the lightning's momentary blaze,
I see him rise the whitening waves above,
No longer such as when in happier days
He gave the enchanted hours--to me and love.
'Such, as when daring the enchafed sea,
And courting dangerous toil, he often said
That every peril, one soft smile from me,
One sigh of speechless tenderness o'erpaid.
'But dead, disfigured, while between the roar
Of the loud waves his accents pierce mine ear,
And seem to say--Ah, wretch! delay no more,
But come, unhappy mourner--meet me here.
'Yet, powerful Fancy, bid the phantom stay,
Still let me hear him!--'Tis already past;
Along the waves his shadow glides away,
I lose his voice amid the deafening blast.
'Ah, wild delusion, born of frantic pain!
He hears not, comes not from his watery bed;
My tears, my anguish, my despair are vain,
The insatiate ocean gives not up its dead.
' 'Tis not his voice! Hark! the deep thunders roll;
Upheaves the ground; the rocky barriers fail;
Approach, ye horrors that delight my soul,
Despair, and Death, and Desolation, hail!'
The Ocean hears--The embodied waters come-Rise o'er the land, and with resistless sweep
Tear from its base the proud aggressor's tomb,
And bear the injured to eternal sleep.
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
620:Cage gestured to my running leg. “Testing a new leg?”
I shook my head. “Underwear.”
His brow wrinkled and the guys behind him inched a bit closer, ears perked.
“What?” Cage asked.
“My favorite underwear has been discontinued. I’m trying a new brand and the best way to test them out is to go for a jog. I want to know before I buy ten pairs if they’re going to ride up on me. I’m not a thong girl. I don’t like anything shoved up my ass.”
His cheeks turned red while taking a hard swallow. The fishing crew tried and failed to hide their chuckling. One of the guys slapped him on the shoulder.
“We’ll meet you out front.” He cleared his throat. “Our condolences on the ass news.”
That sparked a new round of laughter as the guys piled onto the elevator. When the doors shut, Cage pursed his lips and sighed. “Thanks for that.”
I shrugged. “What?”
“What …” It’s possible his intention was to be serious or maybe upset, but he couldn’t finish his thought without rubbing his hand over his mouth to hide his smirk. “You don’t like ‘anything shoved up your ass.’ Really, Lake?” Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, he shook his head.
“So you’re big into fishing, huh?”
“Don’t change the subject.” He narrowed his eyes at me. Too bad he still couldn’t keep a straight face. It would have given his case a lot more merit. Those were favorite moments of mine, when he was ninety percent sure my actions were an embarrassing side effect of my Sahara Desert humor, yet still ten percent holy-shit-she’s-serious.
I loved that ten percent. I worked my ass off for that ten percent.
“I’m sorry, what was the subject? Oh yeah, things I don’t like in my crack. Sounds like a Jeopardy category or a Family Feud survey. ‘Name something Lake Jones does not like up her crack. Underwear. Survey says? Ding ding ding … ninety-four people surveyed said underwear, the other six said cock. And I do believe those six lascivious idiots are downstairs waiting for you.”
Cage observed me; it was never just a stare or a lingering look. His eyes narrowed a fraction, but never lost their sparkle. The wetting of his lips was always followed by biting them together like he refused to speak until he’d figured me out. And just before he spoke, his dimples surrendered to his impending grin.
“I’m going to text you an address. Meet me there in three hours.”
“What if I haven’t sorted through this underwear situation by then?” My head tilted to the side as my poker face slipped a bit, revealing my own impending grin.
“Hmm …” He pulled me to him, his hands easing into the back of my running shorts. “Don’t fret over it,” he whispered before sucking my earlobe into his mouth.
My lips parted, and eyes closed, as I held onto his biceps to keep my knees from buckling.
“Panties are optional.”
Three words and my knees buckled. Thankfully—not really thankful at all—he fisted the back of my new panties and yanked up. My hero? No. The wedgie was underway a few seconds before my knees gave out.
I gasped.
He smirked.
“I think you should consider getting used to the idea—the feeling—of something in that sexy ass of yours.”
Not much left me speechless, but my first non-brother-male-induced wedgie left me with cow eyes and a numb tongue.
He winked just before the elevator doors shut. ~ Jewel E Ann,#NFDB
621:The Mountains
The Mountains
What ails you, Ocean, that nor near nor far,
Find you a bourne to ease your burdened breast,
But throughout time inexorable are
Never at rest?
With foaming mouth and fluttering crest you leap
Impatiently towards never-shifting beach,
Then wheel, and hurry to some distant deep
Beyond your reach.
Nor golden sands nor sheltering combes can slake
Your fretful longing for some shore unknown,
And through your shrineless pilgrimage you make
Unending moan.
The Sea
Nimbused by sunlight or enwreathed in snow,
Lonely you stand, and loftily you soar,
While I immeasurably ebb and flow
From shore to shore.
I see the palm-dates mellowing in the sun,
I hear the snow-fed torrents bound and brawl,
And if, where'er I range, content with none,
I know them all.
Inward the ice-floes where the walrus whet
Their pendent tusks, I sweep and swirl my way,
Or dally where 'neath dome and minaret
The dolphins play.
Beneath or bountiful or bitter sky
If I myself can never be at rest,
I lullaby the winds until they lie
Husht on my breast.
The Mountains
Till they awake, and from your feeble lap
526
Whirl through the air, and in their rage rejoice:
Then you with levin-bolt and thunderclap
Mingle your voice.
But I their vain insanity survey,
And on my silent brow I let them beat.
What is there it is worth my while to say
To storm or sleet?
I hear the thunder rumbling through the rain,
I feel the lightning flicker round my head;
The blizzards buffet me, but I remain
Dumb as the dead!
Urged by the goad of stern taskmaster Time,
The Seasons come and go, the years roll round.
I watch them from my solitude sublime,
Uttering no sound.
For hate and love I have nor love nor hate;
To be alone is not to be forlorn:
The only armour against pitiless Fate
Is pitying scorn.
The Sea
Yet do I sometimes seem to hear afar
A tumult in your dark ravines as though
You weary of your loneliness, and are
Wrestling with woe.
The Mountains
When the white wolves of Winter to their lair
Throng, and yet deep and deeper sleeps the snow,
I loose the avalanche, to shake and scare
The vale below.
And, when its sprouting hopes and brimming glee
Are bound and buried in a death-white shroud,
Then at the thought that I entombed can be,
I laugh aloud.
The Sea
527
I grieve with grief, at anguish I repine,
I dirge the keel the hurricane destroys:
For all the sorrows of the world are mine,
And all its joys.
And when there is no space 'twixt surf and sky,
And all the universe seems cloud and wave,
It is the immitigable wind, not I,
That scoops men's grave.
I wonder how the blast can hear them moan
For pity, yet keep deaf unto their prayers.
I have too many sorrows of my own,
Not to feel theirs.
And when the season of sweet joy comes round,
My bosom to their rapture heaves and swells;
And closer still I creep to catch the sound
Of wedding bells.
I see the children digging in the sand,
I hear the sinewy mariners carouse,
And lovers in the moonlight, hand-in-hand,
Whispering their vows.
You in your lofty loneliness disdain
Suffering below and comfort from above.
The sweetest thing in all the world is pain
Consoled by Love.
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
622:The Passing Show
I know not if it was a dream. I viewed
A city where the restless multitude,
Between the eastern and the western deep
Had reared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.
Colossal palaces crowned every height;
Towers from valleys climbed into the light;
O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes
Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.
But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day
Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,
Dim spires of temples to the nation's God
Studding high spaces of the wide survey.
Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep
Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,
Yet whispered of an hour when sleepers wake,
The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.
The gardens greened upon the builded hills
Above the tethered thunders of the mills
With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet
By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.
A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,
Looked on the builder's blocks about his base
And bared his wounded breast in sign to say:
'Strike! 'tis my destiny to lodge your race.
''Twas but a breath ago the mammoth browsed
Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed
Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness,
While on their foemen's offal they caroused.'
Ships from afar afforested the bay.
Within their huge and chambered bodies lay
The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed
538
The hardy argosies to far Cathay.
Beside the city of the living spreadStrange fellowship!-the city of the dead;
And much I wondered what its humble folk,
To see how bravely they were housed, had said.
Noting how firm their habitations stood,
Broad-based and free of perishable woodHow deep in granite and how high in brass
The names were wrought of eminent and good,
I said: 'When gold or power is their aim,
The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,
Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare
When they would conquer an abiding fame.'
From the red East the sun-a solemn riteCrowned with a flame the cross upon a height
Above the dead; and then with all his strength
Struck the great city all aroar with light!
II
I know not if it was a dream. I came
Unto a land where something seemed the same
That I had known as 'twere but yesterday,
But what it was I could not rightly name.
It was a strange and melancholy land,
Silent and desolate. On either hand
Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,
And dead above it seemed the hills to stand.
Grayed all with age, those lonely hills-ah me,
How worn and weary they appeared to be!
Between their feet long dusty fissures clove
The plain in aimless windings to the sea.
One hill there was which, parted from the rest,
Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.
Silent and passionless it stood. I thought
539
I saw a scar upon its giant breast.
The sun with sullen and portentous gleam
Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme;
Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars
Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam.
It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,
That desert in its cold, uncanny light;
No soul but I alone to mark the fear
And imminence of everlasting night!
All presages and prophecies of doom
Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,
And in the midst of that accursèd scene
A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
623:This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms. ~ Amanda Ripley, #NFDB
624:It’s dark as a tomb in here,” she said, unable to see more than shadows. “Will you light the candles, please,” she asked, “assuming there are candles in here?”
“Aye, milady, right there, next to the bed.” His shadow crossed before her, and Elizabeth focused on a large, oddly shaped object that she supposed could be a bed, given its size.
“Will you light them, please?” she urged. “I-I can’t see a thing in here.”
“His lordship don’t like more’n one candle lit in the bedchambers,” the footman said. “He says it’s a waste of beeswax.”
Elizabeth blinked in the darkness, torn somewhere between laughter and tears at her plight. “Oh,” she said, nonplussed. The footman lit a small candle at the far end of the room and left, closing the door behind him. “Milady?” Berta whispered, peering through the dark, impenetrable gloom. “Where are you?”
“I’m over here,” Elizabeth replied, walking cautiously forward, her arms outstretched, her hands groping about for possible obstructions in her path as she headed for what she hoped was the outside wall of the bedchamber, where there was bound to be a window with draperies hiding its light.
“Where?” Berta asked in a frightened whisper, and Elizabeth could hear the maid’s teeth chattering halfway across the room.
“Here-on your left.”
Berta followed the sound of her mistress’s voice and let out a terrified gasp at the sight of the ghostlike figure moving eerily through the darkness, arms outstretched. “Raise your arm,” she said urgently, “so I’ll know ‘tis you.”
Elizabeth, knowing Berta’s timid nature, complied immediately. She raised her arm, which, while calming poor Berta, unfortunately caused Elizabeth to walk straight into a slender, fluted pillar with a marble bust upon it, and they both began to topple. “Good God!” Elizabeth burst out, wrapping her arms protectively around the pillar and the marble object upon it. “Berta!” she said urgently. “This is no time to be afraid of the dark. Help me, please. I’ve bumped into something-a bust and its stand, I think-and I daren’t let go of them until I can see how to set them upright. There are draperies over here, right in front of me. All you have to do is follow my voice and open them. Once we do, ‘twill be bright as day in here.”
“I’m coming, milady,” Berta said bravely, and Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve found them!” Berta cried softly a few minutes later. “They’re heavy-velvet they are, with another panel behind them.” Berta pulled one heavy panel back across the wall, and then, with renewed urgency and vigor, she yanked back the other and turned around to survey the room.
“Light as last!” Elizabeth said with relief. Dazzling late-afternoon sunlight poured into the windows directly in front of her, blinding her momentarily. “That’s much better,” she said, blinking. Satisfied that the pillar was quite sturdy enough to stand without her aid, Elizabeth was about to place the bust back upon it, but Berta’s cry stopped her.
“Saints preserve us!”
With the fragile bust clutched protectively to her chest Elizabeth swung sharply around. There, spread out before her, furnished entirely in red and gold, was the most shocking room Elizabeth had ever beheld: Six enormous gold cupids seemed to hover in thin air above a gigantic bed clutching crimson velvet bed draperies in one pudgy fist and holding bows and arrows in the other; more cupids adorned the headboard. Elizabeth’s eyes widened, first in disbelief, and a moment later in mirth. “Berta,” she breathed on a smothered giggle, “will you look at this place! ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
625:A Hard Left For High-School History The College Board version of our national story BY STANLEY KURTZ | 1215 words AT the height of the “culture wars” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, conservatives were alive to the dangers of a leftist takeover of American higher education. Today, with the coup all but complete, conservatives take the loss of the academy for granted and largely ignore it. Meanwhile, America’s college-educated Millennial generation drifts ever farther leftward. Now, however, an ambitious attempt to force a leftist tilt onto high-school U.S.-history courses has the potential to shake conservatives out of their lethargy, pulling them back into the education wars, perhaps to retake some lost ground. The College Board, the private company that develops the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, recently ignited a firestorm by releasing, with little public notice, a lengthy, highly directive, and radically revisionist “framework” for teaching AP U.S. history. The new framework replaces brief guidelines that once allowed states, school districts, and teachers to present U.S. history as they saw fit. The College Board has promised to generate detailed guidelines for the entire range of AP courses (including government and politics, world history, and European history), and in doing so it has effectively set itself up as a national school board. Dictating curricula for its AP courses allows the College Board to circumvent state standards, virtually nationalizing America’s high schools, in violation of cherished principles of local control. Unchecked, this will result in a high-school curriculum every bit as biased and politicized as the curriculum now dominant in America’s colleges. Not coincidentally, David Coleman, the new head of the College Board, is also the architect of the Common Core, another effort to effectively nationalize American K–12 education, focusing on English and math skills. As president of the College Board, Coleman has found a way to take control of history, social studies, and civics as well, pushing them far to the left without exposing himself to direct public accountability. Although the College Board has steadfastly denied that its new AP U.S. history (APUSH) guidelines are politically biased, the intellectual background of the effort indicates otherwise. The early stages of the APUSH redesign overlapped with a collaborative venture between the College Board and the Organization of American Historians to rework U.S.-history survey courses along “internationalist” lines. The goal was to undercut anything that smacked of American exceptionalism, the notion that, as a nation uniquely constituted around principles of liberty and equality, America stands as a model of self-government for the world. Accordingly, the College Board’s new framework for AP U.S. history eliminates the traditional emphasis on Puritan leader John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” sermon and its echoes in American history. The Founding itself is demoted and dissolved within a broader focus on transcontinental developments, chiefly the birth of an exploitative international capitalism grounded in the slave trade. The Founders’ commitment to republican principles is dismissed as evidence of a benighted belief in European cultural superiority. Thomas Bender, the NYU historian who leads the Organization of American Historians’ effort to globalize and denationalize American history, collaborated with the high-school and college teachers who eventually came to lead the College Board’s APUSH redesign effort. Bender frames his movement as a counterpoint to the exceptionalist perspective that dominated American foreign policy during the George W. Bush ad ministration. Bender also openly hopes that students exposed to his approach will sympathize with Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s willingness to use foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution rather than with Justice Antonin Scalia ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
626:The Portrait
This is her picture as she was:
It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
Should tarry when myself am gone.
I gaze until she seems to stir,-Until mine eyes almost aver
That now, even now, the sweet lips part
To breathe the words of the sweet heart:-And yet the earth is over her.
Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
That makes the prison-depths more rude,-The drip of water night and day
Giving a tongue to solitude.
Yet only this, of love's whole prize,
Remains; save what in mournful guise
Takes counsel with my soul alone,-Save what is secret and unknown,
Below the earth, above the skies.
In painting her I shrin'd her face
Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
Hardly at all; a covert place
Where you might think to find a din
Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
Wandering, and many a shape whose name
Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
And your own footsteps meeting you,
And all things going as they came.
A deep dim wood; and there she stands
As in that wood that day: for so
Was the still movement of her hands
And such the pure line's gracious flow.
And passing fair the type must seem,
Unknown the presence and the dream.
'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
Less than her shadow on the grass
Or than her image in the stream.
457
That day we met there, I and she
One with the other all alone;
And we were blithe; yet memory
Saddens those hours, as when the moon
Looks upon daylight. And with her
I stoop'd to drink the spring-water,
Athirst where other waters sprang;
And where the echo is, she sang,-My soul another echo there.
But when that hour my soul won strength
For words whose silence wastes and kills,
Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
Thunder'd the heat within the hills.
That eve I spoke those words again
Beside the pelted window-pane;
And there she hearken'd what I said,
With under-glances that survey'd
The empty pastures blind with rain.
Next day the memories of these things,
Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
Still vibrated with Love's warm wings;
Till I must make them all my own
And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease
Of talk and sweet long silences,
She stood among the plants in bloom
At windows of a summer room,
To feign the shadow of the trees.
And as I wrought, while all above
And all around was fragrant air,
In the sick burthen of my love
It seem'd each sun-thrill'd blossom there
Beat like a heart among the leaves.
O heart that never beats nor heaves,
In that one darkness lying still,
What now to thee my love's great will
Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?
For now doth daylight disavow
458
Those days,--nought left to see or hear.
Only in solemn whispers now
At night-time these things reach mine ear;
When the leaf-shadows at a breath
Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
Forest and water, far and wide,
In limpid starlight glorified,
Lie like the mystery of death.
Last night at last I could have slept,
And yet delay'd my sleep till dawn,
Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
For unawares I came upon
Those glades where once she walk'd with me:
And as I stood there suddenly,
All wan with traversing the night,
Upon the desolate verge of light
Yearn'd loud the iron-bosom'd sea.
Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
The beating heart of Love's own breast,-Where round the secret of all spheres
All angels lay their wings to rest,-How shall my soul stand rapt and aw'd,
When, by the new birth borne abroad
Throughout the music of the suns,
It enters in her soul at once
And knows the silence there for God!
Here with her face doth memory sit
Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,
Till other eyes shall look from it,
Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,
Even than the old gaze tenderer:
While hopes and aims long lost with her
Stand round her image side by side,
Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
About the Holy Sepulchre.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
627:The Scurril Press
OM JONESMITH _(loquitur)_: I've slept right through
The night-a rather clever thing to do.
How soundly women sleep _(looks at his wife.)
They're all alike. The sweetest thing in life
Is woman when she lies with folded tongue,
Its toil completed and its day-song sung.
(_Thump_) That's the morning paper. What a bore
That it should be delivered at the door.
There ought to be some expeditious way
To get it _to_ one. By this long delay
The fizz gets off the news _(a rap is heard)_.
That's Jane, the housemaid; she's an early bird;
She's brought it to the bedroom door, good soul.
_(Gets up and takes it in.)_ Upon the whole
The system's not so bad a one. What's here?
Gad, if they've not got after-listen dear
_(To sleeping wife)_-young Gastrotheos! Well,
If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell
She'll shriek again-with laughter-seeing how
They treated Gast. with her. Yet I'll allow
'T is right if he goes dining at The Pup
With Mrs. Thing.
WIFE _(briskly, waking up)_:
With her? The hussy! Yes, it serves him right.
JONESMITH (_continuing to 'seek the light'_):
What's this about old Impycu? That's good!
Grip-that's the funny man-says Impy should
Be used as a decoy in shooting tramps.
I knew old Impy when he had the 'stamps'
To buy us all out, and he wasn't then
So bad a chap to have about. Grip's pen
Is just a tickler!-and the world, no doubt,
Is better with it than it was without.
What? thirteen ladies-Jumping Jove! we know
Them nearly all!-who gamble at a low
And very shocking game of cards called 'draw'!
O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw!
556
Let's see what else (_wife snores_). Well, I'll be blest!
A woman doesn't understand a jest.
Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds
To take a fling at _me_, condemn him! (_reads_):
Tom Jonesmith-my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!-_Of
the new Shavings Bank_-the man's gone mad!
That's libelous; I'll have him up for that-_Has
had his corns cut_. Devil take the rat!
What business is 't of his, I'd like to know?
He didn't have to cut them. Gods! what low
And scurril things our papers have become!
You skim their contents and you get but scum.
Here, Mary, (_waking wife_) I've been attacked
In this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact!
WIFE (_reading it_): How wicked! Who do you
Suppose 't was wrote it?
JONESMITH: Who? why, who
But Grip, the so-called funny man-he wrote
Me up because I'd not discount his note.
(_Blushes like sunset at the hideous lieHe'll think of one that's better by and byThrows down the paper on the floor, and treads
A lively measure on it-kicks the shreds
And patches all about the room, and still
Performs his jig with unabated will._)
WIFE (_warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn_):
Dear, do be careful of that second corn.
STANLEY.
Noting some great man's composition vile:
A head of wisdom and a heart of guile,
A will to conquer and a soul to dare,
Joined to the manners of a dancing bear,
Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey
Of various Nature's compensating sway,
Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff,
To praise the one and at the other laugh,
Yearn all in vain and impotently seek
Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak
557
The sycophantic worship of the weak.
Not so the wise, from superstition free,
Who find small pleasure in the bended knee;
Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad,
And willing in the king to find the cadNo reason seen why genius and conceit,
The power to dazzle and the will to cheat,
The love of daring and the love of gin,
Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin.
To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still,
Despite your cradling in a tub for swill.
Your peasant manners can't efface the mark
Of light you drew across the Land of Dark.
In you the extremes of character are wed,
To serve the quick and villify the dead.
Hero and clown! O, man of many sides,
The Muse of Truth adores you and derides,
And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray
Upon your head of gold and feet of clay.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
628:Hymn To Light
First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come
From the old Negro's darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled,
Thou tide of glory which no rest dost know,
But ever ebb and ever flow!
Thou golden shower of a true Jove,
Who does in thee descend, and heaven to earth make love!
Hail, active nature's watchful life and health,
Her joy, her ornament and wealth!
Hail to thy husband Heat, and thee!
Thou the world's beauteous bride, the lusty bridegroom he!
Say, from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?
Swiftness and power by birth are thine:
From thy great Sire they came, thy Sire the Word divine.
'Tis, I believe, this archery to show,
That so much cost in colors thou,
And skill in painting, dost bestow
Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.
Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finished when begun;
Let a post-angel start with thee,
And thou the goal of earth shalt teach as soon as he.
Thou in the moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey,
And all the year dost with thee bring,
Of thousand flowery lights, thine own nocturnal spring.
Thou Scythian-like dost round thy lands, above
The sun's gilt tent, forever move,
And still, as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.
25
Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
The humble glowworms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild O greatness without pride! - the bushes of the field.
Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
And sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Ashamed and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.
With 'em there hastes, and wildly takes the alarm,
Of painted dreams, a busy swarm;
At the first openings of thine eye,
The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.
The guilty serpents and obscener beasts
Creep conscious to their secret rests;
Nature to thee does reverence pay;
Ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way.
At thy appearance, Grief itself is said
To shake his wings and rouse his head.
And cloudy Care has often took
A gentle beamy smile reflected from thy look.
At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
Thy sunshine melts away his cold.
Encouraged at the sight of thee,
To the cheek color comes, and firmness to the knee.
Even Lust, the master of a hardened face,
Blushes if thou beest in the place,
To darkness' curtains he retires;
In sympathizing night he rolls his smoky fires.
When, goddess, thou list'st up thy wakened head
Out of the morning's purple bed,
Thy quire of birds about thee play,
And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.
The ghosts and monster spirits that did presume
26
A body's privilege to assume
Vanish again invisibly,
And bodies gain again their visibility.
All the world's bravery that delights our eyes
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st;
Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go'st.
A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;
A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;
The virgin blies in their white
Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.
The violet, spring's little infant, stands
Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands;
On the fair tulip thou dost dote;
Thou cloth'st it in a gay and parti-colored coat.
With flame condensed thou dost the jewels fix,
And solid colors in it mix;
Flora herself envies to see
Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she.
Ah, goddess! would thou couldst thy hand withhold
And be less liberal to gold;
Didst thou less value to it give,
Of how much care, alas! mightst thou poor man relieve!
To me the sun is more delightful far,
And all fair days much fairer are,
But few, ah wondrous few, there be
Who do not gold prefer, O goddess, even to thee.
Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee,
Like a clear river thou dost glide,
And with thy living stream through the close channels slide.
But where firm bodies thy free course oppose,
Gently thy source the land o'erflows,
Takes there possession, and does make
27
Of colors mingled, light, a thick and standing lake.
But the vast ocean of unbounded day
In the empyrean heaven does stay.
Thy rivers, lakes, and springs below
From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.
~ Abraham Cowley,#NFDB
629:Younger Brutus
When in the Thracian dust uprooted lay,
In ruin vast, the strength of Italy,
And Fate had doomed Hesperia's valleys green,
And Tiber's shores,
The trampling of barbarian steeds to feel,
And from the leafless groves,
On which the Northern Bear looks down,
Had called the Gothic hordes,
That Rome's proud walls might fall before their swords;
Exhausted, wet with brothers' blood,
Alone sat Brutus, in the dismal night;
Resolved on death, the gods implacable
Of heaven and hell he chides,
And smites the listless, drowsy air
With his fierce cries of anger and despair.
'O foolish virtue, empty mists,
The realms of shadows, are thy schools,
And at thy heels repentance follows fast.
To you, ye marble gods
(If ye in Phlegethon reside, or dwell
Above the clouds), a mockery and scorn
Is the unhappy race,
Of whom you temples ask,
And fraudulent the law that you impose.
Say, then, does earthly piety provoke
The anger of the gods?
O Jove, dost thou protect the impious?
And when the storm-cloud rushes through the air,
And thou thy thunderbolts dost aim,
Against the _just_ dost thou impel the sacred flame?
Unconquered Fate and stern necessity
Oppress the feeble slaves of Death:
Unable to avert their injuries,
The common herd endure them patiently.
But is the ill less hard to bear,
Because it has no remedy?
Does he who knows no hope no sorrow feel?
The hero wages war with thee,
144
Eternal deadly war, ungracious Fate,
And knows not how to yield; and thy right hand,
Imperious, proudly shaking off,
E'en when it weighs upon him most,
Though conquered, is triumphant still,
When his sharp sword inflicts the fatal blow;
And seeks with haughty smile the shades below.
'Who storms the gates of Tartarus,
Offends the gods.
Such valor does not suit, forsooth,
Their soft, eternal bosoms; no?
Or are our toils and miseries,
And all the anguish of our hearts,
A pleasant sport, their leisure to beguile?
Yet no such life of crime and wretchedness,
But pure and free as her own woods and fields,
Nature to us prescribed; a queen
And goddess once. Since impious custom, now,
Her happy realm hath scattered to the winds,
And other laws on this poor life imposed,
Will Nature of fool-hardiness accuse
The manly souls, who such a life refuse?
'Of crime, and their own sufferings ignorant,
Serene old age the beasts conducts
Unto the death they ne'er foresee.
But if, by misery impelled, they sought
To dash their heads against the rugged tree,
Or, plunging headlong from the lofty rock,
Their limbs to scatter to the winds.
No law mysterious, misconception dark,
Would the sad wish refuse to grant.
Of all that breathe the breath of life,
You, only, children of Prometheus, feel
That life a burden hard to bear;
Yet, would you seek the silent shores of death,
If sluggish fate the boon delay,
To you, alone, stern Jove forbids the way.
'And thou, white moon, art rising from the sea,
That with our blood is stained;
145
The troubled night dost thou survey,
And field, so fatal unto Italy.
On brothers' breasts the conqueror treads;
The hills with fear are thrilled;
From her proud heights Rome totters to her fall.
And smilest thou upon the dismal scene?
Lavinia's children from their birth,
And all their prosperous years,
And well-earned laurels, hast thou seen;
And thou _wilt_ smile, with ray unchanged,
Upon the Alps, when, bowed with grief and shame,
The haughty city, desolate and lone,
Beneath the tread of Gothic hordes shall groan.
'Behold, amid the naked rocks,
Or on the verdant bough, the beast and bird,
Whose breasts are ne'er by thought or memory stirred,
Of the vast ruin take no heed,
Or of the altered fortunes of the world;
And when the humble herdsman's cot
Is tinted with the earliest rays of dawn,
The one will wake the valleys with his song,
The other, o'er the cliffs, the frightened throng
Of smaller beasts before him drive.
O foolish race! Most wretched we, of all!
Nor are these blood-stained fields,
These caverns, that our groans have heard,
Regardful of our misery;
Nor shines one star less brightly in the sky.
Not the deaf kings of heaven or hell,
Or the unworthy earth,
Or night, do I in death invoke,
Or thee, last gleam the dying hour that cheers,
The voice of coming ages. I no tomb
Desire, to be with sobs disturbed, or with
The words and gifts of wretched fools adorned.
The times grow worse and worse;
And who, unto a vile posterity,
The honor of great souls would trust,
Or fit atonement for their wrongs?
Then let the birds of prey around me wheel:
And let my wretched corpse
146
The lightning blast, the wild beast tear;
And let my name and memory melt in air!'
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
630:The Younger Brutus
When in the Thracian dust uprooted lay,
In ruin vast, the strength of Italy,
And Fate had doomed Hesperia's valleys green,
And Tiber's shores,
The trampling of barbarian steeds to feel,
And from the leafless groves,
On which the Northern Bear looks down,
Had called the Gothic hordes,
That Rome's proud walls might fall before their swords;
Exhausted, wet with brothers' blood,
Alone sat Brutus, in the dismal night;
Resolved on death, the gods implacable
Of heaven and hell he chides,
And smites the listless, drowsy air
With his fierce cries of anger and despair.
'O foolish virtue, empty mists,
The realms of shadows, are thy schools,
And at thy heels repentance follows fast.
To you, ye marble gods
(If ye in Phlegethon reside, or dwell
Above the clouds), a mockery and scorn
Is the unhappy race,
Of whom you temples ask,
And fraudulent the law that you impose.
Say, then, does earthly piety provoke
The anger of the gods?
O Jove, dost thou protect the impious?
And when the storm-cloud rushes through the air,
And thou thy thunderbolts dost aim,
Against the _just_ dost thou impel the sacred flame?
Unconquered Fate and stern necessity
Oppress the feeble slaves of Death:
Unable to avert their injuries,
The common herd endure them patiently.
But is the ill less hard to bear,
Because it has no remedy?
Does he who knows no hope no sorrow feel?
The hero wages war with thee,
112
Eternal deadly war, ungracious Fate,
And knows not how to yield; and thy right hand,
Imperious, proudly shaking off,
E'en when it weighs upon him most,
Though conquered, is triumphant still,
When his sharp sword inflicts the fatal blow;
And seeks with haughty smile the shades below.
'Who storms the gates of Tartarus,
Offends the gods.
Such valor does not suit, forsooth,
Their soft, eternal bosoms; no?
Or are our toils and miseries,
And all the anguish of our hearts,
A pleasant sport, their leisure to beguile?
Yet no such life of crime and wretchedness,
But pure and free as her own woods and fields,
Nature to us prescribed; a queen
And goddess once. Since impious custom, now,
Her happy realm hath scattered to the winds,
And other laws on this poor life imposed,
Will Nature of fool-hardiness accuse
The manly souls, who such a life refuse?
'Of crime, and their own sufferings ignorant,
Serene old age the beasts conducts
Unto the death they ne'er foresee.
But if, by misery impelled, they sought
To dash their heads against the rugged tree,
Or, plunging headlong from the lofty rock,
Their limbs to scatter to the winds.
No law mysterious, misconception dark,
Would the sad wish refuse to grant.
Of all that breathe the breath of life,
You, only, children of Prometheus, feel
That life a burden hard to bear;
Yet, would you seek the silent shores of death,
If sluggish fate the boon delay,
To you, alone, stern Jove forbids the way.
'And thou, white moon, art rising from the sea,
That with our blood is stained;
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The troubled night dost thou survey,
And field, so fatal unto Italy.
On brothers' breasts the conqueror treads;
The hills with fear are thrilled;
From her proud heights Rome totters to her fall.
And smilest thou upon the dismal scene?
Lavinia's children from their birth,
And all their prosperous years,
And well-earned laurels, hast thou seen;
And thou _wilt_ smile, with ray unchanged,
Upon the Alps, when, bowed with grief and shame,
The haughty city, desolate and lone,
Beneath the tread of Gothic hordes shall groan.
'Behold, amid the naked rocks,
Or on the verdant bough, the beast and bird,
Whose breasts are ne'er by thought or memory stirred,
Of the vast ruin take no heed,
Or of the altered fortunes of the world;
And when the humble herdsman's cot
Is tinted with the earliest rays of dawn,
The one will wake the valleys with his song,
The other, o'er the cliffs, the frightened throng
Of smaller beasts before him drive.
O foolish race! Most wretched we, of all!
Nor are these blood-stained fields,
These caverns, that our groans have heard,
Regardful of our misery;
Nor shines one star less brightly in the sky.
Not the deaf kings of heaven or hell,
Or the unworthy earth,
Or night, do I in death invoke,
Or thee, last gleam the dying hour that cheers,
The voice of coming ages. I no tomb
Desire, to be with sobs disturbed, or with
The words and gifts of wretched fools adorned.
The times grow worse and worse;
And who, unto a vile posterity,
The honor of great souls would trust,
Or fit atonement for their wrongs?
Then let the birds of prey around me wheel:
And let my wretched corpse
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The lightning blast, the wild beast tear;
And let my name and memory melt in air!'
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
631:The Messiah : A Sacred Eclogue
Ye nymphs of Solyma! begin the song,
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.
The mossy fountains, and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus, and the Aonian maids,
Delight no more - O thou, my voice inspire,
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire!
Rapt into future times the bard begun,
A virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a son!
From Jesse's root behold a branch arise,
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies;
The ethereal Spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descend the mystic Dove.
Ye heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour,
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower!
The sick and weak, the healing Plant shall aid,
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
Returning justice lift aloft her scale.
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
And white robed innocence from heaven descend.
Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn!
O spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born!
See! nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
WIth all the incense of the breathing spring!
See! lofty Lebanon his head advance,
See! nodding forests on the mountains dance:
See! spicy clouds from lowly Sharon rise;
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies.
Hark! a glad voice the lonely desart cheers;
Prepare the way! a God, a God appears:
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply,
The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity.
Lo! earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down ye mountains, and ye vallies rise!
With heads declined ye cedars homage pay!
Be smooth ye rocks, ye rapid floods give way!
The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold:
218
Hear him ye deaf, and all ye blind, behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eye-ball pour the day.
'Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe:
No sigh, no murmer the wide world shall hear;
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall death be bound,
And hell's grim tyrant feel the eternal wound.
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pastures and the purest air:
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects;
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms!
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promis'd father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes;
Nor fields with gleaming steel be cover'd o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad faulchion in a plough-share end.
Then palaces shall rise: the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-liv'd fire begun;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sow'd, shall reap the field.
The swain in barren desarts with surprise
Sees lillies spring, and sudden verdure rise,
And starts amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear;
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy vallies once perplex'd with thorn,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn;
The leafless shrubs the flow'ring palms succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall grace the verdant mead,
And boys in flow'ry bands the tyger lead;
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
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The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake;
Pleas'd, the green lustres of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongues shall innocently play.
Rise, crown'd with light, imperial Salem rise!
Exalt thy tow'ry head, and lift thy eyes!
See! a long race thy spacious courts adorn;
See! future sons and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on ev'ry side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See! barb'rous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See! thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings,
And heap'd with products of Sabaean springs!
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See! heav'n its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor ev'ning Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolv'd in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze,
O'erflow thy courts: the Light Himself shall shine
Reveal'd, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fix'd his word, his saving pow'r remains,
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
632:Studies By The Sea
AH ! wherefore do the incurious say,
That this stupendous ocean wide,
No change presents from day to day,
Save only the alternate tide;
Or save when gales of summer glide
Across the lightly crisped wave;
Or, when against the cliff's rough side,
As equinoctial tempests rave,
It wildly bursts; o'erwhelms the deluged strand,
Tears down its bounds, and desolates the land ?
He who with more enquiring eyes
Doth this extensive scene survey,
Beholds innumerous changes rise,
As various winds its surface sway;
Now o'er its heaving bosom play
Small sparkling waves of silver gleam,
And as they lightly glide away
Illume with fluctuating beam
The deepening surge; green as the dewy corn
That undulates in April's breezy morn.
The far off waters then assume
A glowing amethystine shade,
That changing like the peacock's plume
Seems in celestial blue to fade;
Or paler, colder hues of lead,
As lurid vapours float on high,
Along the ruffling billows spread,
While darkly lours the threatening sky;
And the small scatter'd barks with outspread shrouds,
Catch the long gleams, that fall between the clouds.
Then day's bright star with blunted rays
Seems struggling thro' the sea-fog pale,
And doubtful in the heavy haze,
Is dimly seen the nearing sail;
'Till from the land a fresher gale
Disperses the white mist, and clear,
As melts away the gauzy veil,
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The sun-reflecting waves appear;
So, brighter genuine virtue seems to rise
From envy's dark invidious calumnies.
What glories on the sun attend,
When the full tides of evening flow,
Where in still changing beauty, blend
With amber light, the opal's glow;
While in the east the diamond bow
Rises in virgin lustre bright,
And from the horizon seems to throw,
A partial line of trembling light
To the hush'd shore; and all the tranquil deep
Beneath the modest moon, is sooth'd to sleep.
Forgotten then, the thundering break
Of waves, that in the tempest rise,
The falling cliff, the shatter'd wreck,
The howling blast, the sufferer's cries;
For soft the breeze of evening sighs,
And murmuring seems in Fancy's ear
To whisper fairy lullabies,
That tributary waters bear
From precipices, dark with piny woods,
And inland rocks, and heathy solitudes.
The vast encircling seas within,
What endless swarms of creatures hide ,
Of burnish'd scale, and spiny fin !
These providential instincts guide,
And bid them know the annual tide,
When, from unfathom'd waves that swell,
Beyond Fuego's stormy side,
They come, to cheer the tribes that dwell
In Boreal climes; and thro' his half year's night
Give to the Lapland savage, food and light.
From cliffs, that pierce the northern sky;
Where eagles rear their sanguine brood,
With long awaiting patient eye,
Baffled by many a sailing cloud,
The Highland native marks the flood,
Till bright the quickening billows roll,
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And hosts of sea-birds, clamouring loud,
Track with wild wing the welcome shoal,
Swift o'er the animated current sweep,
And bear their silver captives from the deep.
Sons of the North ! your streamy vales
With no rich sheaves rejoice and sing;
Her flowery robe no fruit conceals,
Tho' sweetly smile your tardy spring;
Yet every mountain, clothed with ling,
Doth from its purple brow survey
Your busy sails, that ceaseless bring
To the broad frith, and sheltering bay,
Riches, by Heaven's parental power supplied,
The harvest of the far embracing tide.
And, where those fractur'd mountains lift
O'er the blue wave their towering crest,
Each salient ledge and hollow cleft
To sea-fowl give a rugged nest.
But with instinctive love is drest
The Eider's downy cradle; where
The mother-bird, her glossy breast
Devotes, and with maternal care,
And plumeless bosom, stems the toiling seas,
That foam round the tempestuous Orcades.
From heights, whence shuddering sense recoils,
And cloud-capped headlands, steep and bare,
Sons of the North ! your venturous toils
Collect your poor and scanty fare.
Urged by imperious Want, you dare
Scale the loose cliff, where Gannets hide,
Or scarce suspended, in the air
Hang perilous; and thus provide
The soft voluptuous couch, which not secures
To Luxury's pamper'd minions, sleep like yours.
Revolving still, the waves that now
Just ripple on the level shore,
Have borne perchance the Indian's prow,
Or half congeal'd, 'mid ice rocks hoar,
Raved to the Walrus' hollow roar;
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Or have by currents swift convey'd
To the cold coast of Labrador,
The relics of the tropic shade;
And to the wondering Esquimaux have shown
Leaves of strange shape, and fruits unlike their own.
No more then, let the incurious say,
No change this world of water shows,
But as the tides the moon obey,
Or tempests rave, or calms repose.
Shew them, its bounteous breast bestows
On myriads life; and bid them see
In every wave that circling flows,
Beauty and use, and harmony
Works of the Power Supreme, who poured the flood,
Round the green peopled earth, and call'd it good !
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
633:A Description Of One Of The Pieces Of Tapistry At
Long-Leat
THUS Tapistry of old, the Walls adorn'd,
Ere noblest Dames the artful Shuttle scorn'd:
Arachne, then, with Pallas did contest,
And scarce th' Immortal Work was judg'd the Best.
Nor valorous Actions, then, in Books were fought;
But all the Fame, that from the Field was brought,
Employ'd the Loom, where the kind Consort wrought:
Whilst sharing in the Toil, she shar'd the Fame,
And with the Heroes mixt her interwoven Name.
No longer, Females to such Praise aspire,
And seldom now We rightly do admire.
So much, All Arts are by the Men engross'd,
And Our few Talents unimprov'd or cross'd;
Even I, who on this Subject wou'd compose,
Which the fam'd Urbin for his Pencil chose,
(And here, in tinctur'd Wool we now behold
Correctly follow'd in each Shade, and Fold)
Shou'd prudently from the Attempt withdraw,
But Inclination proves the stronger Law:
And tho' the Censures of the World pursue
These hardy Flights, whilst his Designs I view;
My burden'd Thoughts, which labour for a Vent,
Urge me t'explain in Verse, what by each Face is meant.
Of SERGIUS first, upon his lofty Seat,
With due Regard our Observations treat;
Who, whilst he thence on ELYMAS looks down,
Contracts his pensive Brow into a Frown,
With Looks inquistive he seeks the Cause
Why Nature acts not still by Natures Laws.
'Twas but a Moment, since the Sorcerer's Sight
Receiv'd the Day, and blaz'd infernal Light:
Untouch'd, the Optiques in a Moment fail'd,
Their fierce Illumination quench'd, or veil'd;
Throughout th' Extention of his ample Sway,
11
No Fact, like this, the Roman cou'd survey,
Who, with spread Hands, invites Mankind to gaze,
And sympathize in the profound Amaze.
To share his Wonder every one combines,
By diff'rent Aspects shewn, and diff'rent Signs.
A comely Figure, near the Consul plac'd,
With serious Mildness and Instruction grac'd,
To Others seems imparting what he saw,
And shews the Wretch with reverential Awe:
Whilst a more eager Person next we find,
Viewing the Wizard with a Skeptic's Mind;
Who his fixt Eyes so near him do's apply,
We think, enliv'ning Beams might from them fly,
To re-inkindle, by so just an Aim,
The radial Sparks, but lately check'd and tame,
As Tapers new put-out will catch approaching Flame.
But dire Surprize th' Enquiry do's succeed,
Whilst full Conviction in his Face we read,
And He, who question'd, now deplores the Deed.
To sacred PAUL a younger Figure guides,
With seeming Warmth, which still in Youth presides;
And pointing forward, Elder Men directs,
In Him, to note the Cause of these Effects;
Upon whose Brow do's evidently shine
Deputed Pow'r, t' inflict the Wrath Divine;
Whilst sad and solemn, suited to their Years,
Each venerable Countenance appears,
Where, yet we see Astonishment reveal'd,
Tho' by the Aged often 'tis conceal'd;
Who the Emotions of their Souls disguize,
Lest by admiring they shou'd seem less Wise.
But to thy Portrait, ELYMAS, we come
Whose Blindness almost strikes the Poet dumb;
And whilst She vainly to Describe thee seeks,
The Pen but traces, where the Pencil speaks.
Of Darkness to be felt, our Scriptures write,
Thou Darken'd seem'st, as thou would'st feel the Light;
And with projected Limbs, betray'st a Dread,
12
Of unseen Mischiefs, levell'd at thy Head.
Thro' all thy Frame such Stupefaction reigns,
As Night it self were sunk into thy Veins:
Nor by the Eyes alone thy Loss we find,
Each Lineament helps to proclaim thee Blind.
An artful Dimness far diffus'd we grant,
And failing seem all Parts through One important Want.
Oh! Mighty RAPHAEL, justly sure renown'd!
Since in thy Works such Excellence is found;
No Wonder, if with Nature Thou'rt at strife,
Who thus can paint the Negatives of Life;
And Deprivation more expressive make,
Than the most perfect Draughts, which Others take.
Whilst to this Chiefest Figure of the Piece,
All that surround it, Heightnings do encrease:
In some, Amazement by Extreams is shewn,
Who viewing his clos'd Lids, extend their Own.
Nor can, by that, enough their Thoughts express,
Which op'ning Months seem ready to confess.
Thus stand the LICTORS gazing on a Deed,
Which do's all humane Chastisements exceed;
Enfeebl'd seem their Instruments of smart,
When keener Words can swifter Ills impart.
Thou, BARNABAS, though Last, not least our Care,
Seem'st equally employ'd in Praise, and Prayer,
Acknowledging th' Omnipotent Decree,
Yet soft Compassion in thy Face we see;
Whilst lifted Hands implore a kind Relief,
Tho' no Impatience animates thy Grief;
But mild Suspence and Charity benign,
Do all th' excesses of thy Looks confine.
Thus far, our slow Imagination goes:
Wou'd the more skill'd THEANOR his disclose;
Expand the Scene, and open to our Sight
What to his nicer Judgement gives Delight;
13
Whose soaring Mind do's to Perfections climb,
Nor owns a Relish, but for Things sublime:
Then, wou'd the Piece fresh Beauties still present,
Nor Length of Time wou'd leave the Eye content:
As moments, Hours; as Hours the Days wou'd seem,
Observing here, taught to observe by HIM.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
634:Vertumnus And Pomona : Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Book 14 [v. 623-771]
The fair Pomona flourish'd in his reign;
Of all the Virgins of the sylvan train,
None taught the trees a nobler race to bear,
Or more improv'd the vegetable care.
To her the shady grove, the flow'ry field,
The streams and fountains, no delights could yield;
'Twas all her joy the ripening fruits to tend,
And see the boughs with happy burthens bend.
The hook she bore instead of Cynthia's spear,
To lop the growth of the luxuriant year,
To decent form the lawless shoots to bring,
And teach th' obedient branches where to spring.
Now the cleft rind inserted graffs receives,
And yields an offspring more than nature gives;
Now sliding streams the thirsty plants renew,
And feed their fibres with reviving dew.
These cares alone her virgin breast employ,
Averse from Venus and the nuptial joy.
Her private orchards, wall'd on ev'ry side,
To lawless sylvans all access deny'd.
How oft the Satyrs and the wanton Fawns,
Who haunt the forests, or frequent the lawns,
The God whose ensign scares the birds of prey,
And old Silenus, youthful in decay,
Employ'd their wiles, and unavailing care,
To pass the fences, and surprise the fair.
Like these, Vertumnus own'd his faithful flame,
Like these, rejected by the scornful dame.
To gain her sight a thousand forms he wears,
And first a reaper from the field appears,
Sweating he walks, while loads of golden grain
O'ercharge the shoulders of the seeming swain.
Oft o'er his back a crooked scythe is laid,
And wreathes of hay his sun-burnt temples shade:
Oft in his harden'd hand a goad he bears,
Like one who late unyok'd the sweating steers.
Sometimes his pruning-hook corrects the vines,
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And the loose stragglers to their ranks confines.
Now gath'ring what the bounteous year allows,
He pulls ripe apples from the bending boughs.
A soldier now, he with his sword appears;
A fisher next, his trembling angle bears;
Each shape he varies, and each art he tries,
On her bright charms to feast his longing eyes.
A female form at last Vertumnus wears,
With all the marks of rev'rend age appears,
His temples thinly spread with silver hairs;
Propp'd on his staff, and stooping as he goes,
A painted mitre shades his furrow'd brows.
The God in this decrepit form array'd,
The gardens enter'd, and the fruit survey'd,
And 'Happy you!' (he thus address'd the maid)
'Whose charms as far all other nymphs out-shine,
'As other gardens are excell'd by thine!'
Then kiss'd the fair; (his kisses warmer grow
Than such as women on their sex bestow.)
Then plac'd beside her on the flow'ry ground,
Beheld the trees with autumn's bounty crown'd.
An Elm was near, to whose embraces led,
The curling vine her swelling clusters spread:
He view'd her twining branches with delight,
And prais'd the beauty of the pleasing sight.
'Yet this tall elm, but for his vine' (he said)
'Had stood neglected, and a barren shade;
And this fair vine, but that her arms surround
Her marry'd elm, had crept along the ground.
Ah beauteous maid, let this example move
Your mind, averse from all the joys of love.
Deign to be lov'd, and ev'ry heart subdue!
What nymph could e'er attract such crowds as you?
Not she whose beauty urg'd the Centaurs' arms,
Ulysses' Queen, nor Helen's fatal charms.
Ev'n now, when silent scorn is all they gain,
A thousand court you, tho' they court in vain,
A thousand sylvans, demigods, and gods,
That haunt our mountains and our Alban woods.
But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise,
Whom age, and long experience render wise,
And one whose tender care is far above
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All that these lovers ever felt of love,
(Far more than e'er can by yourself be guess'd)
Fix on Vertumnus, and reject the rest.
For his firm faith I dare engage my own;
Scarce to himself, himself is better known.
To distant lands Vertumnus never roves;
Like you contented with his native groves;
Nor at first sight, like most, admires the fair;
For you he lives; and you alone shall share
His last affection, as his early care.
Besides, he's lovely far above the rest,
With youth immortal, and with beauty blest.
Add, that he varies ev'ry shape with ease,
And tries all forms that may Pomona please.
But what should most excite a mutual flame,
Your rural cares, and pleasures are the same:
To him your orchard's early fruits are due,
(A pleasing off'ring when 'tis made by you)
He values these; but yet (alas) complains,
That still the best and dearest gift remains.
Not the fair fruit that on yon' branches glows
With that ripe red th' autumnal sun bestows;
Nor tasteful herbs that in these gardens rise,
Which the kind soil with milky sap supplies;
You, only you, can move the God's desire:
Oh crown so constant and so pure a fire!
Let soft compassion touch your gentle mind;
Think, 'tis Vertumnus begs you to be kind!
So may no frost, when early buds appear,
Destroy the promise of the youthful year;
Nor winds, when first your florid orchard blows,
Shake the light blossoms from their blasted boughs!'
This when the various God had urg'd in vain,
He straight assum'd his native form again;
Such, and so bright an aspect now he bears,
As when thro' clouds th' emerging sun appears,
And thence exerting his refulgent ray,
Dispels the darkness, and reveals the day.
Force he prepar'd, but check'd the rash design;
For when, appearing in a form divine,
The Nymph surveys him, and beholds the grace
Of charming features, and a youthful face,
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In her soft breast consenting passions move,
And the warm maid confess'd a mutual love.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
635:The Bush Fire
“’TIS nine o’clock:—to bed!” cried Egremont,
Who with his youthful household (for ’tis now
Long since) inhabited a lonely home
In the Australian wilderness, that then
As with an unshorn fleece of gloomy wood
Robed the vast bulk of all the mighty Isle.
But ere retiring finally, he went
Forth as his wont was, to survey the night.
’Twas clear and silent: and the stirless woods
Seemed dreaming in the witch-light of the moon
As like a boat of stained pearl, she hung
Amid the ridges of a wavy cloud—
The only cloud in heaven. While Egremont
Looked thus abroad observingly, he marked
All around him, listing the horizon’s verge,
A broad unusual upward glaring gleam,
Such a drear radiance as the setting sun
Effuses when the atmosphere is stormy.
What this might be he wondered—but not long;
Divining soon the cause—a vast Bush Fire!
But deeming it too distant yet for harm,
During the night betiding, to repose
With his bed-faring household he retired.
Sound was their sleep: for honesty of life
Is somewhat lumpish when ’tis once a-bed.
And now the darkness of the night was past,
When with the dreams of Egremont, a strange
And momently approaching roar began
To mingle and insinuate through them more
And more of its own import, till a Fire
Huge as the world was their sole theme: and then
He started from his sleep to find the type
A warning! for what else however terrible,
Might breathe with a vitality so fierce
As that which reigned without?
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Scarce did he wait
To clothe himself ere forth he rushed; and lo,
Within the circling forest he beheld
A vast and billowy belt of writhing fire,
That shed a wild and lurid splendour up
Against the whitening dawn, come raging on!
Raging and roaring as with ten thousand tongues
That prophesied destruction. On it came,
A dreadful apparition—such as Fear
Conceives when dreaming of the front of hell!
No time was there to lose. “Up—up!” he cried
To all the house. Instantly all within
Was haste and wonder, and in briefest space
The whole-roused family were staring out
In speechless admiration, such as kept
Even Terror dormant;—till more urgently
The voice of Egremont again was heard:—
“Lose not a moment! Follow me at once,
Each with whatever he can grasp of use
And carry unincumbered!”
Right before,
A narrow strip of clearing 1 like a glade
Stretched out tow’rds a bald summit. Thitherward
The perilled people now were hurrying all,
While in their front, beneath the ridge, a dense
Extent of brushwood into which the Fire’s
Bright teeth were eating hungrily, still brought
The danger nearer! Shall they reach that hill
Unscathed, their only refuge? Will they speed
Past the red-rushing peril? Onward yet!
And onward!—till at length the summit’s gained,
And halting, they look back—in safety all,
Though breathless.
But no sooner had they past
That fearful brush, than a vast swathe of flame
Lifted and hurried forward by the wind
Over their very passage track, was pitched
With a loud thud like thunder into it—
With such a thud as the sea-swell gives up
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From under the ledges of some hanging cliff!
And in an instant all its depth of shade
Was as a lake of hell! And hark! as then,
Even like a ghastly pyramid its mass
Of flames went surging up—up with them still
A cry of mortal agony was heard
Ascending, all so terrible, indeed,
That they who heard it, never, until then,
Might deem a voice so earnest in its fear,
So strenuous in its anguish could have being
In the live bosom of the suffering Earth!
But soon did they divine, even to their loss,
Its import:—there a giant steed, their best,
Had taken refuge, there to die!
All grouped
In safety now upon that hill’s bare top—
Egremont and his household looked abroad,
Astonished at the terrors of the time!
Soon sunk their rooftree in the fiery surge,
Which entering next a high-grassed bottom, thick
With bark-ringed trees all standing bleak and leafless,
Tenfold more terrible in its ravage grew,
Upclimbing to their very tops! As when
Upon some day of national festival,
From the tall spars of the ship-crowded port
Innumerous flags in one direction all
Tongue outward, writhing in the wind: even so,
From those dry boles where still the dead bark clings
And from their multifarious mass above
Of leafless boughs, myriads of flaming tongues
Lick upward, or aloft in narrowing flakes
Stream out,—and thence upon the tortured blast
Bicker and flap in one inconstant blaze!
Scared forward by the roaring of the Fire,
A flight of parrots o’er the upper ridge
Comes whizzing, and then sweeping down, alights
Amid the oaks that fringe the base of yon
Precipitous terrace, being deterred from still
Proceeding by the smoke uprolled in front
Like a dim-moving range of spectral mountains.
142
There they abide, and listen in their fear
To the tremendous riot of the flames
Beyond the ridge line, that keep nearing fast
Though yet unseen from thence—unseen, till now
Furiously seizing on the withered grove
That tops the terrace, all whose spiry shafts
Rush upward, and then culminating, bend
Sheer o’er the oaks wherein the birds are lodged.
All are in flight at once, but from above
As suddenly, a mightier burst of flame
Outsheeteth o’er them!—Down they dip, but it
Keeps swooping with them even to the ground—
Where, in a moment after, all are seen
To writhe convulsed—blasted and plumeless all!
Thus through the day the conflagration raged:
And when the wings of night o’erspread the scene,
Not even their starry blazonry wore such
An aggregated glory to the eye,
As did the blazing dead wood of the forest—
On all hands blazing! Mighty sapless gums
Amid their living kindred, stood all fire—
Boles, branches, all!—like flaming ghosts of trees,
Come from the past within the whiteman’s pale
To typify a doom. Such was the prospect:
Illuminated cities were but jests
Compared to it for splendor. But enough!
Where are the words to paint the million shapes
And unimaginable freaks of Fire,
When holding thus its monster carnival
In the primeval forest all night long?
~ Charles Harpur,#NFDB
636:The Rape Of The Lock: Canto 5
She said: the pitying audience melt in tears,
But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan;
Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.
"Say, why are beauties prais'd and honour'd most,
The wise man's passion, and the vain man's toast?
Why deck'd with all that land and sea afford,
Why angels call'd, and angel-like ador'd?
Why round our coaches crowd the white-glov'd beaux,
Why bows the side-box from its inmost rows?
How vain are all these glories, all our pains,
Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains:
That men may say, when we the front-box grace:
'Behold the first in virtue, as in face!'
Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the smallpox, or chas'd old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,
Curl'd or uncurl'd, since locks will turn to grey,
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a man, must die a maid;
What then remains but well our pow'r to use,
And keep good humour still whate'er we lose?
And trust me, dear! good humour can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."
So spoke the dame, but no applause ensu'd;
Belinda frown'd, Thalestris call'd her prude.
"To arms, to arms!" the fierce virago cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
239
All side in parties, and begin th' attack;
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack;
Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise,
And bass, and treble voices strike the skies.
No common weapons in their hands are found,
Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.
So when bold Homer makes the gods engage,
And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage;
'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms;
And all Olympus rings with loud alarms.
Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around;
Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound;
Earth shakes her nodding tow'rs, the ground gives way;
And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
Clapp'd his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:
Propp'd on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.
While through the press enrag'd Thalestris flies,
And scatters death around from both her eyes,
A beau and witling perish'd in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.
"O cruel nymph! a living death I bear,"
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,
"Those eyes are made so killing"--was his last.
Thus on Mæeander's flow'ry margin lies
Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies.
When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
Chloe stepp'd in, and kill'd him with a frown;
She smil'd to see the doughty hero slain,
But at her smile, the beau reviv'd again.
Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
240
See, fierce Belinda on the baron flies,
With more than usual lightning in her eyes,
Nor fear'd the chief th' unequal fight to try,
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
But this bold lord with manly strength endu'd,
She with one finger and a thumb subdu'd:
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
The Gnomes direct, to ev'ry atom just,
The pungent grains of titillating dust.
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.
"Now meet thy fate", incens'd Belinda cried,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
(The same, his ancient personage to deck,
Her great great grandsire wore about his neck
In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,
Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown:
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew;
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)
"Boast not my fall," he cried, "insulting foe!
Thou by some other shalt be laid as low.
Nor think, to die dejects my lofty mind;
All that I dread is leaving you benind!
Rather than so, ah let me still survive,
And burn in Cupid's flames--but burn alive."
"Restore the lock!" she cries; and all around
"Restore the lock!" the vaulted roofs rebound.
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roar'd for the handkerchief that caus'd his pain.
But see how oft ambitious aims are cross'd,
The chiefs contend 'till all the prize is lost!
The lock, obtain'd with guilt, and kept with pain,
In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain:
With such a prize no mortal must be blest,
So Heav'n decrees! with Heav'n who can contest?
241
Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere,
Since all things lost on earth are treasur'd there.
There hero's wits are kept in pond'rous vases,
And beaux' in snuff boxes and tweezercases.
There broken vows and deathbed alms are found,
And lovers' hearts with ends of riband bound;
The courtier's promises, and sick man's prayers,
The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs,
Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea,
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry.
But trust the Muse--she saw it upward rise,
Though mark'd by none but quick, poetic eyes:
(So Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdrew,
To Proculus alone confess'd in view)
A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright,
The heav'ns bespangling with dishevell'd light.
The Sylphs behold it kindling as it flies,
And pleas'd pursue its progress through the skies.
This the beau monde shall from the Mall survey,
And hail with music its propitious ray.
This the blest lover shall for Venus take,
And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake.
This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes;
And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome.
Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravish'd hair,
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
For, after all the murders of your eye,
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die:
242
When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,
This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame
And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
637:The Iliad: Book Vi (Excerpt)
He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
Had thence retir'd; and, with her second joy,
The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy,
Pensive she stood on Ilion's tow'ry height,
Beheld the war, and sicken'd at the sight;
There her sad eyes in vain her lord explore,
Or weep the wounds her bleeding country bore.
But he, who found not whom his soul desir'd,
Whose virtue charm'd him as her beauty fir'd,
Stood in the gates, and ask'd what way she bent
Her parting steps; if to the fane she went,
Where late the mourning matrons made resort,
Or sought her sisters in the Trojan court.
"Not to the court" replied th' attendant train,
"Nor, mixed with matrons, to Minerva's fane;
To Ilion's steepy tow'r she bent her way,
To mark the fortunes of the doubtful day.
Troy fled, she heard, before the Grecian sword;
She heard, and trembled for her absent lord.
Distracted with surprise, she seem'd to fly,
Fear on her cheek and sorrow in her eye.
The nurse attended with her infant boy,
The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy."
Hector, this heard, return'd without delay;
Swift through the town he trod his former way
Through streets of palaces and walks of state,
And met the mourner at the Scæan gate.
With haste to meet him sprung the joyful fair,
His blameless wife, E{"e}tion's wealthy heir
(Cilician Thebè great E{"e}tion sway'd,
And Hippoplacus' wide-extended shade);
The nurse stood near, in whose embraces prest
His only hope hung smiling at her breast,
Whom each soft charm and early grace adorn,
212
Fair as the new-born star that gilds the morn.
To this lov'd infant Hector gave the name
Scamandrius, from Scamander's honour'd stream;
Astyanax the Trojans call'd the boy,
From his great father, the defence of Troy.
Silent the warrior smil'd, and pleas'd, resign'd
To tender passions all his mighty mind:
His beauteous princess cast a mournful look,
Hung on his hand, and then dejected spoke;
Her bosom labour'd with a boding sigh,
And the big tear stood trembling in her eye.
"Too daring prince! ah whither dost thou run?
Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and son!
And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, a helpless orphan he!
For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice.
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;
Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain!
Oh, grant me, gods! e'er Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of heav'n, an early tomb!
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun.
No parent now remains, my griefs to share,
No father's aid, no mother's tender care.
The fierce Achilles wrapp'd our walls in fire,
Laid Thebè waste, and slew my warlike sire!
His fate compassion in the victor bred;
Stern as he was, he yet rever'd the dead,
His radiant arms preserv'd from hostile spoil,
And laid him decent on the fun'ral pile;
Then rais'd a mountain where his bones were burn'd:
The mountain nymphs the rural tomb adorn'd;
Jove's sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow
A barren shade, and in his honour grow.
"By the same arm my sev'n brave brothers fell;
In one sad day beheld the gates of hell:
While the fat herds and snowy flocks they fed,
Amid their fields the hapless heroes bled!
My mother liv'd to bear the victor's bands,
213
The queen of Hippoplacia's sylvan lands;
Redeem'd too late, she scarce beheld again
Her pleasing empire and her native plain,
When, ah! oppress'd by life-consuming woe,
She fell a victim to Diana's bow.
"Yet while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee:
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all,
Once more will perish if my Hector fall.
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share:
Oh, prove a husband's and a father's care!
That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy:
Thou from this tow'r defend th' important post
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,
That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have giv'n,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from heav'n.
Let others in the field their arms employ,
But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy."
The chief replied: "That post shall be my care,
Not that alone, but all the works of war.
How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown'd,
And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame?
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to th' embattled plains:
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories, and my own.
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates,
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam's hoary hairs defil'd with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread;
214
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led.
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes, of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring
The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring!
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, 'Behold the mighty Hector's wife!'
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.
The thoughts of glory past and present shame,
A thousand griefs, shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Press'd with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapp'd in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep."
Thus having spoke, th' illustrious chief of Troy
Stretch'd his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smil'd,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child;
The glitt'ring terrors from his brows unbound,
And plac'd the beaming helmet on the ground.
Then kiss'd the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferr'd a father's pray'r:
"O thou! whose glory fills th' ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless pow'rs! protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when, triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him with deserv'd acclaim,
And say, 'This chief transcends his father's fame':
While pleas'd, amidst the gen'ral shouts of Troy,
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy."
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,
Restor'd the pleasing burthen to her arms;
215
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd.
The troubled pleasure soon chastis'd by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The soften'd chief with kind compassion view'd,
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursu'd:
"Andromache! my soul's far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fix'd is the term to all the race of earth,
And such the hard condition of our birth.
No force can then resist, no flight can save;
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
No more--but hasten to thy tasks at home,
There guide the spindle, and direct the loom;
Me glory summons to the martial scene,
The field of combat is the sphere for men.
Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,
The first in danger as the first in fame."
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
638:The Rape Of The Lock: Canto 4
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress'd,
And secret passions labour'd in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravish'd hair.
For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrew,
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew,
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
Repair'd to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.
Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome,
And in a vapour reach'd the dismal dome.
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded East is all the wind that blows.
Here, in a grotto, shelter'd close from air,
And screen'd in shades from day's detested glare,
She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,
Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head.
Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place,
But diff'ring far in figure and in face.
Here stood Ill Nature like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white array'd;
With store of pray'rs, for mornings, nights, and noons,
Her hand is fill'd; her bosom with lampoons.
There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
234
Wrapp'd in a gown, for sickness, and for show.
The fair ones feel such maladies as these,
When each new night-dress gives a new disease.
A constant vapour o'er the palace flies;
Strange phantoms, rising as the mists arise;
Dreadful, as hermit's dreams in haunted shades,
Or bright, as visions of expiring maids.
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,
Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires:
Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes,
And crystal domes, and angels in machines.
Unnumber'd throngs on ev'ry side are seen,
Of bodies chang'd to various forms by Spleen.
Here living teapots stand, one arm held out,
One bent; the handle this, and that the spout:
A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks;
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose pie talks;
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works,
And maids turn'd bottles, call aloud for corks.
Safe pass'd the Gnome through this fantastic band,
A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand.
Then thus address'd the pow'r: "Hail, wayward Queen!
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:
Parent of vapours and of female wit,
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays;
Who cause the proud their visits to delay,
And send the godly in a pet to pray.
A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains,
And thousands more in equal mirth maintains.
But oh! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace,
Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face,
Like citron waters matrons' cheeks inflame,
Or change complexions at a losing game;
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads,
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds,
Or caus'd suspicion when no soul was rude,
Or discompos'd the head-dress of a prude,
235
Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease,
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease:
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin;
That single act gives half the world the spleen."
The goddess with a discontented air
Seems to reject him, though she grants his pray'r.
A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds,
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds;
There she collects the force of female lungs,
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.
A vial next she fills with fainting fears,
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.
The Gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,
Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day.
Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he found,
Her eyes dejected and her hair unbound.
Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent,
And all the Furies issu'd at the vent.
Belinda burns with more than mortal ire,
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire.
"Oh wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried,
(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied,
"Was it for this you took such constant care
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound,
For this with tort'ring irons wreath'd around?
For this with fillets strain'd your tender head,
And bravely bore the double loads of lead?
Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair,
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare!
Honour forbid! at whose unrivall'd shrine
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all, our sex resign.
Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honour in a whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize,
Expos'd through crystal to the gazing eyes,
236
And heighten'd by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow,
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!"
She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
(Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuffbox open'd, then the case,
And thus broke out--"My Lord, why, what the devil?
Z{-}{-}{-}ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, pox!
Give her the hair"--he spoke, and rapp'd his box.
"It grieves me much," replied the peer again,
"Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain.
But by this lock, this sacred lock I swear,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair;
Which never more its honours shall renew,
Clipp'd from the lovely head where late it grew)
That while my nostrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear."
He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.
But Umbriel, hateful gnome! forbears not so;
He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow.
Then see! the nymph in beauteous grief appears,
Her eyes half-languishing, half-drown'd in tears;
On her heav'd bosom hung her drooping head,
Which, with a sigh, she rais'd; and thus she said:
"For ever curs'd be this detested day,
Which snatch'd my best, my fav'rite curl away!
Happy! ah ten times happy, had I been,
If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen!
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,
By love of courts to num'rous ills betray'd.
237
Oh had I rather unadmir'd remain'd
In some lone isle, or distant northern land;
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea!
There kept my charms conceal'd from mortal eye,
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.
What mov'd my mind with youthful lords to roam?
Oh had I stay'd, and said my pray'rs at home!
'Twas this, the morning omens seem'd to tell,
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;
The tott'ring china shook without a wind,
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!
A Sylph too warn'd me of the threats of fate,
In mystic visions, now believ'd too late!
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares:
These, in two sable ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck.
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal shears demands
And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands.
Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
639:By what arrangements all things come to pass
Through the blue regions of the mighty world,-
How we can know what energy and cause
Started the various courses of the sun
And the moon's goings, and by what far means
They can succumb, the while with thwarted light,
And veil with shade the unsuspecting lands,
When, as it were, they blink, and then again
With open eye survey all regions wide,
Resplendent with white radiance- I do now
Return unto the world's primeval age
And tell what first the soft young fields of earth
With earliest parturition had decreed
To raise in air unto the shores of light
And to entrust unto the wayward winds.
In the beginning, earth gave forth, around
The hills and over all the length of plains,
The race of grasses and the shining green;
The flowery meadows sparkled all aglow
With greening colour, and thereafter, lo,
Unto the divers kinds of trees was given
An emulous impulse mightily to shoot,
With a free rein, aloft into the air.
As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot
The first on members of the four-foot breeds
And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged,
Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth
Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat
The mortal generations, there upsprung-
Innumerable in modes innumerable-
After diverging fashions. For from sky
These breathing-creatures never can have dropped,
Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up
Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains,
How merited is that adopted name
Of earth- "The Mother!"- since from out the earth
Are all begotten. And even now arise
From out the loams how many living things-
Concreted by the rains and heat of the sun.
Wherefore 'tis less a marvel, if they sprang
In Long Ago more many, and more big,
Matured of those days in the fresh young years
Of earth and ether. First of all, the race
Of the winged ones and parti-coloured birds,
Hatched out in spring-time, left their eggs behind;
As now-a-days in summer tree-crickets
Do leave their shiny husks of own accord,
Seeking their food and living. Then it was
This earth of thine first gave unto the day
The mortal generations; for prevailed
Among the fields abounding hot and wet.
And hence, where any fitting spot was given,
There 'gan to grow womb-cavities, by roots
Affixed to earth. And when in ripened time
The age of the young within (that sought the air
And fled earth's damps) had burst these wombs, O then
Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth
And make her spurt from open veins a juice
Like unto milk; even as a woman now
Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk,
Because all that swift stream of aliment
Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.
There earth would furnish to the children food;
Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed
Abounding in soft down. Earth's newness then
Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold,
Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers-
For all things grow and gather strength through time
In like proportions; and then earth was young.
Wherefore, again, again, how merited
Is that adopted name of Earth- The Mother!-
Since she herself begat the human race,
And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth
Each breast that ranges raving round about
Upon the mighty mountains and all birds
Aerial with many a varied shape.
But, lo, because her bearing years must end,
She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld.
For lapsing aeons change the nature of
The whole wide world, and all things needs must take
One status after other, nor aught persists
Forever like itself. All things depart;
Nature she changeth all, compelleth all
To transformation. Lo, this moulders down,
A-slack with weary eld, and that, again,
Prospers in glory, issuing from contempt.
In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change
The nature of the whole wide world, and earth
Taketh one status after other. And what
She bore of old, she now can bear no longer,
And what she never bore, she can to-day.
In those days also the telluric world
Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung
With their astounding visages and limbs-
The Man-woman- a thing betwixt the twain,
Yet neither, and from either sex remote-
Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet,
Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too
Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye,
Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms
Cleaving unto the body fore and aft,
Thuswise, that never could they do or go,
Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.
And other prodigies and monsters earth
Was then begetting of this sort- in vain,
Since Nature banned with horror their increase,
And powerless were they to reach unto
The coveted flower of fair maturity,
Or to find aliment, or to intertwine
In works of Venus. For we see there must
Concur in life conditions manifold,
If life is ever by begetting life
To forge the generations one by one:
First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby
The seeds of impregnation in the frame
May ooze, released from the members all;
Last, the possession of those instruments
Whereby the male with female can unite,
The one with other in mutual ravishments.
And in the ages after monsters died,
Perforce there perished many a stock, unable
By propagation to forge a progeny.
For whatsoever creatures thou beholdest
Breathing the breath of life, the same have been
Even from their earliest age preserved alive
By cunning, or by valour, or at least
By speed of foot or wing. And many a stock
Remaineth yet, because of use to man,
And so committed to man's guardianship.
Valour hath saved alive fierce lion-breeds
And many another terrorizing race,
Cunning the foxes, flight the antlered stags.
Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast,
However, and every kind begot from seed
Of beasts of draft, as, too, the woolly flocks
And horned cattle, all, my Memmius,
Have been committed to guardianship of men.
For anxiously they fled the savage beasts,
And peace they sought and their abundant foods,
Obtained with never labours of their own,
Which we secure to them as fit rewards
For their good service. But those beasts to whom
Nature has granted naught of these same things-
Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive
And vain for any service unto us
In thanks for which we should permit their kind
To feed and be in our protection safe-
Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed,
Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom,
As prey and booty for the rest, until
Nature reduced that stock to utter death.
But Centaurs ne'er have been, nor can there be
Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,
Compact of members alien in kind,
Yet formed with equal function, equal force
In every bodily part- a fact thou mayst,
However dull thy wits, well learn from this:
The horse, when his three years have rolled away,
Flowers in his prime of vigour; but the boy
Not so, for oft even then he gropes in sleep
After the milky nipples of the breasts,
An infant still. And later, when at last
The lusty powers of horses and stout limbs,
Now weak through lapsing life, do fail with age,
Lo, only then doth youth with flowering years
Begin for boys, and clothe their ruddy cheeks
With the soft down. So never deem, percase,
That from a man and from the seed of horse,
The beast of draft, can Centaurs be composed
Or e'er exist alive, nor Scyllas be-
The half-fish bodies girdled with mad dogs-
Nor others of this sort, in whom we mark
Members discordant each with each; for ne'er
At one same time they reach their flower of age
Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame,
And never burn with one same lust of love,
And never in their habits they agree,
Nor find the same foods equally delightsome-
Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats
Batten upon the hemlock which to man
Is violent poison. Once again, since flame
Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks
Of the great lions as much as other kinds
Of flesh and blood existing in the lands,
How could it be that she, Chimaera lone,
With triple body- fore, a lion she;
And aft, a dragon; and betwixt, a goat-
Might at the mouth from out the body belch
Infuriate flame? Wherefore, the man who feigns
Such beings could have been engendered
When earth was new and the young sky was fresh
(Basing his empty argument on new)
May babble with like reason many whims
Into our ears: he'll say, perhaps, that then
Rivers of gold through every landscape flowed,
That trees were wont with precious stones to flower,
Or that in those far aeons man was born
With such gigantic length and lift of limbs
As to be able, based upon his feet,
Deep oceans to bestride; or with his hands
To whirl the firmament around his head.
For though in earth were many seeds of things
In the old time when this telluric world
First poured the breeds of animals abroad,
Still that is nothing of a sign that then
Such hybrid creatures could have been begot
And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous
Have been together knit; because, indeed,
The divers kinds of grasses and the grains
And the delightsome trees- which even now
Spring up abounding from within the earth-
Can still ne'er be begotten with their stems
Begrafted into one; but each sole thing
Proceeds according to its proper wont
And all conserve their own distinctions based
In Nature's fixed decree.
author class:Lucretius
~ to what remains!- Since I've resolved, Origins Of Vegetable And Animal Life
,#NFDB
640:The Duellist - Book Ii
Deep in the bosom of a wood,
Out of the road, a Temple stood:
Ancient, and much the worse for wear,
It call'd aloud for quick repair,
And, tottering from side to side,
Menaced destruction far and wide;
Nor able seem'd, unless made stronger,
To hold out four or five years longer.
Four hundred pillars, from the ground
Rising in order, most unsound,
Some rotten to the heart, aloof
Seem'd to support the tottering roof,
But, to inspection nearer laid,
Instead of giving, wanted aid.
The structure, rare and curious, made
By men most famous in their trade,
A work of years, admired by all,
Was suffer'd into dust to fall;
Or, just to make it hang together,
And keep off the effects of weather,
Was patch'd and patch'd from time to time
By wretches, whom it were a crime,
A crime, which Art would treason hold
To mention with those names of old.
Builders, who had the pile survey'd,
And those not Flitcrofts in their trade,
Doubted (the wise hand in a doubt
Merely, sometimes, to hand her out)
Whether (like churches in a brief,
Taught wisely to obtain relief
Through Chancery, who gives her fees
To this and other charities)
It must not, in all parts unsound,
Be ripp'd, and pull'd down to the ground;
Whether (though after ages ne'er
Shall raise a building to compare)
Art, if they should their art employ,
Meant to preserve, might not destroy;
As human bodies, worn away,
145
Batter'd and hasting to decay,
Bidding the power of Art despair,
Cannot those very medicines bear,
Which, and which only, can restore,
And make them healthy as before.
To Liberty, whose gracious smile
Shed peace and plenty o'er the isle,
Our grateful ancestors, her plain
But faithful children, raised this fane.
Full in the front, stretch'd out in length,
Where Nature put forth all her strength
In spring eternal, lay a plain
Where our brave fathers used to train
Their sons to arms, to teach the art
Of war, and steel the infant heart.
Labour, their hardy nurse, when young,
Their joints had knit, their nerves had strung;
Abstinence, foe declared to Death,
Had, from the time they first drew breath,
The best of doctors, with plain food,
Kept pure the channel of their blood;
Health in their cheeks bade colour rise,
And Glory sparkled in their eyes.
The instruments of husbandry,
As in contempt, were all thrown by,
And, flattering a manly pride,
War's keener tools their place supplied.
Their arrows to the head they drew;
Swift to the points their javelins flew;
They grasp'd the sword, they shook the spear;
Their fathers felt a pleasing fear;
And even Courage, standing by,
Scarcely beheld with steady eye.
Each stripling, lesson'd by his sire,
Knew when to close, when to retire,
When near at hand, when from afar
To fight, and was himself a war.
Their wives, their mothers, all around,
Careless of order, on the ground
Breathed forth to Heaven the pious vow,
And for a son's or husband's brow,
With eager fingers, laurel wove;
146
Laurel, which in the sacred grove,
Planted by Liberty, they find,
The brows of conquerors to bind,
To give them pride and spirit, fit
To make a world in arms submit.
What raptures did the bosom fire
Of the young, rugged, peasant sire,
When, from the toil of mimic fight,
Returning with return of night,
He saw his babe resign the breast,
And, smiling, stroke those arms in jest,
With which hereafter he shall make
The proudest heart in Gallia quake!
Gods! with what joy, what honest pride,
Did each fond, wishing rustic bride
Behold her manly swain return!
How did her love-sick bosom burn,
Though on parades he was not bred,
Nor wore the livery of red,
When, Pleasure heightening all her charms,
She strain'd her warrior in her arms,
And begg'd, whilst love and glory fire,
A son, a son just like his sire!
Such were the men in former times,
Ere luxury had made our crimes
Our bitter punishment, who bore
Their terrors to a foreign shore:
Such were the men, who, free from dread,
By Edwards and by Henries led,
Spread, like a torrent swell'd with rains,
O'er haughty Gallia's trembling plains:
Such were the men, when lust of power,
To work him woe, in evil hour
Debauch'd the tyrant from those ways
On which a king should found his praise;
When stern Oppression, hand in hand
With Pride, stalk'd proudly through the land;
When weeping Justice was misled
From her fair course, and Mercy dead:
Such were the men, in virtue strong,
Who dared not see their country's wrong,
Who left the mattock and the spade,
147
And, in the robes of War array'd,
In their rough arms, departing, took
Their helpless babes, and with a look
Stern and determined, swore to see
Those babes no more, or see them free:
Such were the men whom tyrant Pride
Could never fasten to his side
By threats or bribes; who, freemen born,
Chains, though of gold, beheld with scorn;
Who, free from every servile awe,
Could never be divorced from Law,
From that broad general law, which Sense
Made for the general defence;
Could never yield to partial ties
Which from dependant stations rise;
Could never be to slavery led,
For Property was at their head:
Such were the men, in days of yore,
Who, call'd by Liberty, before
Her temple on the sacred green,
In martial pastimes oft were seen-Now seen no longer--in their stead,
To laziness and vermin bred,
A race who, strangers to the cause
Of Freedom, live by other laws,
On other motives fight, a prey
To interest, and slaves for pay.
Valour--how glorious, on a plan
Of honour founded!--leads their van;
Discretion, free from taint of fear,
Cool, but resolved, brings up their rear-Discretion, Valour's better half;
Dependence holds the general's staff.
In plain and home-spun garb array'd,
Not for vain show, but service made,
In a green flourishing old age,
Not damn'd yet with an equipage,
In rules of Porterage untaught,
Simplicity, not worth a groat,
For years had kept the Temple-door;
Full on his breast a glass he wore,
Through which his bosom open lay
148
To every one who pass'd that way:
Now turn'd adrift, with humbler face,
But prouder heart, his vacant place
Corruption fills, and bears the key;
No entrance now without a fee.
With belly round, and full fat face,
Which on the house reflected grace,
Full of good fare, and honest glee,
The steward Hospitality,
Old Welcome smiling by his side,
A good old servant, often tried,
And faithful found, who kept in view
His lady's fame and interest too,
Who made each heart with joy rebound,
Yet never ran her state aground,
Was turn'd off, or (which word I find
Is more in modern use) resign'd.
Half-starved, half-starving others, bred
In beggary, with carrion fed,
Detested, and detesting all,
Made up of avarice and gall,
Boasting great thrift, yet wasting more
Than ever steward did before,
Succeeded one, who, to engage
The praise of an exhausted age,
Assumed a name of high degree,
And call'd himself Economy.
Within the Temple, full in sight,
Where, without ceasing, day and night
The workmen toiled; where Labour bared
His brawny arm; where Art prepared,
In regular and even rows,
Her types, a printing-press arose;
Each workman knew his task, and each
Was honest and expert as Leach.
Hence Learning struck a deeper root,
And Science brought forth riper fruit;
Hence Loyalty received support,
Even when banish'd from the court;
Hence Government gain'd strength, and hence
Religion sought and found defence;
Hence England's fairest fame arose,
149
And Liberty subdued her foes.
On a low, simple, turf-made throne,
Raised by Allegiance, scarcely known
From her attendants, glad to be
Pattern of that equality
She wish'd to all, so far as could
Safely consist with social good,
The goddess sat; around her head
A cheerful radiance Glory spread:
Courage, a youth of royal race,
Lovelily stern, possess'd a place
On her left hand, and on her right
Sat Honour, clothed with robes of light;
Before her Magna Charta lay,
Which some great lawyer, of his day
The Pratt, was officed to explain,
And make the basis of her reign:
Peace, crown'd with olive, to her breast
Two smiling twin-born infants press'd;
At her feet, couching, War was laid,
And with a brindled lion play'd:
Justice and Mercy, hand in hand,
Joint guardians of the happy land,
Together held their mighty charge,
And Truth walk'd all about at large;
Health for the royal troop the feast
Prepared, and Virtue was high-priest.
Such was the fame our Goddess bore
Her Temple such, in days of yore.
What changes ruthless Time presents!
Behold her ruin'd battlements,
Her walls decay'd, her nodding spires,
Her altars broke, her dying fires,
Her name despised, her priests destroy'd,
Her friends disgraced, her foes employ'd,
Herself (by ministerial arts
Deprived e'en of the people's hearts,
Whilst they, to work her surer woe,
Feign her to Monarchy a foe)
Exiled by grief, self-doom'd to dwell
With some poor hermit in a cell;
Or, that retirement tedious grown,
150
If she walks forth, she walks unknown,
Hooted, and pointed at with scorn,
As one in some strange country born.
Behold a rude and ruffian race,
A band of spoilers, seize her place;
With looks which might the heart disseat,
And make life sound a quick retreat!
To rapine from the cradle bred,
A staunch old blood-hound at their head,
Who, free from virtue and from awe,
Knew none but the bad part of law,
They roved at large; each on his breast
Mark'd with a greyhound stood confess'd:
Controlment waited on their nod,
High-wielding Persecution's rod;
Confusion follow'd at their heels,
And a cast statesman held the seals;
Those seals, for which he dear shall pay,
When awful Justice takes her day.
The printers saw--they saw and fled-Science, declining, hung her head.
Property in despair appear'd,
And for herself destruction fear'd;
Whilst underfoot the rude slaves trod
The works of men, and word of God;
Whilst, close behind, on many a book,
In which he never deigns to look,
Which he did not, nay, could not read,
A bold, bad man (by power decreed
For that bad end, who in the dark
Scorn'd to do mischief) set his mark
In the full day, the mark of Hell,
And on the Gospel stamp'd an L.
Liberty fled, her friends withdrew-Her friends, a faithful, chosen few;
Honour in grief threw up; and Shame,
Clothing herself with Honour's name,
Usurp'd his station; on the throne
Which Liberty once call'd her own,
(Gods! that such mighty ills should spring
Under so great, so good a king,
So loved, so loving, through the arts
151
Of statesmen, cursed with wicked hearts!)
For every darker purpose fit,
Behold in triumph State-craft sit!
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
641:Charades
I.
She stood at Greenwich, motionless amid
The ever-shifting crowd of passengers.
I marked a big tear quivering on the lid
Of her deep-lustrous eye, and knew that hers
Were days of bitterness. But, 'Oh! what stirs'
I said 'such storm within so fair a breast?'
Even as I spoke, two apoplectic curs
Came feebly up: with one wild cry she prest
Each singly to her heart, and faltered, 'Heaven be blest!'
Yet once again I saw her, from the deck
Of a black ship that steamed towards Blackwall.
She walked upon MY FIRST. Her stately neck
Bent o'er an object shrouded in her shawl:
I could not see the tears--the glad tears--fall,
Yet knew they fell. And 'Ah,' I said, 'not puppies,
Seen unexpectedly, could lift the pall
From hearts who KNOW what tasting misery's cup is,
As Niobe's, or mine, or Mr. William Guppy's.'
***
Spake John Grogblossom the coachman to Eliza Spinks the cook:
'Mrs. Spinks,' says he, 'I've foundered: 'Liza dear, I'm overtook.
Druv into a corner reglar, puzzled as a babe unborn;
Speak the word, my blessed 'Liza; speak, and John the coachman's yourn.'
Then Eliza Spinks made answer, blushing, to the coachman John:
'John, I'm born and bred a spinster: I've begun and I'll go on.
Endless cares and endless worrits, well I knows it, has a wife:
Cooking for a genteel family, John, it's a goluptious life!
'I gets 20 pounds per annum--tea and things o' course not reckoned, There's a cat that eats the butter, takes the coals, and breaks MY
SECOND:
There's soci'ty--James the footman;--(not that I look after him;
But he's aff'ble in his manners, with amazing length of limb -
'Never durst the missis enter here until I've said 'Come in':
If I saw the master peeping, I'd catch up the rolling-pin.
Christmas-boxes, that's a something; perkisites, that's something too;
And I think, take all together, John, I won't be on with you.'
John the coachman took his hat up, for he thought he'd had enough;
Rubbed an elongated forehead with a meditative cuff;
Paused before the stable doorway; said, when there, in accents mild,
'She's a fine young 'oman, cook is; but that's where it is, she's
spiled.'
***
I have read in some not marvellous tale,
(Or if I have not, I've dreamed)
Of one who filled up the convivial cup
Till the company round him seemed
To be vanished and gone, tho' the lamps upon
Their face as aforetime gleamed:
And his head sunk down, and a Lethe crept
O'er his powerful brain, and the young man slept.
Then they laid him with care in his moonlit bed:
But first--having thoughtfully fetched some tar Adorned him with feathers, aware that the weather's
Uncertainty brings on at nights catarrh.
They staid in his room till the sun was high:
But still did the feathered one give no sign
Of opening a peeper--he might be a sleeper
Such as rests on the Northern or Midland line.
At last he woke, and with profound
Bewilderment he gazed around;
Dropped one, then both feet to the ground,
But never spake a word:
Then to my WHOLE he made his way;
Took one long lingering survey;
And softly, as he stole away,
10
Remarked, 'By Jove, a bird!'
II.
If you've seen a short man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch,
Sing out 'Heave aho! my hearties,' and perpetually hitch
Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace,
Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his pleased companion's face;
If he preluded with hornpipes each successive thing he did,
From a sun-browned cheek extracting still an ostentatious quid;
And expectorated freely, and occasionally cursed:Then have you beheld, depicted by a master's hand, MY FIRST.
O my countryman! if ever from thy arm the bolster sped,
In thy school-days, with precision at a young companion's head;
If 'twas thine to lodge the marble in the centre of the ring,
Or with well-directed pebble make the sitting hen take wing:
Then do thou--each fair May morning, when the blue lake is as glass,
And the gossamers are twinkling star-like in the beaded grass;
When the mountain-bee is sipping fragrance from the bluebell's lip,
And the bathing-woman tells you, Now's your time to take a dip:
When along the misty valleys fieldward winds the lowing herd,
And the early worm is being dropped on by the early bird;
And Aurora hangs her jewels from the bending rose's cup,
And the myriad voice of Nature calls thee to MY SECOND up:Hie thee to the breezy common, where the melancholy goose
Stalks, and the astonished donkey finds that he is really loose;
There amid green fern and furze-bush shalt thou soon MY WHOLE behold,
Rising 'bull-eyed and majestic'--as Olympus queen of old:
Kneel,--at a respectful distance,--as they kneeled to her, and try
With judicious hand to put a ball into that ball-less eye:
Till a stiffness seize thy elbows, and the general public wake Then return, and, clear of conscience, walk into thy well-earned steak.
11
III.
Ere yet 'knowledge for the million'
Came out 'neatly bound in boards;'
When like Care upon a pillion
Matrons rode behind their lords:
Rarely, save to hear the Rector,
Forth did younger ladies roam;
Making pies, and brewing nectar
From the gooseberry-trees at home.
They'd not dreamed of Pan or Vevay;
Ne'er should into blossom burst
At the ball or at the levee;
Never come, in fact, MY FIRST:
Nor illumine cards by dozens
With some labyrinthine text,
Nor work smoking-caps for cousins
Who were pounding at MY NEXT.
Now have skirts, and minds, grown ampler;
Now not all they seek to do
Is create upon a sampler
Beasts which Buffon never knew:
But their venturous muslins rustle
O'er the cragstone and the snow,
Or at home their biceps muscle
Grows by practising the bow.
Worthier they those dames who, fable
Says, rode 'palfreys' to the war
With gigantic Thanes, whose 'sable
Destriers caracoled' before;
Smiled, as--springing from the war-horse
As men spring in modern 'cirques' They plunged, ponderous as a four-horse
Coach, among the vanished Turks:In the good times when the jester
Asked the monarch how he was,
And the landlady addrest her
12
Guests as 'gossip' or as 'coz';
When the Templar said, 'Gramercy,'
Or, ''Twas shrewdly thrust, i' fegs,'
To Sir Halbert or Sir Percy
As they knocked him off his legs:
And, by way of mild reminders
That he needed coin, the Knight
Day by day extracted grinders
From the howling Israelite:
And MY WHOLE in merry Sherwood
Sent, with preterhuman luck,
Missiles--not of steel but firwood Thro' the two-mile-distant buck.
IV.
Evening threw soberer hue
Over the blue sky, and the few
Poplars that grew just in the view
Of the hall of Sir Hugo de Wynkle:
'Answer me true,' pleaded Sir Hugh,
(Striving to woo no matter who,)
'What shall I do, Lady, for you?
'Twill be done, ere your eye may twinkle.
Shall I borrow the wand of a Moorish enchanter,
And bid a decanter contain the Levant, or
The brass from the face of a Mormonite ranter?
Shall I go for the mule of the Spanish Infantar (That _R_, for the sake of the line, we must grant her,) And race with the foul fiend, and beat in a canter,
Like that first of equestrians Tam o' Shanter?
I talk not mere banter--say not that I can't, or
By this MY FIRST--(a Virginia planter
Sold it me to kill rats)--I will die instanter.'
The Lady bended her ivory neck, and
Whispered mournfully, 'Go for--MY SECOND.'
She said, and the red from Sir Hugh's cheek fled,
And 'Nay,' did he say, as he stalked away
The fiercest of injured men:
13
'Twice have I humbled my haughty soul,
And on bended knee I have pressed MY WHOLE But I never will press it again!'
V.
On pinnacled St. Mary's
Lingers the setting sun;
Into the street the blackguards
Are skulking one by one:
Butcher and Boots and Bargeman
Lay pipe and pewter down;
And with wild shout come tumbling out
To join the Town and Gown.
And now the undergraduates
Come forth by twos and threes,
From the broad tower of Trinity,
From the green gate of Caius:
The wily bargeman marks them,
And swears to do his worst;
To turn to impotence their strength,
And their beauty to MY FIRST.
But before Corpus gateway
MY SECOND first arose,
When Barnacles the freshman
Was pinned upon the nose:
Pinned on the nose by Boxer,
Who brought a hobnailed herd
From Barnwell, where he kept a van,
Being indeed a dogsmeat man,
Vendor of terriers, blue or tan,
And dealer in MY THIRD.
'Twere long to tell how Boxer
Was 'countered' on the cheek,
And knocked into the middle
Of the ensuing week:
How Barnacles the Freshman
14
Was asked his name and college;
And how he did the fatal facts
Reluctantly acknowledge.
He called upon the Proctor
Next day at half-past ten;
Men whispered that the Freshman cut
A different figure then:That the brass forsook his forehead,
The iron fled his soul,
As with blanched lip and visage wan
Before the stony-hearted Don
He kneeled upon MY WHOLE.
VI.
Sikes, housebreaker, of Houndsditch,
Habitually swore;
But so surpassingly profane
He never was before,
As on a night in winter,
When--softly as he stole
In the dim light from stair to stair,
Noiseless as boys who in her lair
Seek to surprise a fat old hare He barked his shinbone, unaware
Encountering MY WHOLE.
As pours the Anio plainward,
When rains have swollen the dykes,
So, with such noise, poured down MY FIRST,
Stirred by the shins of Sikes.
The Butler Bibulus heard it;
And straightway ceased to snore,
And sat up, like an egg on end,
While men might count a score:
Then spake he to Tigerius,
A Buttons bold was he:
'Buttons, I think there's thieves about;
Just strike a light and tumble out;
15
If you can't find one, go without,
And see what you may see.'
But now was all the household,
Almost, upon its legs,
Each treading carefully about
As if they trod on eggs.
With robe far-streaming issued
Paterfamilias forth;
And close behind him,--stout and true
And tender as the North, Came Mrs. P., supporting
On her broad arm her fourth.
Betsy the nurse, who never
From largest beetle ran,
And--conscious p'raps of pleasing caps The housemaids, formed the van:
And Bibulus the Butler,
His calm brows slightly arched;
(No mortal wight had ere that night
Seen him with shirt unstarched
And Bob, the shockhaired knifeboy,
Wielding two Sheffield blades,
And James Plush of the sinewy legs,
The love of lady's maids:
And charwoman and chaplain
Stood mingled in a mass,
And 'Things,' thought he of Houndsditch,
'Is come to a pretty pass.'
Beyond all things a Baby
Is to the schoolgirl dear;
Next to herself the nursemaid loves
Her dashing grenadier;
Only with life the sailor
Parts from the British flag;
While one hope lingers, the cracksman's fingers
Drop not his hard-earned 'swag.'
But, as hares do MY SECOND
Thro' green Calabria's copses,
16
As females vanish at the sight
Of short-horns and of wopses;
So, dropping forks and teaspoons,
The pride of Houndsditch fled,
Dumbfoundered by the hue and cry
He'd raised up overhead.
***
They gave him--did the Judges As much as was his due.
And, Saxon, should'st thou e'er be led
To deem this tale untrue;
Then--any night in winter,
When the cold north wind blows,
And bairns are told to keep out cold
By tallowing the nose:
When round the fire the elders
Are gathered in a bunch,
And the girls are doing crochet,
And the boys are reading Punch:Go thou and look in Leech's book;
There haply shalt thou spy
A stout man on a staircase stand,
With aspect anything but bland,
And rub his right shin with his hand,
To witness if I lie.
~ Charles Stuart Calverley,#NFDB
642:The Spooniad
[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The
Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to
complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by
William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of
December 18th, 1914.]
Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
Of freedom for Spoon River, and the fall
Of Rhodes' bank that brought unnumbered woes
And loss to many, with engendered hate
That flamed into the torch in Anarch hands
To burn the court-house, on whose blackened wreck
A fairer temple rose and Progress stood -Sing, muse, that lit the Chian's face with smiles,
Who saw the ant-like Greeks and Trojans crawl
About Scamander, over walls, pursued
Or else pursuing, and the funeral pyres
And sacred hecatombs, and first because
Of Helen who with Paris fled to Troy
As soul-mate; and the wrath of Peleus' son,
Decreed to lose Chryseis, lovely spoil
Of war, and dearest concubine.
Say first,
Thou son of night, called Momus, from whose eyes
No secret hides, and Thalia, smiling one,
What bred 'twixt Thomas Rhodes and John Cabanis
The deadly strife? His daughter Flossie, she,
Returning from her wandering with a troop
Of strolling players, walked the village streets,
Her bracelets tinkling and with sparkling rings
And words of serpent wisdom and a smile
Of cunning in her eyes. Then Thomas Rhodes,
Who ruled the church and ruled the bank as well,
Made known his disapproval of the maid;
And all Spoon River whispered and the eyes
Of all the church frowned on her, till she knew
285
They feared her and condemned.
But them to flout
She gave a dance to viols and to flutes,
Brought from Peoria, and many youths,
But lately made regenerate through the prayers
Of zealous preachers and of earnest souls,
Danced merrily, and sought her in the dance,
Who wore a dress so low of neck that eyes
Down straying might survey the snowy swale
Till it was lost in whiteness.
With the dance
The village changed to merriment from gloom.
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, could not fill
Her orders for new hats, and every seamstress
Plied busy needles making gowns; old trunks
And chests were opened for their store of laces
And rings and trinkets were brought out of hiding
And all the youths fastidious grew of dress;
Notes passed, and many a fair one's door at eve
Knew a bouquet, and strolling lovers thronged
About the hills that overlooked the river.
Then, since the mercy seats more empty showed,
One of God's chosen lifted up his voice:
"The woman of Babylon is among us; rise,
Ye sons of light, and drive the wanton forth!"
So John Cabanis left the church and left
The hosts of law and order with his eyes
By anger cleared, and him the liberal cause
Acclaimed as nominee to the mayoralty
To vanquish A. D. Blood.
But as the war
Waged bitterly for votes and rumors flew
About the bank, and of the heavy loans
Which Rhodes' son had made to prop his loss
In wheat, and many drew their coin and left
The bank of Rhodes more hollow, with the talk
Among the liberals of another bank
Soon to be chartered, lo, the bubble burst
'Mid cries and curses; but the liberals laughed
And in the hall of Nicholas Bindle held
Wise converse and inspiriting debate.
High on a stage that overlooked the chairs
286
Where dozens sat, and where a pop-eyed daub
Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man
Of Christian Dallmann, brow and pointed beard,
Upon a drab proscenium outward stared,
Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence,
By merit raised in ribaldry and guile,
And to the assembled rebels thus he spake:
"Whether to lie supine and let a clique
Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms,
Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain
Our little hoards for hazards on the price
Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath
The shadow of a spire upreared to curb
A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank
Coadjutor in greed, that is the question.
Shall we have music and the jocund dance,
Or tolling bells? Or shall young romance roam
These hills about the river, flowering now
To April's tears, or shall they sit at home,
Or play croquet where Thomas Rhodes may see,
I ask you? If the blood of youth runs o'er
And riots 'gainst this regimen of gloom,
Shall we submit to have these youths and maids
Branded as libertines and wantons?"
Ere
His words were done a woman's voice called "No!"
Then rose a sound of moving chairs, as when
The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs;
And every head was turned, as when a flock
Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread
Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall
With riotous laughter, for with battered hat
Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist
Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood.
Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall
Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights,
Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard.
Then 'mid applause she hastened toward the stage
And flung both gold and silver to the cause
And swiftly left the hall.
Meantime upstood
287
A giant figure, bearded like the son
Of Alcmene, deep-chested, round of paunch,
And spoke in thunder: "Over there behold
A man who for the truth withstood his wife -Such is our spirit -- when that A. D. Blood
Compelled me to remove Dom Pedro --"
Quick
Before Jim Brown could finish, Jefferson Howard
Obtained the floor and spake: "Ill suits the time
For clownish words, and trivial is our cause
If naught's at stake but John Cabanis' wrath,
He who was erstwhile of the other side
And came to us for vengeance. More's at stake
Than triumph for New England or Virginia.
And whether rum be sold, or for two years
As in the past two years, this town be dry
Matters but little -- Oh yes, revenue
For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!
I wish to God this fight were now inspired
By other passion than to salve the pride
Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why
Can never contests of great moment spring
From worthy things, not little? Still, if men
Must always act so, and if rum must be
The symbol and the medium to release
From life's denial and from slavery,
Then give me rum!"
Exultant cries arose.
Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear
And vacillation and begun to speak,
The door creaked and the idiot, Willie Metcalf,
Breathless and hatless, whiter than a sheet,
Entered and cried: "The marshal's on his way
To arrest you all. And if you only knew
Who's coming here to-morrow; I was listening
Beneath the window where the other side
Are making plans."
So to a smaller room
To hear the idiot's secret some withdrew
Selected by the Chair; the Chair himself
And Jefferson Howard, Benjamin Pantier,
And Wendell Bloyd, George Trimble, Adam Weirauch,
288
Imanuel Ehrenhardt, Seth Compton, Godwin James
And Enoch Dunlap, Hiram Scates, Roy Butler,
Carl Hamblin, Roger Heston, Ernest Hyde
And Penniwit, the artist, Kinsey Keene,
And E. C. Culbertson and Franklin Jones,
Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier
By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note,
And secretly conferred.
But in the hall
Disorder reigned and when the marshal came
And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out
And locked them up.
Meanwhile within a room
Back in the basement of the church, with Blood
Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first,
Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins
And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes
And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard,
A traitor to the liberals, who with lip
Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer:
"Such strife about an insult to a woman -A girl of eighteen" -- Christian Dallman too,
And others unrecorded. Some there were
Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule
Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom
And lust of life it symbolized.
Now morn with snowy fingers up the sky
Flung like an orange at a festival
The ruddy sun, when from their hasty beds
Poured forth the hostile forces, and the streets
Resounded to the rattle of the wheels
That drove this way and that to gather in
The tardy voters, and the cries of chieftains
Who manned the battle. But at ten o'clock
The liberals bellowed fraud, and at the polls
The rival candidates growled and came to blows.
Then proved the idiot's tale of yester-eve
A word of warning. Suddenly on the streets
Walked hog-eyed Allen, terror of the hills
That looked on Bernadotte ten miles removed.
No man of this degenerate day could lift
The boulders which he threw, and when he spoke
289
The windows rattled, and beneath his brows,
Thatched like a shed with bristling hair of black,
His small eyes glistened like a maddened boar.
And as he walked the boards creaked, as he walked
A song of menace rumbled. Thus he came,
The champion of A. D. Blood, commissioned
To terrify the liberals. Many fled
As when a hawk soars o'er the chicken yard.
He passed the polls and with a playful hand
Touched Brown, the giant, and he fell against,
As though he were a child, the wall; so strong
Was hog-eyed Allen. But the liberals smiled.
For soon as hog-eyed Allen reached the walk,
Close on his steps paced Bengal Mike, brought in
By Kinsey Keene, the subtle-witted one,
To match the hog-eyed Allen. He was scarce
Three-fourths the other's bulk, but steel his arms,
And with a tiger's heart. Two men he killed
And many wounded in the days before,
And no one feared.
But when the hog-eyed one
Saw Bengal Mike his countenance grew dark,
The bristles o'er his red eyes twitched with rage,
The song he rumbled lowered. Round and round
The court-house paced he, followed stealthily
By Bengal Mike, who jeered him every step:
"Come, elephant, and fight! Come, hog-eyed coward!
Come, face about and fight me, lumbering sneak!
Come, beefy bully, hit me, if you can!
Take out your gun, you duffer, give me reason
To draw and kill you. Take your billy out;
I'll crack your boar's head with a piece of brick!"
But never a word the hog-eyed one returned
But trod about the court-house, followed both
By troops of boys and watched by all the men.
All day, they walked the square. But when Apollo
Stood with reluctant look above the hills
As fain to see the end, and all the votes
Were cast, and closed the polls, before the door
Of Trainor's drug store Bengal Mike, in tones
That echoed through the village, bawled the taunt:
290
"Who was your mother, hog-eyed?" In a trice,
As when a wild boar turns upon the hound
That through the brakes upon an August day
Has gashed him with its teeth, the hog-eyed one
Rushed with his giant arms on Bengal Mike
And grabbed him by the throat. Then rose to heaven
The frightened cries of boys, and yells of men
Forth rushing to the street. And Bengal Mike
Moved this way and now that, drew in his head
As if his neck to shorten, and bent down
To break the death grip of the hog-eyed one;
'Twixt guttural wrath and fast-expiring strength
Striking his fists against the invulnerable chest
Of hog-eyed Allen. Then, when some came in
To part them, others stayed them, and the fight
Spread among dozens; many valiant souls
Went down from clubs and bricks.
But tell me, Muse,
What god or goddess rescued Bengal Mike?
With one last, mighty struggle did he grasp
The murderous hands and turning kick his foe.
Then, as if struck by lightning, vanished all
The strength from hog-eyed Allen, at his side
Sank limp those giant arms and o'er his face
Dread pallor and the sweat of anguish spread.
And those great knees, invincible but late,
Shook to his weight. And quickly as the lion
Leaps on its wounded prey, did Bengal Mike
Smite with a rock the temple of his foe,
And down he sank and darkness o'er his eyes
Passed like a cloud.
As when the woodman fells
Some giant oak upon a summer's day
And all the songsters of the forest shrill,
And one great hawk that has his nestling young
Amid the topmost branches croaks, as crash
The leafy branches through the tangled boughs
Of brother oaks, so fell the hog-eyed one
Amid the lamentations of the friends
Of A. D. Blood.
Just then, four lusty men
Bore the town marshal, on whose iron face
291
The purple pall of death already lay,
To Trainor's drug store, shot by Jack McGuire.
And cries went up of "Lynch him!" and the sound
Of running feet from every side was heard
Bent on the
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB
643:All Is Vanity
How vain is Life! which rightly we compare
To flying Posts, that haste away;
To Plants, that fade with the declining Day;
To Clouds, that sail amidst the yielding Air;
Till by Extention into that they flow,
Or, scatt'ring on the World below,
Are lost and gone, ere we can say they were;
To Autumn-leaves, which every Wind can chace;
To rising Bubbles, on the Waters Face;
To fleeting Dreams, that will not stay,
Nor in th' abused Fancy dance,
When the returning Rays of Light,
Resuming their alternate Right,
Break on th' ill-order'd Scene on the fantastick Trance:
As weak is Man, whilst Tenant to the Earth;
As frail and as uncertain all his Ways,
From the first moment of his weeping Birth,
Down to the last and best of his few restless Days;
When to the Land of Darkness he retires
From disappointed Hopes, and frustrated Desires;
Reaping no other Fruit of all his Pain
Bestow'd whilst in the vale of Tears below,
But this unhappy Truth, at last to know,
That Vanity's our Lot, and all Mankind is Vain.
II
If past the hazard of his tendrest Years,
Neither in thoughtless Sleep opprest,
Nor poison'd with a tainted Breast,
Loos'd from the infant Bands and female Cares,
A studious Boy, advanc'd beyond his Age,
Wastes the dim Lamp, and turns the restless Page;
For some lov'd Book prevents the rising Day,
And on it, stoln aside, bestows the Hours of Play;
Him the observing Master do's design
For search of darkned Truths and Mysteries Divine;
37
Bids him with unremitted Labour trace
The Rise of Empires, and their various Fates,
The several Tyrants o'er the several States,
To Babel's lofty Towers, and warlike Nimrod's Race;
Bids him in Paradice the Bank survey,
Where Man, new-moulded from the temper'd Clay,
(Till fir'd with Breath Divine) a helpless Figure lay:
Could he be led thus far--What were the Boast,
What the Reward of all the Toil it cost,
What from that Land of ever-blooming Spring,
For our Instruction could he bring,
Unless, that having Humane Nature found
Unseparated from its Parent Ground,
(Howe'er we vaunt our Elevated Birth)
The Epicure in soft Array,
The lothsome Beggar, that before
His rude unhospitable Door,
Unpity'd but by Brutes, a broken Carcass lay,
Were both alike deriv'd from the same common Earth?
But ere the Child can to these Heights attain,
Ere he can in the Learned Sphere arise;
A guilding Star, attracting to the Skies,
A fever, seizing the o'er labour'd Brain,
Sends him, perhaps, to Death's concealing Shade;
Where, in the Marble Tomb now silent laid,
He better do's that useful Doctrine show,
(Which all the sad Assistants ought to know,
Who round the Grave his short continuance mourn)
That first from Dust we came, and must to Dust return.
III
A bolder Youth, grown capable of Arms,
Bellona courts with her prevailing Charms;
Bids th' inchanting Trumpet sound,
Loud as Triumph, soft as Love,
Striking now the Poles above,
Then descending from the Skies,
Soften every falling Note;
As the harmonious Lark that sings and flies,
When near the Earth, contracts her narrow Throat,
And warbles on the Ground:
38
Shews the proud Steed, impatient of the Check,
'Gainst the loudest Terrors Proof,
Pawing the Valley with his steeled Hoof,
With Lightning arm'd his Eyes, with Thunder cloth'd his Neck;
Who on the th' advanced Foe, (the Signal giv'n)
Flies, like a rushing Storm by mighty Whirlwinds driv'n;
Lays open the Records of Fame,
No glorious Deed omits, no Man of mighty Name;
Their Stratagems, their Tempers she'll repeat,
From Alexander's, (truly stil'd the GREAT)
From Cæsar's on the World's Imperial Seat,
To Turenne's Conduct, and to Conde's Heat.
'Tis done! and now th' ambitious Youth disdains
The safe, but harder Labours of the Gown,
The softer pleasures of the Courtly Town,
The once lov'd rural Sports, and Chaces on the Plains;
Does with the Soldier's Life the Garb assume,
The gold Embroid'ries, and the graceful Plume;
Walks haughty in a Coat of Scarlet Die,
A Colour well contriv'd to cheat the Eye,
Where richer Blood, alas! may undistinguisht lye.
And oh! too near that wretched Fate attends;
Hear it ye Parents, all ye weeping Friends!
Thou fonder Maid! won by these gaudy Charms,
(The destin'd Prize of his Victorious Arms)
Now fainting Dye upon the mournful Sound,
That speaks his hasty Death, and paints the fatal Wound!
Trail all your Pikes, dispirit every Drum,
March in a slow Procession from afar,
Ye silent, ye dejected Men of War!
Be still the Hautboys, and the Flute be dumb!
Display no more, in vain, the lofty Banner;
For see! where on the Bier before ye lies
The pale, the fall'n, th' untimely Sacrifice
To your mistaken Shrine, to your false Idol Honour!
IV
As Vain is Beauty, and as short her Power;
Tho' in its proud, and transitory Sway,
The coldest Hearts and wisest Heads obey
That gay fantastick Tyrant of an Hour.
39
On Beauty's Charms, (altho' a Father's Right,
Tho' grave Seleucus! to thy Royal Side
By holy Vows fair Stratonice be ty'd)
With anxious Joy, with dangerous Delight,
Too often gazes thy unwary Son,
Till past all Hopes, expiring and undone,
A speaking Pulse the secret Cause impart;
The only time, when the Physician's Art
Could ease that lab'ring Grief, or heal a Lover's Smart.
See Great Antonius now impatient stand,
Expecting, with mistaken Pride,
On Cydnus crowded Shore, on Cydnus fatal Strand,
A Queen, at his Tribunal to be try'd,
A Queen that arm'd in Beauty, shall deride
His feeble Rage, and his whole Fate command:
O'er the still Waves her burnisht Galley moves,
Row'd by the Graces, whilst officious Loves
To silken Cords their busie Hands apply,
Or gathering all the gentle Gales that fly,
To their fair Mistress with these Spoils repair,
And from their purple Wings disperse the balmy Air.
Hov'ring Perfumes ascend in od'rous Clouds,
Curl o'er the Barque, and play among the Shrouds;
Whilst gently dashing every Silver Oar,
Guided by the Rules of Art,
With tuneful Instruments design'd
To soften, and subdue the stubborn Mind,
A strangely pleasing and harmonious Part
In equal Measures bore.
Like a new Venus on her native Sea,
In midst of the transporting Scene,
(Which Pen or Pencil imitates in vain)
On a resplendent and conspicuous Bed,
With all the Pride of Persia loosely spread,
The lovely Syrene lay.
Which but discern'd from the yet distant Shore,
Th' amazed Emperor could hate no more;
No more a baffled Vengeance could pursue;
But yielding still, still as she nearer drew,
When Cleopatra anchor'd in the Bay,
Where every Charm cou'd all its Force display,
Like his own Statue stood, and gaz'd the World away.
40
Where ends alas! this Pageantry and State;
Where end the Triumphs of this conqu'ring Face,
Envy'd of Roman Wives, and all the Female Race?
Oh swift Vicissitude of Beauty's Fate!
Now in her Tomb withdrawn from publick Sight,
From near Captivity and Shame,
The vanquish'd, the abandon'd Dame
Proffers the Arm, that held another's Right,
To the destructive Snake's more just Embrace,
And courts deforming Death, to mend his Leaden Pace.
But Wit shall last (the vaunting Poet cries)
Th' immortal Streams that from Parnassus flow,
Shall make his never-fading Lawrels grow,
Above this mouldring Earth to flourish in the Skies:
'And when his Body falls in Funeral Fire,
When late revolving Ages shall consume
The very Pillars, that support his Tomb,
'His name shall live, and his best Part aspire.
Deluded Wretch! grasping at future Praise,
Now planting, with mistaken Care,
Round thy enchanted Palace in the Air,
A Grove, which in thy Fancy time shall raise,
A Grove of soaring Palms, and everlasting Bays;
Could'st Thou alas! to such Reknown arrive,
As thy Imagination wou'd contrive;
Should numerous Cities, in a vain contest,
Struggle for thy famous Birth;
Should the sole Monarch of the conquer'd Earth,
His wreathed Head upon thy Volume rest;
Like Maro, could'st thou justly claim,
Amongst th' inspired tuneful Race,
The highest Room, the undisputed Place;
And after near Two Thousand Years of Fame,
Have thy proud Work to a new People shown;
Th' unequal'd Poems made their own,
In such a Dress, in such a perfect Stile
As on his Labours Dryden now bestows,
As now from Dryden's just Improvement flows,
In every polish'd Verse throughout the British Isle;
41
What Benefit alas! would to thee grow?
What Sense of Pleasure wou'dst thou know?
What swelling Joy? what Pride? what Glory have,
When in the Darkness of the abject Grave,
Insensible, and Stupid laid below,
No Atom of thy Heap, no Dust wou'd move,
For all the airy Breath that form'd thy Praise above?
VI
True, says the Man to Luxury inclin'd;
Without the Study of uncertain Art,
Without much Labour of the Mind,
Meer uninstructed Nature will impart,
That Life too swiftly flies, and leaves all good behind.
Sieze then, my Friends, (he cries) the present Hour;
The Pleasure which to that belongs,
The Feasts, th' o'erflowing Bowls, the Mirth, the Songs,
The Orange-Bloom, that with such Sweetness blows,
Anacreon's celebrated Rose,
The Hyacinth, with every beauteous Flower,
Which just this happy Moment shall disclose,
Are out of Fortune's reach, and all within our Power.
Such costly Garments let our Slaves prepare,
As for the gay Demetrius were design'd;
Where a new Sun of radiant Diamonds shin'd,
Where the enamel'd Earth, and scarce-discerned Air,
With a transparent Sea were seen,
A Sea composed of the Em'rald's Green,
And with a golden Shore encompass'd round;
Where every Orient Shell, of wondrous shape was found.
The whole Creation on his Shoulders hung,
The whole Creation with his Wish comply'd,
Did swiftly, for each Appetite provide,
And fed them all when Young.
No less, th' Assyrian Prince enjoy'd,
Of Bliss too soon depriv'd, but never cloy'd,
Whose Counsel let us still pursue,
Whose Monument, did this Inscription shew
To every Passenger, that trod the way,
Where, with a slighting Hand, and scornful Smile
The proud Effigies, on th' instructive Pile,
42
A great Example lay.
I, here Entomb'd, did mighty Kingdoms sway,
Two Cities rais'd in one prodigious Day:
Thou wand'ring Traveller, no longer gaze,
No longer dwell upon this useless Place;
Go Feed, and Drink, in Sports consume thy Life;
For All that else we gain's not worth a Moment's Strife.
Thus! talks the Fool, whom no Restraint can bound,
When now the Glass has gone a frequent round;
When soaring Fancy lightly swims,
Fancy, that keeps above, and dances o'er the Brims;
Whilst weighty Reason sinks, and in the bottom's drown'd;
Adds to his Own, an artificial Fire,
Doubling ev'ry hot Desire,
Till th' auxiliary Spirits, in a Flame,
The Stomach's Magazine defy,
That standing Pool, that helpless Moisture nigh,
Thro' every Vital part impetuous fly,
And quite consume the Frame;
When to the Under-world despis'd he goes,
A pamper'd Carcase on the Worms bestows,
Who rioting on the unusual Chear,
As good a Life enjoy, as he could boast of here.
VII
But hold my Muse! thy farther Flight restrain,
Exhaust not thy declining Force,
Nor in a long, pursu'd, and breathless Course,
Attempt, with slacken'd speed, to run
Through ev'ry Vanity beneath the Sun,
Lest thy o'erweary'd Reader, should complain,
That of all Vanities beside,
Which thine, or his Experience e'er have try'd,
Thou art, too tedious Muse, most frivolous and vain;
Yet, tell the Man, of an aspiring Thought,
Of an ambitious, restless Mind,
That can no Ease, no Satisfaction find,
Till neighb'ring States are to Subjection brought,
Till Universal Awe, enslav'd Mankind is taught;
That, should he lead an Army to the Field,
For whose still necessary Use,
43
Th' extended Earth cou'd not enough produce,
Nor Rivers to their Thirst a full Contentment yield;
Yet, must their dark Reverse of Fate
Roll round, within that Course of Years,
Within the short, the swift, and fleeting Date
Prescrib'd by Xerxes, when his falling Tears
Bewail'd those Numbers, which his Sword employ'd,
And false, Hyena-like, lamented and destroy'd.
Tell Him, that does some stately Building raise,
A Windsor or Versailles erect,
And thorough all Posterity expect,
With its unshaken Base, a firm unshaken Praise;
Tell Him, Judea's Temple is no more,
Upon whose Splendour, Thousands heretofore
Spent the astonish'd Hours, forgetful to Adore:
Tell him, into the Earth agen is hurl'd,
That most stupendious Wonder of the World,
Justly presiding o'er the boasted Seven,
By humane Art and Industry design'd,
This! the rich Draught of the Immortal Mind,
The Architect of Heaven.
Remember then, to fix thy Aim on High,
Project, and build on t'other side the Sky,
For, after all thy vain Expence below,
Thou canst no Fame, no lasting Pleasure know;
No Good, that shall not thy Embraces fly;
Or thou from that be in a Moment caught,
Thy Spirit to new Claims, new Int'rests brought,
Whilst unconcern'd thy secret Ashes lye,
Or stray about the Globe, O Man ordain'd to Dye!
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
644:Prince Dorus
In days of yore, as Ancient Stories tell,
A King in love with a great Princess fell.
Long at her feet submiss the Monarch sigh'd,
While she with stern repulse his suit denied.
Yet was he form'd by birth to please the fair,
Dress'd, danc'd, and courted, with a Monarch's air;
But Magic Spells her frozen breast had steel'd
With stubborn pride, that knew not how to yield.
This to the King a courteous Fairy told,
And bade the Monarch in his suit be bold;
For he that would the charming Princess wed,
Had only on her cat's black tail to tread,
When straight the Spell would vanish into air,
And he enjoy for life the yielding fair.
He thank'd the Fairy for her kind advice.Thought he, 'If this be all, I'll not be nice;
Rather than in my courtship I will fail,
I will to mince-meat tread Minon's black tail.'
To the Princess's court repairing strait,
He sought the cat that must decide his fate;
But when he found her, how the creature stared!
How her back bristled, and her great eyes glared!
That tail, which he so fondly hop'd his prize,
Was swell'd by wrath to twice its usual size;
And all her cattish gestures plainly spoke,
She thought the affair he came upon, no joke.
With wary step the cautious King draws near,
And slyly means to attack her in her rear;
But when he thinks upon her tail to pounce,
Whisk-off she skips-three yards upon a bounceAgain he tries, again his efforts fail-
96
Minon's a witch-the deuce is in her tail.-
The anxious chase for weeks the Monarch tried,
Till courage fail'd, and hope within him died.
A desperate suit 'twas useless to prefer,
Or hope to catch a tail of quicksilver.When on a day, beyond his hopes, he found
Minon, his foe, asleep upon the ground;
Her ample tail hehind her lay outspread,
Full to the eye, and tempting to the tread.
The King with rapture the occasion bless'd,
And with quick foot the fatal part he press'd.
Loud squalls were heard, like howlings of a storm,
And sad he gazed on Minon's altered form,No more a cat, but chang'd into a man
Of giant size, who frown'd, and thus began:
'Rash King, that dared with impious design
To violate that tail, that once was mine;
What tho' the spell be broke, and burst the charms,
That kept the Princess from thy longing arms,Not unrevenged shalt thou my fury dare,
For by that violated tail I swear,
From your unhappy nuptials shall be born
A Prince, whose Nose shall be thy subjects' scorn.
Bless'd in his love thy son shall never be,
Till he his foul deformity shall see,
Till he with tears his blemish shall confess,
Discern its odious length, and wish it less!'
This said, he vanish'd; and the King awhile
Mused at his words, then answer'd with a smile,
'Give me a child in happy wedlock born,
And let his Nose be made like a French horn;
His knowledge of the fact I ne'er can doubt,If he have eyes, or hands, he'll find it out.'
So spake the King, self-flatter'd in his thought,
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Then with impatient step the Princess sought;
His urgent suit no longer she withstands,
But links with him in Hymen's knot her hands.
Almost as soon a widow as a bride,
Within a year the King her husband died;
And shortly after he was dead and gone
She was deliver'd of a little son,
The prettiest babe, with lips as red as rose,
And eyes like little stars-but such a noseThe tender Mother fondly took the boy
Into her arms, and would have kiss'd her joy;
His luckless nose forbade the fond embraceHe thrust the hideous feature in her face.
Then all her Maids of Honour tried in turn,
And for a Prince's kiss in envy burn;
By sad experience taught, their hopes they miss'd,
And mourn'd a Prince that never could be kiss'd.
In silent tears the Queen confess'd her grief,
Till kindest Flattery came to her relief.
Her maids, as each one takes him in her arms,
Expatiate freely o'er his world of charmsHis eyes, lips, mouth-his forehead was divineAnd for the nose-they call'd it AquilineDeclared that Cæsar, who the world subdued,
Had such a one-just of that longitudeThat Kings like him compell'd folks to adore them,
And drove the short-nos'd sons of men before themThat length of nose portended length of days,
And was a great advantage many waysTo mourn the gifts of Providence was wrongBesides, the Nose was not so very long.-
These arguments in part her grief redrest,
A mother's partial fondness did the rest;
And Time, that all things reconciles by use,
Did in her notions such a change produce,
That, as she views her babe, with favour blind,
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She thinks him handsomest of human kind.
Meantime, in spite of his disfigured face,
Dorus (for so he's call'd) grew up a pace;
In fair proportion all his features rose,
Save that most prominent of all-his Nose.
That Nose, which in the infant could annoy,
Was grown a perfect nuisance in the boy.
Whene'er he walk'd, his Handle went before,
Long as the snout of Ferret, or Wild Boar;
Or like the Staff, with which on holy day
The solemn Parish Beadle clears the way.
But from their cradle to their latest year,
How seldom Truth can reach a Prince's ear!
To keep the unwelcome knowledge out of view,
His lesson well each flattering Courtier knew;
The hoary Tutor, and the wily Page,
Unmeet confederates! dupe his tender age.
They taught him that whate'er vain mortals boastStrength, Courage, Wisdom-all they value mostWhate'er on human life distinction throwsWas all comprized-in what?-a length of nose!
Ev'n Virtue's self (by some suppos'd chief merit)
In short-nosed folks was only want of spirit.
While doctrines such as these his guides instill'd,
His Palace was with long-nosed people fill'd;
At Court whoever ventured to appear
With a short nose, was treated with a sneer.
Each courtier's wife, that with a babe is blest,
Moulds its young nose betimes; and does her best,
By pulls, and hauls, and twists, and lugs, and pinches,
To stretch it to the standard of the Prince's.
Dup'd by these arts, Dorus to manhood rose,
Nor dream'd of ought more comely than his Nose;
Till Love, whose power ev'n Princes have confest,
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Claim'd the soft empire o'er his youthful breast.
Fair Claribel was she who caus'd his care;
A neighb'ring Monarch's daughter, and sole heir.
For beauteous Claribel his bosom burn'd;
The beauteous Claribel his flame return'd;
Deign'd with kind words his passion to approve,
Met his soft vows, and yielded love for love.
If in her mind some female pangs arose
At sight (and who can blame her?) of his Nose,
Affection made her willing to be blind;
She loved him for the beauties of his mind;
And in his lustre, and his royal race,
Contented sunk-one feature of his face.
Blooming to sight, and lovely to behold,
Herself was cast in Beauty's richest mould;
Sweet female majesty her person deck'dHer face an angel's-save for one defectWise Nature, who to Dorus over kind,
A length of nose too liberal had assign'd,
As if with us poor mortals to make sport,
Had given to Claribel a nose too short:
But turn'd up with a sort of modest grace;
It took not much of beauty from her face;
And subtle Courtiers, who their Prince's mind
Still watch'd, and turn'd about with every wind,
Assur'd the Prince, that though man's beauty owes
Its charms to a majestic length of nose,
The excellence of Woman (softer creature)
Consisted in the shortness of that feature.
Few arguments were wanted to convince
The already more than half persuaded Prince;
Truths, which we hate, with slowness we receive,
But what we wish to credit, soon believe.
The Princess's affections being gain'd,
What but her Sire's approval now remain'd?
Ambassadors with solemn pomp are sent
To win the aged Monarch to consent
(Seeing their States already were allied)
100
That Dorus might have Claribel to bride.
Her Royal Sire, who wisely understood
The match propos'd was for both kingdoms' good,
Gave his consent; and gentle Claribel
With weeping bids her father's court farewell.
With gallant pomp, and numerous array,
Dorus went forth to meet her on her way;
But when the Princely pair of lovers met,
Their hearts on mutual gratulations set,
Sudden the Enchanter from the ground arose,
(The same who prophesied the Prince's nose)
And with rude grasp, unconscious of her charms,
Snatch'd up the lovely Princess in his arms,
Then bore her out of reach of human eyes,
Up in the pathless regions of the skies.
Bereft of her that was his only care,
Dorus resign'd his soul to wild despair;
Resolv'd to leave the land that gave him birth,
And seek fair Claribel throughout the earth.
Mounting his horse, he gives the beast the reins,
And wanders lonely through the desert plains;
With fearless heart the savage heath explores,
Where the wolf prowls, and where the tiger roars,
Nor wolf, nor tiger, dare his way oppose;
The wildest creatures see, and shun, his Nose.
Ev'n lions fear! the elephant alone
Surveys with pride a trunk so like his own.
At length he to a shady forest came,
Where in a cavern lived an aged dame;
A reverend Fairy, on whose silver head
A hundred years their downy snows had shed.
Here ent'ring in, the Mistress of the place
Bespoke him welcome with a cheerful grace;
Fetch'd forth her dainties, spread her social board
With all the store her dwelling could afford.
The Prince, with toil and hunger sore opprest,
101
Gladly accepts, and deigns to be her guest.
But when the first civilities were paid,
The dishes rang'd, and Grace in order said;
The Fairy, who had leisure now to view
Her guest more closely, from her pocket drew
Her spectacles, and wip'd them from the dust,
Then on her nose endeavour'd to adjust;
With difficulty she could find a place
To hang them on in her unshapely face;
For, if the Princess's was somewhat small,
This Fairy scarce had any nose at all.
But when by help of spectacles the Crone
Discern'd a Nose so different from her own,
What peals of laughter shook her aged sides!
While with sharp jests the Prince she thus derides.
FAIRY.
'Welcome, great Prince of Noses, to my cell;
'Tis a poor place,-but thus we Fairies dwell.
Pray, let me ask you, if from far you comeAnd don't you sometimes find it cumbersome?'
PRINCE.
'Find what?'
FAIRY.
'Your Nose-'
PRINCE.
'My Nose, Ma'am!'
FAIRY.
'No offenceThe King your Father was a man of sense,
A handsome man (but lived not to be old)
And had a Nose cast in the common mould.
Ev'n I myself, that now with age am grey,
102
Was thought to have some beauty in my day,
And am the Daughter of a King.-Your Sire
In this poor face saw something to admireAnd I to shew my gratitude made shiftHave stood his friend-and help'd him at a lift'Twas I that, when his hopes began to fail,
Shew'd him the spell that lurk'd in Minon's tailPerhaps you have heard-but come, Sir, you don't eatThat Nose of yours requires both wine and meatFall to, and welcome, without more adoYou see your fare-what shall I help you to?
This dish the tongues of nightingales contains;
This, eyes of peacocks; and that, linnets' brains;
That next you is a Bird of ParadiseWe Fairies in our food are somewhat nice.And pray, Sir, while your hunger is supplied,
Do lean your Nose a little on one side;
The shadow, which it casts upon the meat,
Darkens my plate, I see not what I eat-'
The Prince, on dainty after dainty feeding,
Felt inly shock'd at the old Fairy's breeding,
But held it want of manners in the Dame,
And did her country education blame.
One thing he only wonder'd at,-what she
So very comic in his Nose could see.
Hers, it must be confest, was somewhat short,
And time and shrinking age accounted for't;
But for his own, thank heaven, he could not tell
That it was ever thought remarkable;
A decent nose, of reasonable size,
And handsome thought, rather than otherwise.
But that which most of all his wonder paid,
Was to observe the Fairy's waiting Maid;
How at each word the aged Dame let fall;
She curtsied low, and smil'd assent to all;
But chiefly when the rev'rend Grannam told
Of conquests, which her beauty made of old.He smiled to see how Flattery sway'd the Dame,
Nor knew himself was open to the same!
He finds her raillery now increase so fast,
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That making hasty end of his repast,
Glad to escape her tongue, he bids farewell
To the old Fairy, and her friendly cell.
But his kind Hostess, who had vainly tried
The force of ridicule to cure his pride,
Fertile in plans, a surer method chose,
To make him see the error of his Nose;
For, till he view'd that feature with remorse,
The Enchanter's direful spell must be in force.
Midway the road by which the Prince must pass,
She rais'd by magic art a House of Glass;
No mason's hand appear'd, nor work of wood;
Compact of glass the wondrous fabric stood.
Its stately pillars, glittering in the sun,
Conspicuous from afar, like silver, shone.
Here, snatch'd and rescued from th' Enchanter's might,
She placed the beauteous Claribel in sight.
The admiring Prince the chrystal dome survey'd,
And sought access unto his lovely Maid:
But, strange to tell, in all that mansion's bound,
Nor door, nor casement, was there to be found.
Enrag'd he took up massy stones, and flung
With such a force, that all the palace rung;
But made no more impression on the glass,
Than if the solid structure had been brass.
To comfort his despair, the lovely maid
Her snowy hand against her window laid;
But when with eager haste he thought to kiss,
His Nose stood out, and robb'd him of the bliss.
Thrice he essay'd th' impracticable feat;
The window and his lips can never meet.
The painful Truth, which Flattery long conceal'd,
Rush'd on his mind, and 'O!' he cried, 'I yield;
Wisest of Fairies, thou wert right, I wrong-
104
I own, I own, I have a Nose too long.'
The frank confession was no sooner spoke,
But into shivers all the palace broke.
His Nose of monstrous length, to his surprise
Shrunk to the limits of a common size:
And Claribel with joy her Lover view'd,
Now grown as beautiful as he was good.
The aged Fairy in their presence stands,
Confirms their mutual vows, and joins their hands.
The Prince with rapture hails the happy hour,
That rescued him from self-delusion's power;
And trains of blessings crown the future life
Of Dorus, and of Claribel, his wife.
THE END
~ Charles Lamb,#NFDB
645:A Poem On The Last Day - Book Iii
The book unfolding, the resplendent seat
Of saints and angels, the tremendous fate
Of guilty souls, the gloomy realms of woe,
And all the horrors of the world below,
I next presume to sing. What yet remains
Demands my last, but most exalted, strains.
And let the Muse or now affect the sky,
Or in inglorious shades for ever lie.
She kindles, she's inflamed so near the goal;
She mounts, she gains upon the starry pole;
The world grows less as she pursues her flight,
And the sun darkens to her distant sight.
Heaven, opening, all its sacred pomp displays,
And overwhelms her with the rushing blaze!
The triumph rings! archangels shout around!
And echoing Nature lengthens out the sound!
Ten thousand trumpets now at once advance;
Now deepest silence lulls the vast expanse;
So deep the silence, and so strong the blast,
As Nature died when she had groan'd her last.
Nor man nor angel moves: the Judge on high
Looks round, and with His glory fills the sky:
Then on the fatal book His hand He lays,
Which high to view supporting seraphs raise;
In solemn form the rituals are prepared,
The seal is broken, and a groan is heard.
And thou, my soul, (O fall to sudden prayer,
And let the thought sink deep!) shalt thou be there?
See on the left, (for by the great command
The throng divided falls on either hand,)
How weak, how pale, how haggard, how obscene!
What more than death in every face and mien!
With what distress, and glarings of affright,
They shock the heart, and turn away the sight!
In gloomy orbs their trembling eye-balls roll,
And tell the horrid secrets of the soul.
25
Each gesture mourns, each look is black with care,
And every groan is loaden with despair.
Reader, if guilty, spare the Muse, and find
A truer image pictured in thy mind.
Shouldst thou behold thy brother, father, wife,
And all the soft companions of thy life,
Whose blended interests levell'd at one aim,
Whose mix'd desires sent up one common flame,
Divided far; thy wretched self alone
Cast on the left, of all whom thou hast known;
How would it wound! What millions wouldst thou give
For one more trial, one day more to live!
Flung back in time an hour, a moment's space,
To grasp with eagerness the means of grace;
Contend for mercy with a pious rage,
And in that moment to redeem an age!
Drive back the tide, suspend a storm in air,
Arrest the sun; but still of this despair.
Mark, on the right, how amiable a grace!
Their Maker's image fresh in every face!
What purple bloom my ravish'd soul admires,
And their eyes sparkling with immortal fires!
Triumphant beauty! charms that rise above
This world, and in bless'd angels kindle love!
To the great Judge with holy pride they turn,
And dare behold the' Almighty's anger burn;
Its flash sustain, against its terror rise,
And on the dread tribunal fix their eyes.
Are these the forms that moulder'd in the dust?
O the transcendent glory of the just!
Yet still some thin remains of fear and doubt
The' infected brightness of their joy pollute.
Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye,
Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize;
26
Inflame his woe by bringing it so late,
And stab him in the crisis of his fate.
Since Adam's family, from first to last,
Now into one distinct survey is cast;
Look round, vain-glorious Muse, and you whoe'er
Devote yourselves to Fame, and think her fair;
Look round, and seek the lights of human race,
Whose shining acts Time's brightest annals grace;
Who founded sects; crowns conquer'd, or resign'd;
Gave names to nations, or famed empires join'd;
Who raised the vale, and laid the mountain low,
And taught obedient rivers where to flow;
Who with vast fleets, as with a mighty chain,
Could bind the madness of the roaring main:
All lost! all undistinguish'd! nowhere found!
How will this truth in Bourbon's palace sound?
That hour, on which the' Almighty King on high
From all eternity has fix'd His eye,
Whether His right hand favour'd, or annoy'd,
Continued, alter'd, threaten'd, or destroy'd;
Southern or eastern sceptre downward hurl'd,
Gave north or west dominion o'er the world;
The point of time, for which the world was built,
For which the blood of God Himself was spilt,
That dreadful moment is arrived.
Aloft, the seats of bliss their pomp display,
Brighter than brightness this distinguish'd day;
Less glorious, when of old the' eternal Son
From realms of night return'd with trophies won;
Through heaven's high gates when He triumphant rode,
And shouting angels hail'd the victor God.
Horrors, beneath, darkness in darkness, hell
Of hell, where torments behind torments dwell;
A furnace formidable, deep, and wide,
O'er-boiling with a mad sulphureous tide,
Expands its jaws, most dreadful to survey,
And roars outrageous for the destined prey.
The sons of light scarce unappall'd look down,
27
And nearer press Heaven's everlasting throne.
Such is the scene; and one short moment's space
Concludes the hopes and fears of human race.
Proceed who dares!-I tremble as I write;
The whole creation swims before my sight:
I see, I see, the Judge's frowning brow:
Say not, 'tis distant; I behold it now.
I faint, my tardy blood forgets to flow,
My soul recoils at the stupendous woe;
That woe, those pangs, which from the guilty breast,
In these, or words like these, shall be express'd:``Who burst the barriers of my peaceful grave?
Ah, cruel Death! that would no longer save,
But grudged me e'en that narrow dark abode,
And cast me out into the wrath of God;
Where shrieks, the roaring flame, the rattling chain,
And all the dreadful eloquence of pain,
Our only song; black fire's malignant light,
The sole refreshment of the blasted sight.
``Must all those powers Heaven gave me to supply
My soul with pleasure, and bring-in my joy,
Rise up in arms against me, join the foe,
Sense, Reason, Memory, increase my woe?
And shall my voice, ordain'd on hymns to dwell,
Corrupt to groans, and blow the fires of hell?
O! must I look with terror on my gain,
And with existence only measure pain?
What! no reprieve, no least indulgence given,
No beam of hope from any point of heaven?
Ah, Mercy! Mercy! art thou dead above?
Is love extinguish'd in the Source of Love?
``Bold that I am! did Heaven stoop down to hell?
The' expiring Lord of Life my ransom seal?
Have not I been industrious to provoke?
From His embraces obstinately broke?
Pursued, and panted for His mortal hate,
Earn'd my destruction, labour'd out my fate?
And dare I on extinguish'd love exclaim?
28
Take, take full vengeance, rouse the slackening flame;
Just is my lot-but O! must it transcend
The reach of time, despair a distant end?
With dreadful growth shoot forward, and arise,
Where Thought can't follow, and bold Fancy dies?
``NEVER! Where falls the soul at that dread sound?
Down an abyss how dark, and how profound!
Down, down, (I still am falling,-horrid pain!)
Ten thousand thousand fathoms still remain;
My plunge but still begun.-And this for sin?
Could I offend, if I had never been,
But still increased the senseless happy mass,
Flow'd in the stream, or shiver'd in the grass?
``Father of Mercies! why from silent earth
Didst Thou awake, and curse me into birth?
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night,
And make a thankless present of Thy light?
Push into being a reverse of Thee,
And animate a clod with misery?
``The beasts are happy; they come forth, and keep
Short watch on earth, and then lie down to sleep.
Pain is for man; and O! how vast a pain,
For crimes which made the Godhead bleed in vain,
Annull'd His groans, as far as in them lay,
And flung His agonies and death away!
As our dire punishment for ever strong,
Our constitution too for ever young;
Cursed with returns of vigour, still the same,
Powerful to bear and satisfy the flame;
Still to be caught, and still to be pursued;
To perish still, and still to be renew'd!
``And this, my Help! my God! at Thy decree?
Nature is changed, and hell should succour me.
And canst Thou, then, look down from perfect bliss,
And see me plunging in the dark abyss?
Calling Thee Father in a sea of fire?
Or pouring blasphemies at Thy desire?
With mortals' anguish wilt Thou raise Thy name,
29
And by my pangs Omnipotence proclaim?
``Thou, who canst toss the planets to and fro,
Contract not Thy great vengeance to my woe;
Crush worlds; in hotter flames fallen angels lay:
On me Almighty wrath is cast away.
Call back Thy thunders, Lord, hold-in Thy rage,
Nor with a speck of wretchedness engage:
Forget me quite, nor stoop a worm to blame;
But lose me in the greatness of Thy name.
Thou art all love, all mercy, all Divine;
And shall I make those glories cease to shine?
Shall sinful man grow great by his offence,
And from its course turn back Omnipotence?
``Forbid it! and O! grant, great God, at least
This one, this slender, almost no request:
When I have wept a thousand lives away,
When torment is grown weary of its prey,
When I have raved ten thousand years in fire,
Ten thousand thousand, let me then expire.''
Deep anguish, but too late! The hopeless soul,
Bound to the bottom of the burning pool,
Though loath, and ever loud blaspheming, owns,
He's justly doom'd to pour eternal groans;
Enclosed with horrors, and transfix'd with pain,
Rolling in vengeance, struggling with his chain;
To talk to fiery tempests; to implore
The raging flame to give its burnings o'er;
To toss, to writhe, to pant beneath his load,
And bear the weight of an offended God.
The favour'd of their Judge in triumph move
To take possession of their thrones above;
Satan's accursed desertion to supply,
And fill the vacant stations of the sky;
Again to kindle long-extinguish'd rays,
And with new lights dilate the heavenly blaze;
To crop the roses of immortal youth,
And drink the fountain-head of sacred truth;
30
To swim in seas of bliss, to strike the string,
And lift the voice to their Almighty King;
To lose eternity in grateful lays,
And fill heaven's wide circumference with praise.
But I attempt the wondrous height in vain,
And leave unfinish'd the too lofty strain;
What boldly I begin, let others end;
My strength exhausted, fainting I descend,
And choose a less, but no ignoble, theme,Dissolving elements, and worlds in flame.
The fatal period, the great hour, is come,
And Nature shrinks at her approaching doom;
Loud peals of thunder give the sign, and all
Heaven's terrors in array surround the ball;
Sharp lightnings with the meteors' blaze conspire,
And, darted downward, set the world on fire;
Black rising clouds the thicken'd ether choke,
And spiry flames dart through the rolling smoke,
With keen vibrations cut the sullen night,
And strike the darken'd sky with dreadful light;
From heaven's four regions, with immortal force,
Angels drive-on the wind's impetuous course
To' enrage the flame: it spreads, it soars on high,
Swells in the storm, and billows through the sky:
Here winding pyramids of fire ascend,
Cities and deserts in one ruin blend;
Here blazing volumes, wafted, overwhelm
The spacious face of a far-distant realm;
There, undermined, down rush eternal hills,
The neighbouring vales the vast destruction fills.
Hear'st thou that dreadful crack? that sound which broke
Like peals of thunder, and the centre shook?
What wonders must that groan of Nature tell!
Olympus there, and mightier Atlas, fell;
Which seem'd above the reach of fate to stand,
A towering monument of God's right hand;
Now dust and smoke, whose brow so lately spread
O'er shelter'd countries its diffusive shade.
31
Show me that celebrated spot, where all
The various rulers of the sever'd ball
Have humbly sought wealth, honour, and redress,
That land which Heaven seem'd diligent to bless,
Once call'd Britannia: can her glories end?
And can't surrounding seas her realms defend?
Alas! in flames behold surrounding seas!
Like oil, their waters but augment the blaze.
Some angel say, Where ran proud Asia's bound?
Or where with fruits was fair Europa crown'd?
Where stretch'd waste Libya? Where did India's store
Sparkle in diamonds, and her golden ore?
Each lost in each, their mingling kingdoms glow,
And all, dissolved, one fiery deluge flow:
Thus earth's contending monarchies are join'd,
And a full period of ambition find.
And now whate'er or swims, or walks, or flies,
Inhabitants of sea, or earth, or skies;
All on whom Adam's wisdom fix'd a name;
All plunge and perish in the conquering flame.
This globe alone would but defraud the fire,
Starve its devouring rage: the flakes aspire,
And catch the clouds, and make the heavens their prey;
The sun, the moon, the stars, all melt away;
All, all is lost; no monument, no sign,
Where once so proudly blazed the gay machine.
So bubbles on the foaming stream expire,
So sparks that scatter from the kindling fire.
The devastations of one dreadful hour
The great Creator's six days' work devour.
A mighty, mighty ruin! yet one soul
Has more to boast, and far outweighs the whole;
Exalted in superior excellence,
Casts down to nothing such a vast expense.
Have you not seen the' eternal mountains nod,
An earth dissolving, a descending God?
What strange surprises through all nature ran!
For whom these revolutions, but for man?
32
For him, Omnipotence new measures takes,
For him, through all eternity awakes;
Pours on him gifts sufficient to supply
Heaven's loss, and with fresh glories fill the sky.
Think deeply then, O man, how great thou art;
Pay thyself homage with a trembling heart.
What angels guard, no longer dare neglect;
Slighting thyself, affront not God's respect.
Enter the sacred temple of thy breast,
And gaze, and wander there, a ravish'd guest;
Gaze on those hidden treasures thou shalt find,
Wander through all the glories of thy mind.
Of perfect knowledge, see, the dawning light
Foretells a noon most exquisitely bright!
Here springs of endless joy are breaking forth!
There buds the promise of celestial worth!
Worth, which must ripen in a happier clime,
And brighter sun, beyond the bounds of time.
Thou, minor, canst not guess thy vast estate,
What stores, on foreign coasts, thy landing wait:
Lose not thy claim: let virtue's path be trod;
Thus glad all heaven, and please that bounteous God,
Who, to light thee to pleasures, hung on high
Yon radiant orb, proud regent of the sky;
That service done, its beams shall fade away,
And God shine forth in one eternal day.
~ Edward Young,#NFDB
646:Eighteen Hundred And Eleven
Still the loud death drum, thundering from afar,
O'er the vext nations pours the storm of war:
To the stern call still Britain bends her ear,
Feeds the fierce strife, the' alternate hope and fear;
Bravely, though vainly, dares to strive with Fate,
And seeks by turns to prop each sinking state.
Colossal power with overwhelming force
Bears down each fort of Freedom in its course;
Prostrate she lies beneath the Despot's sway,
While the hushed nations curse him—and obey.
Bounteous in vain, with frantic man at strife,
Glad Nature pours the means—the joys of life;
In vain with orange-blossoms scents the gale,
The hills with olives clothes, with corn the vale;
Man calls to Famine, nor invokes in vain,
Disease and Rapine follow in her train;
The tramp of marching hosts disturbs the plough,
The sword, not sickle, reaps the harvest now,
And where the soldier gleans the scant supply,
The helpless peasant but retires to die;
No laws his hut from licensed outrage shield,
And war's least horror is the' ensanguined field.
Fruitful in vain, the matron counts with pride
The blooming youths that grace her honoured side;
No son returns to press her widowed hand,
Her fallen blossoms strew a foreign strand.
—Fruitful in vain, she boasts her virgin race,
Whom cultured arts adorn and gentlest grace;
Defrauded of its homage, Beauty mourns,
And the rose withers on its virgin thorns.
Frequent, some stream obscure, some uncouth name,
By deeds of blood is lifted into fame;
Oft o'er the daily page some soft one bends
To learn the fate of husband, brothers, friends,
Or the spread map with anxious eye explores,
Its dotted boundaries and penciled shores,
48
Asks where the spot that wrecked her bliss is found,
And learns its name but to detest the sound.
And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
An island queen amidst thy subject seas,
While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
So sing thy flatterers;—but, Britain, know,
Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here,
There, the heart-witherings of unuttered fear,
And that sad death, whence most affection bleeds,
Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes.
Thy baseless wealth dissolves in air away,
Like mists that melt before the morning ray:
No more on crowded mart or busy street
Friends, meeting friends, with cheerful hurry greet;
Sad, on the ground thy princely merchants bend
Their altered looks, and evil days portend,
And fold their arms, and watch with anxious breast
The tempest blackening in the distant West.
Yes, thou must droop; thy Midas dream is o'er;
The golden tide of Commerce leaves thy shore,
Leaves thee to prove the' alternate ills that haunt
Enfeebling Luxury and ghastly Want;
Leaves thee, perhaps, to visit distant lands,
And deal the gifts of Heaven with equal hands.
Yet, O my Country, name beloved, revered,
By every tie that binds the soul endeared,
Whose image to my infant senses came
Mixt with Religion's light and Freedom's holy flame!
If prayers may not avert, if 'tis thy fate
To rank amongst the names that once were great,
Not like the dim, cold Crescent shalt thou fade,
Thy debt to Science and the Muse unpaid;
49
Thine are the laws surrounding states revere,
Thine the full harvest of the mental year,
Thine the bright stars in Glory's sky that shine,
And arts that make it life to live are thine.
If westward streams the light that leaves thy shores,
Still from thy lamp the streaming radiance pours.
Wide spreads thy race from Ganges to the pole,
O'er half the western world thy accents roll:
Nations beyond the Apalachian hills
Thy hand has planted and thy spirit fills:
Soon as their gradual progress shall impart
The finer sense of morals and of art,
Thy stores of knowledge the new states shall know,
And think thy thoughts, and with thy fancy glow;
Thy Lockes, thy Paleys shall instruct their youth,
Thy leading star direct their search for truth;
Beneath the spreading platan's tent-like shade,
Or by Missouri's rushing waters laid,
“Old father Thames” shall be the poet's theme,
Of Hagley's woods the' enamoured virgin dream,
And Milton's tones the raptured ear enthrall,
Mixt with the roaring of Niagara's fall;
In Thomson's glass the' ingenuous youth shall learn
A fairer face of Nature to discern;
Nor of the bards that swept the British lyre
Shall fade one laurel, or one note expire.
Then, loved Joanna, to admiring eyes
Thy storied groups in scenic pomp shall rise;
Their high-souled strains and Shakespear's noble rage
Shall with alternate passion shake the stage.
Some youthful Basil from thy moral lay
With stricter hand his fond desires shall sway;
Some Ethwald, as the fleeting shadows pass,
Start at his likeness in the mystic glass;
The tragic Muse resume her just controul,
With pity and with terror purge the soul,
While wide o'er transatlantic realms thy name
Shall live in light, and gather all its fame.
Where wanders Fancy down the lapse of years
Shedding o'er imaged woes untimely tears?
50
Fond moody power! as hopes—as fears prevail,
She longs, or dreads, to lift the awful veil,
On visions of delight now loves to dwell,
Now hears the shriek of woe or Freedom's knell:
Perhaps, she says, long ages past away,
And set in western waves our closing day,
Night, Gothic night, again may shade the plains
Where Power is seated, and where Science reigns;
England, the seat of arts, be only known
By the grey ruin and the mouldering stone;
That Time may tear the garland from her brow,
And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now.
Yet then the' ingenuous youth whom Fancy fires
With pictured glories of illustrious sires,
With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take
From the Blue Mountains, or Ontario's lake,
With fond adoring steps to press the sod
By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod;
On Isis' banks to draw inspiring air,
From Runnymede to send the patriot's prayer;
In pensive thought, where Cam's slow waters wind,
To meet those shades that ruled the realms of mind;
In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow,
And hang fresh wreaths round Newton's awful brow.
Oft shall they seek some peasant's homely shed,
Who toils, unconscious of the mighty dead,
To ask where Avon's winding waters stray,
And thence a knot of wild flowers bear away;
Anxious inquire where Clarkson, friend of man,
Or all-accomplished Jones his race began;
If of the modest mansion aught remains
Where Heaven and Nature prompted Cowper's strains;
Where Roscoe, to whose patriot breast belong
The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song,
Led Ceres to the black and barren moor
Where Ceres never gained a wreath before:
With curious search their pilgrim steps shall rove
By many a ruined tower and proud alcove,
Shall listen for those strains that soothed of yore
Thy rock, stern Skiddaw, and thy fall, Lodore;
Feast with Dun Edin's classic brow their sight,
51
And “visit Melross by the pale moonlight.”
But who their mingled feelings shall pursue
When London's faded glories rise to view?
The mighty city, which by every road,
In floods of people poured itself abroad;
Ungirt by walls, irregularly great,
No jealous drawbridge, and no closing gate;
Whose merchants (such the state which commerce brings)
Sent forth their mandates to dependent kings;
Streets, where the turban'd Moslem, bearded Jew,
And woolly Afric, met the brown Hindu;
Where through each vein spontaneous plenty flowed,
Where Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed.
Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet
Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street;
Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time,
The broken stairs with perilous step shall climb,
Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round,
By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound,
And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey
Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way.
With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread
The hallowed mansions of the silent dead,
Shall enter the long isle and vaulted dome
Where Genius and where Valour find a home;
Awe-struck, midst chill sepulchral marbles breathe,
Where all above is still, as all beneath;
Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn
To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn,
The ponderous mass of Johnson's form to greet,
Or breathe the prayer at Howard's sainted feet.
Perhaps some Briton, in whose musing mind
Those ages live which Time has cast behind,
To every spot shall lead his wondering guests
On whose known site the beam of glory rests:
Here Chatham's eloquence in thunder broke,
Here Fox persuaded, or here Garrick spoke;
Shall boast how Nelson, fame and death in view,
52
To wonted victory led his ardent crew,
In England's name enforced, with loftiest tone,
Their duty,—and too well fulfilled his own:
How gallant Moore,
as ebbing life dissolved,
But hoped his country had his fame absolved.
Or call up sages whose capacious mind
Left in its course a track of light behind;
Point where mute crowds on Davy's lips reposed,
And Nature's coyest secrets were disclosed;
Join with their Franklin, Priestley's injured name,
Whom, then, each continent shall proudly claim.
Oft shall the strangers turn their eager feet
The rich remains of ancient art to greet,
The pictured walls with critic eye explore,
And Reynolds be what Raphael was before.
On spoils from every clime their eyes shall gaze,
Egyptian granites and the' Etruscan vase;
And when midst fallen London, they survey
The stone where Alexander's ashes lay,
Shall own with humbled pride the lesson just
By Time's slow finger written in the dust.
There walks a Spirit o'er the peopled earth,
Secret his progress is, unknown his birth;
Moody and viewless as the changing wind,
No force arrests his foot, no chains can bind;
Where'er he turns, the human brute awakes,
And, roused to better life, his sordid hut forsakes:
He thinks, he reasons, glows with purer fires,
Feels finer wants, and burns with new desires:
Obedient Nature follows where he leads;
The steaming marsh is changed to fruitful meads;
The beasts retire from man's asserted reign,
And prove his kingdom was not given in vain.
Then from its bed is drawn the ponderous ore,
Then Commerce pours her gifts on every shore,
Then Babel's towers and terraced gardens rise,
And pointed obelisks invade the skies;
The prince commands, in Tyrian purple drest,
53
And Egypt's virgins weave the linen vest.
Then spans the graceful arch the roaring tide,
And stricter bounds the cultured fields divide.
Then kindles Fancy, then expands the heart,
Then blow the flowers of Genius and of Art;
Saints, heroes, sages, who the land adorn,
Seem rather to descend than to be born;
Whilst History, midst the rolls consigned to fame,
With pen of adamant inscribes their name.
The Genius now forsakes the favoured shore,
And hates, capricious, what he loved before;
Then empires fall to dust, then arts decay,
And wasted realms enfeebled despots sway;
Even Nature's changed; without his fostering smile
Ophir no gold, no plenty yields the Nile;
The thirsty sand absorbs the useless rill,
And spotted plagues from putrid fens distill.
In desert solitudes then Tadmor sleeps,
Stern Marius then o'er fallen Carthage weeps;
Then with enthusiast love the pilgrim roves
To seek his footsteps in forsaken groves,
Explores the fractured arch, the ruined tower,
Those limbs disjointed of gigantic power;
Still at each step he dreads the adder's sting,
The Arab's javelin, or the tiger's spring;
With doubtful caution treads the echoing ground,
And asks where Troy or Babylon is found.
And now the vagrant Power no more detains
The vale of Tempe, or Ausonian plains;
Northward he throws the animating ray,
O'er Celtic nations bursts the mental day:
And, as some playful child the mirror turns,
Now here now there the moving lustre burns;
Now o'er his changeful fancy more prevail
Batavia's dykes than Arno's purple vale,
And stinted suns, and rivers bound with frost,
Than Enna's plains or Baia's viny coast;
Venice the Adriatic weds in vain,
And Death sits brooding o'er Campania's plain;
O'er Baltic shores and through Hercynian groves,
54
Stirring the soul, the mighty impulse moves;
Art plies his tools, and Commerce spreads her sail,
And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale.
The sons of Odin tread on Persian looms,
And Odin's daughters breathe distilled perfumes
Loud minstrel bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse
The Runic rhyme, and “build the lofty verse:”
The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell
To the soft breathings of the' Æolian shell,
Submits, reluctant, to the harsher tone,
And scarce believes the altered voice her own.
And now, where Cæsar saw with proud disdain
The wattled hut and skin of azure stain,
Corinthian columns rear their graceful forms,
And light varandas brave the wintry storms,
While British tongues the fading fame prolong
Of Tully's eloquence and Maro's song.
Where once Bonduca whirled the scythed car,
And the fierce matrons raised the shriek of war,
Light forms beneath transparent muslins float,
And tutored voices swell the artful note.
Light-leaved acacias and the shady plane
And spreading cedar grace the woodland reign;
While crystal walls the tenderer plants confine,
The fragrant orange and the nectared pine;
The Syrian grape there hangs her rich festoons,
Nor asks for purer air, or brighter noons:
Science and Art urge on the useful toil,
New mould a climate and create the soil,
Subdue the rigour of the northern Bear,
O'er polar climes shed aromatic air,
On yielding Nature urge their new demands,
And ask not gifts but tribute at her hands.
London exults:—on London Art bestows
Her summer ices and her winter rose;
Gems of the East her mural crown adorn,
And Plenty at her feet pours forth her horn;
While even the exiles her just laws disclaim,
People a continent, and build a name:
August she sits, and with extended hands
Holds forth the book of life to distant lands.
55
But fairest flowers expand but to decay;
The worm is in thy core, thy glories pass away;
Arts, arms and wealth destroy the fruits they bring;
Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring.
Crime walks thy streets, Fraud earns her unblest bread,
O'er want and woe thy gorgeous robe is spread,
And angel charities in vain oppose:
With grandeur's growth the mass of misery grows.
For see,—to other climes the Genius soars,
He turns from Europe's desolated shores;
And lo, even now, midst mountains wrapt in storm,
On Andes' heights he shrouds his awful form;
On Chimborazo's summits treads sublime,
Measuring in lofty thought the march of Time;
Sudden he calls:—“'Tis now the hour!” he cries,
Spreads his broad hand, and bids the nations rise.
La Plata hears amidst her torrents' roar;
Potosi hears it, as she digs the ore:
Ardent, the Genius fans the noble strife,
And pours through feeble souls a higher life,
Shouts to the mingled tribes from sea to sea,
And swears—Thy world, Columbus, shall be free.
~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,#NFDB
647:. Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,
Awaits the mould of baked clay.
Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth
The bell that shall be born to-day!
Who would honor obtain,
With the sweat and the pain,
The praise that man gives to the master must buy.
But the blessing withal must descend from on high!
And well an earnest word beseems
The work the earnest hand prepares;
Its load more light the labor deems,
When sweet discourse the labor shares.
So let us pondernor in vain
What strength can work when labor wills;
For who would not the fool disdain
Who ne'er designs what he fulfils?
And well it stamps our human race,
And hence the gift to understand,
That man within the heart should trace
Whate'er he fashions with the hand.
From the fir the fagot take,
Keep it, heap it hard and dry,
That the gathered flame may break
Through the furnace, wroth and high.
When the copper within
Seeths and simmersthe tin,
Pour quick, that the fluid that feeds the bell
May flow in the right course glib and well.
Deep hid within this nether cell,
What force with fire is moulding thus,
In yonder airy tower shall dwell,
And witness wide and far of us!
It shall, in later days, unfailing,
Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;
Its solemn voice with sorrow wailing,
Or choral chiming to devotion.
Whatever fate to man may bring,
Whatever weal or woe befall,
That metal tongue shall backward ring,
The warning moral drawn from all.
See the silvery bubbles spring!
Good! the mass is melting now!
Let the salts we duly bring
Purge the flood, and speed the flow.
From the dross and the scum,
Pure, the fusion must come;
For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,
That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.
That voice, with merry music rife,
The cherished child shall welcome in;
What time the rosy dreams of life,
In the first slumber's arms begin.
As yet, in Time's dark womb unwarning,
Repose the days, or foul or fair;
And watchful o'er that golden morning,
The mother-love's untiring care!
And swift the years like arrows fly
No more with girls content to play,
Bounds the proud boy upon his way,
Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,
With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;
And, wearied with the wish to roam,
Again seeks, stranger-like, the father-home.
And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks
Out from its native morning skies
With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,
The virgin stands before his eyes.
A nameless longing seizes him!
From all his wild compassions flown;
Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;
He wanders all alone.
Blushing, he glides where'er she move;
Her greeting can transport him;
To every mead to deck his love,
The happy wild flowers court him!
Sweet hopeand tender longingye
The growth of life's first age of gold;
When the heart, swelling, seems to see
The gates of heaven unfold!
O love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,
Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!
Browning o'er, the pipes are simmering,
Dip this wand of clay [45] within;
If like glass the wand be glimmering,
Then the casting may begin.
Brisk, brisk now, and see
If the fusion flow free;
If(happy and welcome indeed were the sign!)
If the hard and the ductile united combine.
For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,
And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,
Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong
So be it with thee, if forever united,
The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;
Illusion is brief, but repentance is long.
Lovely, thither are they bringing.
With the virgin wreath, the bride!
To the love-feast clearly ringing,
Tolls the church-bell far and wide!
With that sweetest holiday,
Must the May of life depart;
With the cestus loosedaway
Flies illusion from the heart!
Yet love lingers lonely,
When passion is mute,
And the blossoms may only
Give way to the fruit.
The husband must enter
The hostile life,
With struggle and strife
To plant or to watch.
To snare or to snatch,
To pray and importune,
Must wager and venture
And hunt down his fortune!
Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,
And the garners are filled with the gold of the grain,
Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!
Within sits another,
The thrifty housewife;
The mild one, the mother
Her home is her life.
In its circle she rules,
And the daughters she schools
And she cautions the boys,
With a bustling command,
And a diligent hand
Employed she employs;
Gives order to store,
And the much makes the more;
Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,
And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;
And she hoards in the presses, well polished and full,
The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;
Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavor
Rests never!
Blithe the master (where the while
From his roof he sees them smile)
Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;
There, the beams projecting far,
And the laden storehouse are,
And the granaries bowed beneath
The blessed golden grain;
There, in undulating motion,
Wave the cornfields like an ocean.
Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:
"My house is built upon a rock,
And sees unmoved the stormy shock
Of waves that fret below!"
What chain so strong, what girth so great,
To bind the giant form of fate?
Swift are the steps of woe.
Now the casting may begin;
See the breach indented there:
Ere we run the fusion in,
Haltand speed the pious prayer!
Pull the bung out
See around and about
What vapor, what vaporGod help us!has risen?
Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!
What friend is like the might of fire
When man can watch and wield the ire?
Whate'er we shape or work, we owe
Still to that heaven-descended glow.
But dread the heaven-descended glow,
When from their chain its wild wings go,
When, where it listeth, wide and wild
Sweeps free Nature's free-born child.
When the frantic one fleets,
While no force can withstand,
Through the populous streets
Whirling ghastly the brand;
For the element hates
What man's labor creates,
And the work of his hand!
Impartially out from the cloud,
Or the curse or the blessing may fall!
Benignantly out from the cloud
Come the dews, the revivers of all!
Avengingly out from the cloud
Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!
Harka wail from the steeple!aloud
The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!
Looklookred as blood
All on high!
It is not the daylight that fills with its flood
The sky!
What a clamor awaking
Roars up through the street,
What a hell-vapor breaking.
Rolls on through the street,
And higher and higher
Aloft moves the column of fire!
Through the vistas and rows
Like a whirlwind it goes,
And the air like the stream from the furnace glows.
Beams are cracklingposts are shrinking
Walls are sinkingwindows clinking
Children crying
Mothers flying
And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)
Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!
Hurry and skurryawayaway,
The face of the night is as clear as day!
As the links in a chain,
Again and again
Flies the bucket from hand to hand;
High in arches up-rushing
The engines are gushing,
And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds
With a roar on the breast of the element bounds.
To the grain and the fruits,
Through the rafters and beams,
Through the barns and garners it crackles and streams!
As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,
Rush the flames to the sky
Giant-high;
And at length,
Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!
With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,
And submits to his doom!
Desolate
The place, and dread
For storms the barren bed.
In the blank voids that cheerful casements were,
Comes to and fro the melancholy air,
And sits despair;
And through the ruin, blackening in its shroud
Peers, as it flits, the melancholy cloud.
One human glance of grief upon the grave
Of all that fortune gave
The loiterer takesthen turns him to depart,
And grasps the wanderer's staff and mans his heart
Whatever else the element bereaves
One blessing more than all it reftit leaves,
The faces that he loves!He counts them o'er,
Seenot one look is missing from that store!
Now clasped the bell within the clay
The mould the mingled metals fill
Oh, may it, sparkling into day,
Reward the labor and the skill!
Alas! should it fail,
For the mould may be frail
And still with our hope must be mingled the fear
And, ev'n now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!
To the dark womb of sacred earth
This labor of our hands is given,
As seeds that wait the second birth,
And turn to blessings watched by heaven!
Ah, seeds, how dearer far than they,
We bury in the dismal tomb,
Where. hope and sorrow bend to pray
That suns beyond the realm of day
May warm them into bloom!
From the steeple
Tolls the bell,
Deep and heavy,
The death-knell!
Guiding with dirge-notesolemn, sad, and slow,
To the last home earth's weary wanderers know.
It is that worshipped wife
It is that faithful mother!
Whom the dark prince of shadows leads benighted,
From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted
Far from those blithe companions, born
Of her, and blooming in their morn;
On whom, when couched her heart above,
So often looked the mother-love!
Ah! rent the sweet home's union-band,
And never, never more to come
She dwells within the shadowy land,
Who was the mother of that home!
How oft they miss that tender guide,
The carethe watchthe facethe mother
And where she sate the babes beside,
Sits with unloving looksanother!
While the mass is cooling now,
Let the labor yield to leisure,
As the bird upon the bough,
Loose the travail to the pleasure.
When the soft stars awaken,
Each task be forsaken!
And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,
If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!
Homeward from the tasks of day,
Through the greenwood's welcome way
Wends the wanderer, blithe and cheerly,
To the cottage loved so dearly!
And the eye and ear are meeting,
Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating
Now, the wonted shelter near,
Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;
Creaking now the heavy wain,
Reels with the happy harvest grain.
While with many-colored leaves,
Glitters the garland on the sheaves;
For the mower's work is done,
And the young folks' dance begun!
Desert street, and quiet mart;
Silence is in the city's heart;
And the social taper lighteth;
Each dear face that home uniteth;
While the gate the town before
Heavily swings with sullen roar!
Though darkness is spreading
O'er earththe upright
And the honest, undreading,
Look safe on the night
Which the evil man watches in awe,
For the eye of the night is the law!
Bliss-dowered! O daughter of the skies,
Hail, holy order, whose employ
Blends like to like in light and joy
Builder of cities, who of old
Called the wild man from waste and wold.
And, in his hut thy presence stealing,
Roused each familiar household feeling;
And, best of all the happy ties,
The centre of the social band,
The instinct of the Fatherland!
United thuseach helping each,
Brisk work the countless hands forever;
For naught its power to strength can teach,
Like emulation and endeavor!
Thus linked the master with the man,
Each in his rights can each revere,
And while they march in freedom's van,
Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!
To freemen labor is renown!
Who worksgives blessings and commands;
Kings glory in the orb and crown
Be ours the glory of our hands.
Long in these wallslong may we greet
Your footfalls, peace and concord sweet!
Distant the day, oh! distant far,
When the rude hordes of trampling war
Shall scare the silent vale;
And where,
Now the sweet heaven, when day doth leave
The air,
Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of eve;
Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,
From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!
Now, its destined task fulfilled,
Asunder break the prison-mould;
Let the goodly bell we build,
Eye and heart alike behold.
The hammer down heave,
Till the cover it cleave:
For not till we shatter the wall of its cell
Can we lift from its darkness and bondage the bell.
To break the mould, the master may,
If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;
But woe, when on its fiery way
The metal seeks itself to pour.
Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,
Exploding from its shattered home,
And glaring forth, as from a hell,
Behold the red destruction come!
When rages strength that has no reason,
There breaks the mould before the season;
When numbers burst what bound before,
Woe to the state that thrives no more!
Yea, woe, when in the city's heart,
The latent spark to flame is blown;
And millions from their silence start,
To claim, without a guide, their own!
Discordant howls the warning bell,
Proclaiming discord wide and far,
And, born but things of peace to tell,
Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:
"Freedom! Equality!"to blood
Rush the roused people at the sound!
Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,
And banded murder closes round!
The hyena-shapes (that women were!),
Jest with the horrors they survey;
They houndthey rendthey mangle there
As panthers with their prey!
Naught rests to hollowburst the ties
Of life's sublime and reverent awe;
Before the vice the virtue flies,
And universal crime is law!
Man fears the lion's kingly tread;
Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;
And still the dreadliest of the dread,
Is man himself in error!
No torch, though lit from heaven, illumes
The blind!Why place it in his hand?
It lights not himit but consumes
The city and the land!
Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!
The kernel bursts its huskbehold
From the dull clay the metal rise,
Pure-shining, as a star of gold!
Neck and lip, but as one beam,
It laughs like a sunbeam.
And even the scutcheon, clear-graven, shall tell
That the art of a master has fashioned the bell!
Come income in
My merry menwe'll form a ring
The new-born labor christening;
And "Concord" we will name her!
To union may her heartfelt call
In brother-love attune us all!
May she the destined glory win
For which the master sought to frame her
Aloft(all earth's existence under),
In blue-pavillioned heaven afar
To dwellthe neighbor of the thunder,
The borderer of the star!
Be hers above a voice to rise
Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,
Who, while they move, their Maker praise,
And lead around the wreathed year!
To solemn and eternal things
We dedicate her lips sublime!
As hourly, calmly, on she swings
Fanned by the fleeting wings of time!
No pulseno heartno feeling hers!
She lends the warning voice to fate;
And still companions, while she stirs,
The changes of the human state!
So may she teach us, as her tone
But now so mighty, melts away
That earth no life which earth has known
From the last silence can delay!
Slowly now the cords upheave her!
From her earth-grave soars the bell;
Mid the airs of heaven we leave her!
In the music-realm to dwell!
Upupwards yet raise
She has risenshe sways.
Fair bell to our city bode joy and increase,
And oh, may thy first sound be hallowed to peace!
~ Friedrich Schiller, The Lay Of The Bell
,#NFDB
648:Eloisa To Abelard
In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love!--From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.
Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies:
O write it not, my hand--the name appears
Already written--wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heav'n's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears, for ages, taught to flow in vain.
Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear!
Still breath'd in sighs, still usher'd with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:
54
Now warm in love, now with'ring in thy bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.
Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare,
Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.
Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.
Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,
When Love approach'd me under Friendship's name;
My fancy form'd thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind.
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry day,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gaz'd; heav'n listen'd while you sung;
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.
From lips like those what precept fail'd to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love.
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,
Nor wish'd an Angel whom I lov'd a Man.
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see;
Nor envy them, that heav'n I lose for thee.
How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
55
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies,
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;
Before true passion all those views remove,
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
The jealous God, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires;
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn 'em all:
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me.
Alas, how chang'd! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had oppos'd the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppress'd,
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.
Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,
The shrines all trembl'd, and the lamps grew pale:
Heav'n scarce believ'd the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
56
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the Cross my eyes were fix'd, but you:
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.
Still on that breast enamour'd let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press'd;
Give all thou canst--and let me dream the rest.
Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.
Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r.
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You rais'd these hallow'd walls; the desert smil'd,
And Paradise was open'd in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors;
No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n,
Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n:
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
In these lone walls (their days eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd,
Where awful arches make a noonday night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light;
Thy eyes diffus'd a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.
See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,
(O pious fraud of am'rous charity!)
But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah let thy handmaid, sister, daughter move,
And all those tender names in one, thy love!
The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclin'd
57
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.
Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.
Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
58
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain--do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself--and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.
Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.
I wake--no more I hear, no more I view,
59
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call aloud; it hears not what I say;
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!
Alas, no more--methinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,
Where round some mould'ring tower pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps.
Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies;
Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
And wake to all the griefs I left behind.
For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain
A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;
Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose;
No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows.
Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,
Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;
Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n,
And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heav'n.
Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?
The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.
Nature stands check'd; Religion disapproves;
Ev'n thou art cold--yet Eloisa loves.
Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.
What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,
Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.
I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee,
Thy image steals between my God and me,
Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,
With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight:
60
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown'd,
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.
While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,
While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,
And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art!
Oppose thyself to Heav'n; dispute my heart;
Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes
Blot out each bright idea of the skies;
Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears;
Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God!
No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!)
Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu!
Oh Grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair!
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care!
Fresh blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality!
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest;
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest!
See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propp'd on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watch'd the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
"Come, sister, come!" (it said, or seem'd to say)
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!
Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and pray'd,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm in this eternal sleep;
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Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev'n superstition loses ev'ry fear:
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."
I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs.
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
Where flames refin'd in breasts seraphic glow:
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.
Ah then, thy once-lov'd Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.
See from my cheek the transient roses fly!
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev'n my Abelard be lov'd no more.
O Death all-eloquent! you only prove
What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love.
Then too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,
From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.
May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,
"Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!"
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From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n,
One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n.
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
649:A Poem On The Last Day - Book Ii
Now man awakes, and from his silent bed,
Where he has slept for ages, lifts his head;
Shakes off the slumber of ten thousand years,
And on the borders of new worlds appears.
Whate'er the bold, the rash adventure cost,
In wide Eternity I dare be lost.
The Muse is wont in narrow bounds to sing,
To teach the swain, or celebrate the king.
I grasp the whole, no more to parts confined,
I lift my voice, and sing to human kind:
I sing to men and angels; angels join,
While such the theme, their sacred songs with mine.
Again the trumpet's intermitted sound
Rolls the wide circuit of creation round,
An universal concourse to prepare
Of all that ever breathed the vital air;
In some wide field, which active whirlwinds sweep,
Drive cities, forests, mountains to the deep,
To smooth and lengthen out the' unbounded space,
And spread an area for all human race.
Now monuments prove faithful to their trust,
And render back their long committed dust.
Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all
The various bones, obsequious to the call,
Self-moved, advance; the neck perhaps to meet
The distant head; the distant legs, the feet.
Dreadful to view, see through the dusky sky
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly,
To distant regions journeying, there to claim
Deserted members, and complete the frame.
When the world bow'd to Rome's almighty sword,
Rome bow'd to Pompey, and confess'd her lord.
Yet, one day lost, this deity below
Became the scorn and pity of his foe.
His blood a traitor's sacrifice was made,
14
And smoked indignant on a ruffian's blade.
No trumpet's sound, no gasping army's yell,
Bid, with due horror, his great soul farewell.
Obscure his fall: all weltering in his gore,
His trunk was cast to perish on the shore!
While Julius frown'd the bloody monster dead,
Who brought the world in his great rival's head.
This sever'd head and trunk shall join once more,
Though realms now rise between, and oceans roar.
The trumpet's sound each vagrant-mote shall hear,
Or fix'd in earth, or if afloat in air,
Obey the signal wafted in the wind,
And not one sleeping atom lag behind.
So swarming bees, that, on a summer's day,
In airy rings and wild meanders play,
Charm'd with the brasen sound, their wanderings end,
And, gently circling, on a bough descend.
The body thus renew'd, the conscious soul,
Which has perhaps been fluttering near the pole,
Or midst the burning planets wondering stray'd,
Or hover'd o'er where her pale corpse was laid;
Or rather coasted on her final state,
And fear'd or wish'd for her appointed fate:
This soul, returning with a constant flame,
Now weds for ever her immortal frame.
Life, which ran down before, so high is wound,
The springs maintain an everlasting round.
Thus a frail model of the work design'd
First takes a copy of the builder's mind,
Before the structure firm with lasting oak,
And marble bowels of the solid rock,
Turns the strong arch, and bids the columns rise,
And bear the lofty palace to the skies;
The wrongs of Time enabled to surpass,
With bars of adamant, and ribs of brass.
That ancient, sacred, and illustrious dome,
Where soon or late fair Albion's heroes come,
From camps and courts, though great, or wise, or just,
15
To feed the worm, and moulder into dust;
That solemn mansion of the royal dead,
Where passing slaves o'er sleeping monarchs tread,
Now populous o'erflows: a numerous race
Of rising kings fill all the' extended space.
A life well-spent, not the victorious sword,
Awards the crown, and styles the greater lord.
Nor monuments alone, and burial earth,
Labour with man to this his second birth;
But where gay palaces in pomp arise,
And gilded theatres invade the skies,
Nations shall wake, whose unrespected bones
Support the pride of their luxurious sons.
The most magnificent and costly dome
Is but an upper chamber to a tomb.
No spot on earth but has supplied a grave,
And human skulls the spacious ocean pave.
All's full of man; and at this dreadful turn,
The swarm shall issue, and the hive shall burn.
Not all at once, nor in like manner, rise:
Some lift with pain their slow unwilling eyes;
Shrink backward from the terror of the light,
And bless the grave, and call for lasting night.
Others, whose long-attempted virtue stood
Fix'd as a rock, and broke the rushing flood;
Whose firm resolve nor beauty could melt down,
Nor raging tyrants from their posture frown:Such, in this day of horrors, shall be seen
To face the thunders with a godlike mien:
The planets drop, their thoughts are fix'd above;
The centre shakes, their hearts disdain to move:
An earth dissolving, and a heaven thrown wide,
A yawning gulf, and fiends on every side,
Serene they view, impatient of delay,
And bless the dawn of everlasting day.
Here greatness prostrate falls; there strength gives place:
Here lazars smile; there beauty hides her face.
Christians, and Jews, and Turks, and Pagans stand,
A blended throng, one undistinguish'd band.
16
Some who, perhaps, by mutual wounds expired,
With zeal for their distinct persuasions fired,
In mutual friendship their long slumber break,
And hand in hand their Saviour's love partake.
But none are flush'd with brighter joy, or, warm
With juster confidence, enjoy the storm,
Than those whose pious bounties, unconfined,
Have made them public fathers of mankind.
In that illustrious rank, what shining light
With such distinguish'd glory fills my sight?
Bend down, my grateful Muse, that homage show
Which to such worthies thou art proud to owe.
Wykeham, Fox, Chicheley! hail, illustrious names,
Who to far-distant times dispense your beams!
Beneath your shades, and near your crystal springs,
I first presumed to touch the trembling strings.
All hail, thrice-honour'd! 'Twas your great renown
To bless a people, and oblige a crown.
And now you rise, eternally to shine,
Eternally to drink the rays Divine.
Indulgent God! O how shall mortal raise
His soul to due returns of grateful praise,
For bounty so profuse to human kind,
Thy wondrous gift of an eternal mind?
Shall I, who, some few years ago, was less
Than worm, or mite, or shadow can express,Was nothing; shall I live, when every fire
And every star shall languish and expire?
When earth's no more, shall I survive above,
And through the radiant files of angels move?
Or, as before the throne of God I stand,
See new worlds rolling from His spacious hand,
Where our adventures shall perhaps be taught,
As we now tell how Michael sung or fought?
All that has being in full concert join,
And celebrate the depths of Love Divine!
But O! before this blissful state, before
The' aspiring soul this wondrous height can soar,
17
The Judge, descending, thunders from afar,
And all mankind is summon'd to the bar.
This mighty scene I next presume to draw:
Attend, great Anna, with religious awe.
Expect not here the known successful arts
To win attention, and command our hearts:
Fiction, be far away; let no machine
Descending here, no fabled God, be seen:
Behold the God of gods indeed descend,
And worlds unnumber'd His approach attend!
Lo! the wide theatre, whose ample space
Must entertain the whole of human race,
At Heaven's all-powerful edict is prepared,
And fenced around with an immortal guard.
Tribes, provinces, dominions, worlds o'erflow
The mighty plain, and deluge all below:
And every age and nation pours along;
Nimrod and Bourbon mingle in the throng;
Adam salutes his youngest son; no sign
Of all those ages which their births disjoin.
How empty learning, and how vain is art,
But as it mends the life, and guides the heart!
What volumes have been swell'd, what time been spent,
To fix a hero's birth-day or descent!
What joy must it now yield, what rapture raise,
To see the glorious race of ancient days!
To greet those worthies who perhaps have stood
Illustrious on record before the flood!
Alas! a nearer care your soul demands,
Caesar unnoted in your presence stands.
How vast the concourse! not in number more
The waves that break on the resounding shore,
The leaves that tremble in the shady grove,
The lamps that gild the spangled vault above.
Those overwhelming armies, whose command
Said to one empire, ``Fall;'' another, ``Stand;''
Whose rear lay wrapp'd in night, while breaking dawn
Roused the broad front, and call'd the battle on:
18
Great Xerxes' world in arms, proud Cannae's field,
Where Carthage taught victorious Rome to yield;
(Another blow had broke the Fates' decree,
And earth had wanted her fourth monarchy
Immortal Blenheim, famed Ramillia's host:They all are here, and here they all are lost:
Their millions swell to be discern'd in vain,
Lost as a billow in the' unbounded main.
This echoing voice now rends the yielding air,
For judgment, judgment, sons of men, prepare!
Earth shakes anew; I hear her groans profound;
And hell through all her trembling realms resound.
Whoe'er thou art, thou greatest power of earth,
Bless'd with most equal planets at thy birth:
Whose valour drew the most successful sword,
Most realms united in one common lord;
Who, on the day of triumph, saidst, ``Be Thine
The skies, Jehovah: all this world is mine:''
Dare not to lift thine eye.-Alas! my Muse,
How art thou lost! what numbers canst thou choose?
A sudden blush inflames the waving sky,
And now the crimson curtains open fly;
Lo! far within, and far above all height,
Where heaven's great Sovereign reigns in worlds of light;
Whence Nature He informs, and, with one ray
Shot from His eye, does all her works survey,
Creates, supports, confounds! where time, and place,
Matter, and form, and fortune, life, and grace,
Wait humbly at the footstool of their God,
And move obedient at His awful nod;
Whence He beholds us vagrant emmets crawl
At random on this air-suspended ball:
(Speck of creation!) if He pour one breath,
The bubble breaks, and 'tis eternal death.
Thence issuing I behold, (but mortal sight
Sustains not such a rushing sea of light!)
I see, on an empyreal flying throne
Sublimely raised, Heaven's everlasting Son;
19
Crown'd with that majesty which form'd the world,
And the grand rebel flaming downward hurl'd
Virtue, Dominion, Praise, Omnipotence,
Support the train of their triumphant Prince.
A zone, beyond the thought of angels bright,
Around Him, like the zodiac, winds its light.
Night shades the solemn arches of His brows,
And in His cheek the purple morning glows.
Where'er serene He turns propitious eyes,
Or we expect, or find, a Paradise:
But if resentment reddens their mild beams,
The Eden kindles, and the world's in flames.
On one hand, Knowledge shines in purest light;
On one, the sword of Justice, fiercely bright.
Now bend the knee in sport, present the reed;
Now tell the scourged impostor He shall bleed!
Thus glorious through the courts of heaven the Source
Of life and death eternal bends His course;
Loud thunders round Him roll, and lightnings play;
The' angelic host is ranged in bright array:
Some touch the string, some strike the sounding shell,
And mingling voices in rich concert swell;
Voices seraphic! bless'd with such a strain,
Could Satan hear, he were a god again.
Triumphant King of Glory! Soul of Bliss!
What a stupendous turn of fate is this!
O whither art thou raised above the scorn
And indigence of Him in Bethlem born!
A needless, helpless, unaccounted guest,
And but a second to the fodder'd beast!
How changed from Him who, meekly prostrate laid,
Vouchsafed to wash the feet Himself had made!
From Him who was betray'd, forsook, denied,
Wept, languish'd, pray'd, bled, thirsted, groan'd, and died;
Hung pierced and bare, insulted by the foe,
All heaven in tears above, earth unconcern'd below!
And was't enough to bid the sun retire?
Why did not Nature at Thy groan expire?
I see, I hear, I feel, the pangs Divine;
20
The world is vanish'd,-I am wholly Thine.
Mistaken Caiaphas! Ah! which blasphemed,Thou, or thy Prisoner? which shall be condemn'd?
Well mightst thou rend thy garments, well exclaim;
Deep are the horrors of eternal flame!
But God is good! 'Tis wondrous all! E'en He
Thou gavest to death, shame, torture, died for thee.
Now the descending triumph stops its flight
From earth full twice a planetary height.
There all the clouds, condensed, two columns raise
Distinct with orient veins, and golden blaze:
One fix'd on earth, and one in sea, and round
Its ample foot the swelling billows sound.
These an immeasurable arch support,
The grand tribunal of this awful court.
Sheets of bright azure, from the purest sky,
Stream from the crystal arch, and round the columns fly.
Death, wrapp'd in chains, low at the basis lies,
And on the point of his own arrow dies.
Here high-enthroned the' eternal Judge is placed,
With all the grandeur of His Godhead graced;
Stars on His robes in beauteous order meet,
And the sun burns beneath His awful feet.
Now an archangel eminently bright,
From off his silver staff of wondrous height,
Unfurls the Christian flag, which waving flies,
And shuts and opens more than half the skies:
The cross so strong a red, it sheds a stain,
Where'er it floats, on earth, and air, and main;
Flushes the hill, and sets on fire the wood,
And turns the deep-dyed ocean into blood.
O formidable Glory! dreadful bright!
Refulgent torture to the guilty sight.
Ah, turn, unwary Muse, nor dare reveal
What horrid thoughts with the polluted dwell.
Say not, (to make the Sun shrink in his beam,)
Dare not affirm, they wish it all a dream;
21
Wish, or their souls may with their limbs decay,
Or God be spoil'd of His eternal sway.
But rather, if thou know'st the means, unfold
How they with transport might the scene behold.
Ah how, but by repentance, by a mind
Quick and severe its own offence to find;
By tears, and groans, and never-ceasing care,
And all the pious violence of prayer?
Thus then, with fervency till now unknown,
I cast my heart before the' eternal throne,
In this great temple, which the skies surround,
For homage to its Lord a narrow bound:``O Thou! whose balance does the mountains weigh,
Whose will the wild tumultuous seas obey,
Whose breath can turn those watery worlds to flame,
That flame to tempest, and that tempest tame;
Earth's meanest son, all trembling, prostrate falls,
And on the Boundless of Thy goodness calls.
``O give the winds all past offence to sweep,
To scatter wide, or bury in the deep!
Thy power, my weakness, may I ever see,
And wholly dedicate my soul to Thee.
Reign o'er my will; my passions ebb and flow
At Thy command, nor human motive know.
If anger boil, let anger be my praise,
And sin the graceful indignation raise.
My love be warm to succour the distress'd,
And lift the burden from the soul oppress'd.
O may my understanding ever read
This glorious volume, which Thy wisdom made!
Who decks the maiden Spring with flowery pride?
Who calls forth Summer, like a sparkling bride?
Who joys the mother Autumn's bed to crown,
And bids old Winter lay her honours down?
Not the great Ottoman, or greater Czar,
Not Europe's arbitress of peace and war.
May sea and land, and earth and heaven, be join'd,
To bring the' eternal Author to my mind!
When oceans roar, or awful thunders roll,
22
May thoughts of Thy dread vengeance shake my soul!
When earth's in bloom, or planets proudly shine,
Adore, my heart, the Majesty Divine!
``Through every scene of life, or peace or war,
Plenty or want, Thy glory be my care!
Shine we in arms? or sing beneath our vine?
Thine is the vintage, and the conquest Thine:
Thy pleasure points the shaft, and bends the bow;
The cluster blasts, or bids it brightly glow:
'Tis Thou that lead'st our powerful armies forth,
And giv'st great Anne Thy sceptre o'er the north.
``Grant I may ever, at the morning ray,
Open with prayer the consecrated day;
Tune Thy great praise, and bid my soul arise,
And with the mounting sun ascend the skies:
As that advances, let my zeal improve,
And glow with ardour of consummate love;
Nor cease at eve, but with the setting sun
My endless worship shall be still begun.
``And O! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
When this world's shut, and awful planets rise,
Call on our minds, and raise them to the skies;
Compose our souls with a less dazzling sight,
And show all nature in a milder light;
How every boisterous thought in calms subsides!
How the smooth'd spirit into goodness glides!
O how Divine! to tread the Milky Way,
To the bright palace of the Lord of Day;
His court admire, or for His favour sue,
Or leagues of friendship with His saints renew;
Pleased to look down, and see the world asleep,
While I long vigils to its Founder keep!
``Canst Thou not shake the centre? O control,
Subdue by force, the rebel in my soul!
Thou, who canst still the raging of the flood,
Restrain the various tumults of my blood;
Teach me, with equal firmness, to sustain
23
Alluring pleasure, and assaulting pain.
O may I pant for Thee in each desire!
And with strong faith foment the holy fire!
Stretch out my soul in hope, and grasp the prize
Which in Eternity's deep bosom lies!
At the great day of recompence behold,
Devoid of fear, the fatal book unfold!
Then, wafted upward to the blissful seat,
From age to age my grateful song repeat;
My Light, my Life, my God, my Saviour see,
And rival angels in the praise of Thee!''
~ Edward Young,#NFDB
650:Beauty And The Beast
A Merchant, who by generous pains
Prospered in honourable gains,
Could boast, his wealth and fame to share,
Three manly Sons, three Daughters fair;
With these he felt supremely blest.His latest born surpass'd the rest:
She was so gentle, good and kind,
So fair in feature, form, and mind,
So constant too in filial duty,
The neighbours called her Little Beauty!
And when fair childhood's days were run,
That title still she wore and won;
Lovelier as older still she grew,
Improv'd in grace and goodness too.Her elder Sisters, gay and vain,
View'd her with envy and disdain,
Toss'd up their heads with haughty air;
Dress, Fashion, Pleasure, all their care.
'Twas thus, improving and improv'd;
Loving, and worthy to be lov'd,
Sprightly, yet grave, each circling day
Saw Beauty innocently gay.
Thus smooth the May-like moments past;
Blest times! but soon by clouds o'ercast!
Sudden as winds that madd'ning sweep
The foaming surface of the deep,
Vast treasures, trusted to the wave,
Were buried in the billowy grave!
Our Merchant, late of boundless store,
Saw Famine hasting to his door.
With willing hand and ready grace,
Mild Beauty takes the Servant's place;
Rose with the sun to household cares,
22
And morn's repast with zeal prepares,
The wholesome meal, the cheerful fire:
What cannot filial love inspire?
And when the task of day was done,
Suspended till the rising sun,
Music and song the hours employ'd,
As more deserv'd, the more enjoy'd;
Till Industry, with Pastime join'd,
Refresh'd the body and the mind;
And when the groupe retir'd to rest,
Father and Brothers Beauty blest.
Not so the Sisters; as before
'Twas rich and idle, now 'twas poor.
In shabby finery array'd,
They still affected a parade:
While both insulted gentle Beauty,
Unwearied in the housewife's duty;
They mock'd her robe of modest brown,
And view'd her with a taunting frown;
Yet scarce could hold their rage to see
The blithe effects of Industry.
In this retreat a year had past,
When happier tidings came at last,
And in the Merchant's smile appear'd
Prospects that all the Cotters cheer'd:
A letter came; its purport good;
Part of his ventures brav'd the flood:
'With speed,' said he, 'I must to town,
'And what, my girls, must I bring down?'
The envious Sisters, all confusion,
Commissions gave in wild profusion;
Caps, hats, and bonnets, bracelets, broaches,
To cram the pockets of the coaches,
With laces, linens, to complete
The order, and to fill the seat.
Such wants and wishes now appear'd,
23
To make them larger Beauty fear'd;
Yet lest her silence might produce
From jealous Sisters more abuse,
Considerately good, she chose,
The emblem of herself,-a Rose.
The good man on his journey went,
His thoughts on generous Beauty bent.
'If Heav'n,' he said, and breath'd a prayer,
'If Heav'n that tender child should spare,
'Whate'er my lot, I must be bless'd,
'I must be rich:'-he wept the rest.
Timely such feelings!-Fortune still,
Unkind and niggard, crost his will.
Of all his hopes, alas, the gains
Were far o'erbalanc'd by the pains;
For after a long tedious round,
He had to measure back his ground.
A short day's travel from his Cot,
New misadventures were his lot;
Dark grew the air, the wind blew high,
And spoke the gathering tempest nigh;
Hail, snow, and night-fog join'd their force,
Bewildering rider and his horse.
Dismay'd, perplext, the road they crost,
And in the dubious maze were lost.
When glimmering through the vapours drear,
A taper shew'd a dwelling near.
And guess our Merchant's glad surprise,
When a rich palace seemed to rise
As on he mov'd! The knee be bent,
Thankful to Heaven; then nearer went.
But, O! how much his wonder grew,
When nothing living met his view!Entering a splendid hall, he found,
24
With every luxury around,
A blazing fire, a plenteous board,
A costly cellaret, well stor'd,
All open'd wide, as if to say,
'Stranger, refresh thee on thy way!'
The Merchant to the fire drew near,
Deeming the owner would appear,
And pardon one who, drench'd in rain,
Unask'd, had ventured to remain.
The court-yard clock had number'd seven,
When first he came; but when eleven
Struck on his ear as mute he sate,
It sounded like the knoll of Fate.
And yet so hungry was he grown,
He pick'd a capon to the bone;
And as choice wines before him stood,
He needs must taste if they were good:
So much he felt his spirits cheer'dThe more he drank, the less he fear'd.
Now bolder grown, he pac'd along,
(Still hoping he might do no wrong),
When, entering at a gilded door,
High-rais'd upon a sumptuous floor,
A sofa shew'd all Persia's pride,
And each magnificence beside:
So down at once the Merchant lay,
Tir'd with the wonders of the day.
But had it been a rushy bed,
Tuck'd in the corner of a shed,
With no less joy had it been press'd:
The good man pray'd, and sank to rest.
Nor woke he till the noon of day;
And as he thus enchanted lay,
'Now for my storm-sopp'd clothes,' he cries:
25
When lo! a suit complete he spies;
'Yes, 'tis all fairy-work, no doubt,
'By gentle Pity brought about!'
Tenfold, when risen, amazement grew;
For bursting on his gazing view,
Instead of snow, he saw fair bowers
In all the pride of summer flowers.
Entering again the hall, behold,
Serv'd up in silver, pearl, and gold,
A breakfast, form'd of all things rare,
As if Queen Mab herself were there.
As now he past, with spirits gay,
A shower of Roses strew'd the way,
E'en to his hand the branches bent:
'One of these boughs-I go content!
'Beauty, dear Beauty-thy request
'If I may bear away, I'm blest.'
The Merchant pull'd-the branches broke!A hideous growling while he spoke,
Assail'd his startled ears; and then
A frightful Beast, as from a den,
Rushing to view, exclaimed, 'Ingrate!
'That stolen branch has seal'd thy fate.
'All that my castle own'd was thine,
'My food, my fire, my bed, my wine:
'Thou robb'st my Rose-trees in return,
'For this, base Plunderer, thou shalt mourn!'
'My Lord, I swear upon my knees,
'I did not mean to harm your trees;
'But a lov'd Daughter, fair as spring,
'Intreated me a Rose to bring;
'O didst thou know, my lord, the Maid!'-
'I am no Lord,' Beast angry said,
'And so no flattery!-but know,
'If, on your oath before you go,
'Within three wasted Moons you here
26
'Cause that lov'd Daughter to appear,
'And visit Beast a volunteer
'To suffer for thee, thou mayest live:'Speak not!-do this!-and I forgive.'
Mute and deprest the Merchant fled,
Unhappy traveller, evil sped!
Beauty was first her sire to meet,
Springing impatient from her seat;
Her Brothers next assembled round;
Her straying Sisters soon were found.
While yet the Father fondly press'd
The Child of Duty to his Breast,'Accept these Roses, ill-starr'd Maid!
'For thee thy Father's life is paid.'
The Merchant told the tale of Beast;
And loud lamentings, when he ceas'd,
From both the jealous Sisters broke,
As thus with taunting rage they spoke:
'And so thou kill'st thy Father, Miss,
'Proud, sinful creature, heardst thou this?
'We only wish'd a few new clothes;
'Beauty, forsooth, must have her Rose!
'Yet, harden'd Wretch, her eyes are dry,
'Tho' for her Pride our Sire must die!'
'Die! Not for worlds!' exclaim'd the Maid;
'Beast kindly will take me instead:
'And O, a thousand deaths I'd prove
'To shew my Father how I love!'
The Brothers cried, 'Let us away,
'We'll perish, or the Monster slay.'
'Vain hope, my gen'rous Sons, his power
'Can troops of men and horse devour:
'Your offer, Beauty, moves my soul;
'But no man can his fate controul:
27
'Mine was the fault; you, Love, are free;
'And mine the punishment shall be.'
Beauty was firm! the Sire caress'd
Again his Darling to his breast;
With blended love and awe survey'd,
And each good Brother blest the Maid!
Three months elaps'd, her Father's heart
Heav'd high, as she prepar'd to part;
The Sisters try'd a tear to force,
While Beauty smil'd as she took horse;
Yet smil'd thro' many a generous tear,
To find the parting moment near!
And just as evening's shades came on,
The splendid Palace court they won.
Beauty, now lost in wonder all,
Gain'd with her Sire the spacious hall;
Where, of the costliest viands made,
Behold, a sumptuous table laid!
The Merchant, sickening at the sight,
Sat down with looks of dire affright,
But nothing touch'd; tho' Beauty prest,
And strove to lull his fears to rest.
Just as she spoke, a hideous noise
Announc'd the growling monster's voice.
And now Beast suddenly stalk'd forth,
While Beauty well nigh sank to earth:
Scarce could she conquer her alarms,
Tho' folded in a father's arms.
Grim Beast first question'd fierce, if she
Had hither journey'd willingly?
'Yes,' Beauty cried-in trembling tone:
'That's kind,' said Beast, and thus went on'Good Merchant, at to-morrow's dawn,
'I charge and warn you to be gone!
'And further, on life's penalty,
'Dare not again to visit me.
'Beauty, farewell!' he now withdrew,
As she return'd the dread adieu.
28
Each then their separate pillow prest,
And slumber clos'd their eyes in rest.
As zephyr light, from magic sleep,
Soon as the sun began to peep,
Sprang Beauty; and now took her way
To where her anguish'd father lay,But envious time stole swiftly on;
'Begone! lov'd Father! ah! begone!
'The early dew now gems the thorn,
'The sun-beams gain upon the morn.
'Haste, Father, haste! Heaven guards the good!'
In wonder rapt the Merchant stood;
And while dread fears his thoughts employ,
A child so generous still was joy.
'My Father's safe!' she cried, 'blest Heaven!
'The rest is light, this bounty given.'
She now survey'd th' enchanting scene,
Sweet gardens of eternal green;
Mirrors, and chandeliers of glass,
And diamonds bright which those surpass;
All these her admiration gain'd;
But how was her attention chain'd,
When she in golden letters trac'd,
High o'er an arch of emeralds plac'd,
'Beauty's apartment! Enter, blest!
'This, but an earnest of the rest!'
The fair one was rejoic'd to find,
Beast studied less her eye, than mind.
But, wishing still a nearer view,
Forth from the shelves a book she drew,
In whose first page, in lines of gold,
She might heart-easing words behold:
'Welcome Beauty, banish fear!
'You are Queen, and Mistress here:
29
'Speak your wishes, speak your will,
'Swift obedience meets them still.'
'Alas!' said she, with heartfelt sighs,
The daughter rushing to her eyes,
'There's nothing I so much desire,
'As to behold my tender Sire.'
Beauty had scarce her wish express'd,
When it was granted by the Beast:
A wond'rous mirror to her eye,
Brought all her cottage family.
Here her good Brothers at their toil,
For still they dress'd the grateful soil;
And there with pity she perceiv'd,
How much for her the Merchant griev'd;
How much her Sisters felt delight
To know her banish'd from their sight,
Altho' with voice and looks of guile,
Their bosoms full of joy the while,
They labour'd hard to force a tear,
And imitate a grief sincere.
At noon's repast, she heard a sound
Breathing unseen sweet music round;
But when the evening board was spread,
The voice of Beast recall'd her dread:
'May I observe you sup?' he said;
'Ah, tremble not; your will is law;
'One question answer'd, I withdraw.'Am I not hideous to your eyes?'
'Your temper's sweet,' she mild replies.
'Yes, but I'm ugly, have no sense:''That's better far, than vain pretence.''Try to be happy, and at ease,'
Sigh'd Beast, 'as I will try to please.''Your outward form is scarcely seen
'Since I arriv'd, so kind you've been.'
30
One quarter of the rolling year,
No other living creature near,
Beauty with Beast had past serene,
Save some sad hours that stole between.
That she her Father's life had sav'd,
Upon her heart of hearts was grav'd:
While yet she view'd the Beast with dread,
This was the balm that conscience shed.
But now a second solace grew,
Whose cause e'en conscience scarcely knew.
Here on a Monster's mercy cast,Yet, when her first dire fears were past,
She found that Monster, timid, mild,
Led like the lion by the child.
Custom and kindness banish'd fear;
Beauty oft wish'd that Beast were near.
Nine was the chosen hour that Beast
Constant attended Beauty's feast,
Yet ne'er presum'd to touch the food,
Sat humble, or submissive stood,
Or, audience crav'd, respectful spoke,
Nor aim'd at wit, or ribald joke,
But oftner bent the raptur'd ear
Or ravish'd eye, to see or hear.
And if th' appointed hour pass'd by,
'Twas marked by Beauty with a sigh.
'Swear not to leave me,' sigh'd the Beast:
'I swear'-for now her fears were ceas'd,
'And willing swear,-so now and then
'I might my Father see again'One little week-he's now alone.'
'Granted!' quoth Beast: your will be done!'
'Your Ring upon the table lay
'At night,-you're there at peep of day:
'But oh,-remember, or I die!'
He gaz'd, and went without reply.
At early morn, she rang to rise;
31
The Maid beholds with glad surprise:
Summons her Father to her side,
Who, kneeling and embracing, cried,
With rapture and devotion wild,
'O bless'd be Heaven, and blest my Child!'
Beauty the Father now address'd,
And strait to see her Sisters press'd.
They both were married, and both prov'd
Neither was happy or belov'd.
And when she told them she was blest
With days of ease, and nights of rest;
To hide the malice of the soul,
Into the garden sly they stole,
And there in floods of tears they vent
Their hate, and feel its punishment.
'If,' said the eldest, 'you agree,
'We'll make that wench more curs'd than we!
'I have a plot, my sister dear:
'More than her week let's keep her here.
'No more with Monster shall she sup,
'Who, in his rage, shall eat her up.'
And now such art they both employ'd,
While Beauty wept, yet was o'erjoy'd;
And when the stated hour was come,'Ah! can you quit so soon your home?'
Eager they question'd-tore their hairAnd look'd the Pictures of Despair.
Beauty, tho' blushing at delay,
Promis'd another week to stay.
Meantime, altho' she err'd from love,
Her conscious heart could ill approve'Thy vow was giv'n, thy vow was broke!'
Thus Conscience to her bosom spoke.
Thoughts such as these assail'd her breast,
32
And a sad vision broke her rest!
The palace-garden was the place,
Which her imaginations trace:
There, on a lawn, as if to die,
She saw poor Beast extended lie,
Reproaching with his latest breath
Beauty's ingratitude in death.
Rous'd from her sleep, the contrite Maid
The Ring upon her toilette laid,
And Conscience gave a sound repose:
Balmy her rest; and when she rose,
The palace of poor Beast she found,
Groves, gardens, arbours, blooming round:
The morning shone in summer's pride,
Beauty for fairer evening sigh'dSigh'd for the object once so fear'd,
By worth, by kindness now endear'd.
But when had past the wonted hour,
And no wish'd footstep pass'd the door;When yet another hour lagg'd on,Then to the wide canal she ran:
'For there in vision,' said the fair,
'Was stretch'd the object of my care!'
And there, alas! he now was found,
Extended on the flowery ground.
'Ah! fond and faithful Beast,' she cried,
'Hast thou for me perfidious died?
'O! could'st thou hear my fervid prayer,
''Twould ease the anguish of despair.'
Beast open'd now his long-clos'd eyes,
And saw the fair with glad surprise.
'In my last moments you are sent;
'You pity, and I die content.'
'Thou shalt not die,' rejoin'd the Maid;
'O rather live to hate, upbraid'But no! my grievous fault forgive!
'I feel I can't without thee live.'
33
Beauty had scarce pronounc'd the word,
When magic sounds of sweet accord,
The music of celestial spheres
As if from seraph harps she hears;
Amaz'd she stood,-new wonders grew;
For Beast now vanish'd from her view;
And, lo! a Prince, with every grace
Of figure, fashion, feature, face,
In whom all charms of Nature meet,
Was kneeling at fair Beauty's feet.
'But where is Beast?' still Beauty cried:
'Behold him here!' the Prince replied.
'Orasmyn, lady, is my name,
'In Persia not unknown to fame;
'Till this re-humanizing hour,
'The victim of a Fairy's pow'r;'Till a deliverer could be found,
'Who, while the accursed spell still bound,
'Could first endure, tho' with alarm,
'And break at last by love the charm!'
Beauty delighted gave her hand,
And bade the Prince her fate command;
The Prince now led through rooms of state,
Where Beauty's family await,
In bridal vestments all array'd,
By some superior power convey'd.
'Beauty,' pronounc'd a heavenly voice,
'Now take from me your princely choice.
'Virtue, to every good beside
'While wit and beauty were denied,
'Fix'd your pure heart! for which, unseen,
'I led your steps; and now a Queen,
'Seated on Persia's glittering throne,
''Tis mine and Virtue's task to crown!
'But as for you, ye Sisters vain,
34
'Still first and last in envy's train,
'Before fair Beauty's Palace-gate,
'Such Justice has decreed your fate,
'Transform'd to statues you must dwell,
'Curs'd with the single power, to feel'Unless by penitence and prayer'But this will ask long years of care,
'Of promise and performance too,
'A change of mind from false to true'A change I scarce can hope from you.'
Instant the Power stretch'd forth her wand,
Her sceptre of supreme command,
When lo! at her resistless call,
Gay crowds came thronging through the hall,
The blissful hour to celebrate
When Persia's Prince resum'd his state:
At once the dome with music rang,
And virgins danc'd, and minstrels sang;
It was the Jubilee of Youth,
Led on by Virtue and by Truth;
The pride of Persia fill'd the scene,
To hail Orasmyn and his Queen!
THE END
~ Charles Lamb,#NFDB
651:The Deserted Garden
I know a village in a far-off land
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain
With tinted walls a space on either hand
And fed by many an olive-darkened lane
The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band
Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,
Winds off to that dim corner of the skies
Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.
Here, among trees whose overhanging shade
Strews petals on the little droves below,
Pattering townward in the morning weighed
With greens from many an upland garden-row,
Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed
Its scalloped edge, and passers to and fro
Heard never from beyond its crumbling height
Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.
But here where little lizards bask and blink
The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run,
At whose red bells the humming bird to drink
Stops oft before his garden feast is done;
And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink
That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun,
Have covered part of this old wall, entwined
With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.
And crowning other parts the wild white rose
Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees.
Above the old abandoned orchard shows
And all within beneath the dense-set trees,
Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows,
That settled in its wavy depth one sees
Grass melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between,
Down fading avenues of implicated green;
Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night
With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay;
Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white
94
Shine through the green and clustering apple-spray,
Such as the fairy-queen before her knight
Waved in old story, luring him away
Where round lost isles Hesperian billows break
Or towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake;
And under the deep grass blue hare-bells hide,
And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet,
Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied,
Sometime on pathway borders neatly set,
Now blossom through the brake on either side,
Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette,
With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees,
Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze,
That sprung like Hermes from his natal cave
In some blue rampart of the curving West,
Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave,
Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest,
Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples pave
Its placid floor; at length a long-loved guest,
He steals across this plot of pleasant ground,
Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound.
Here many a day right gladly have I sped,
Content amid the wavy plumes to lie,
And through the woven branches overhead
Watch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by,
And soaring birds make their dissolving bed
Far in the azure depths of summer sky,
Or nearer that small huntsman of the air,
The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair;
Pillowed at case to hear the merry tune
Of mating warblers in the boughs above
And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon
Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove
Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon
That like the voice of visionary love
Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze
(Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);
95
And, parting tangled bushes as I passed
Down beechen allies beautiful and dim,
Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last
My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim,
And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed
Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim.
Here, then, that magic summoning would cease,
Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.
And here where the blanched lilies of the vale
And violets and yellow star-flowers teem,
And pink and purple hyacinths exhale
Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream
My head would sink, from many an olden tale
Drawing imagination's fervid theme,
Or haply peopling this enchanting spot
Only with fair creations of fantastic thought.
For oft I think, in years long since gone by,
That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle hands
Stored all this bowery bliss to beautify
The paradise of some unsung romance;
Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye,
'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance,
Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and share
Their simple loveliness with the enamored air.
Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers decked
The altars of First Love were these green ways,
These lawns and verdurous brakes forever flecked
With the warm sunshine of midsummer days;
Oft where the long straight allies intersect
And marble seats surround the open space,
Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand,
Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand.
When twilight deepened, in the gathering shade
Beneath that old titanic cypress row,
Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade
Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below,
Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed,
Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow
96
Grew less and patterning the garden floor
Faint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more.
And the strange tempest that a touch imparts
Through the mid fibre of the molten frame,
When the sweet flesh in early youth asserts
Its heyday verve and little hints enflame,
Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts
Welled the soft word, and many a tender name
Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained
And the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained.
Love's soul that is the depth of starry skies
Set in the splendor of one upturned face
To beam adorably through half-closed eyes;
Love's body where the breadth of summer days
And all the beauty earth and air comprise
Come to the compass of an arm's embrace,
To burn a moment on impassioned lips
And yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips,
They knew; and here where morning-glories cling
Round carven forms of carefullest artifice,
They made a bower where every outward thing
Should comment on the cause of their own bliss;
With flowers of liveliest hue encompassing
That flower that the beloved body is
That rose that for the banquet of Love's bee
Has budded all the æons of past eternity.
But their choice seat was where the garden wall,
Crowning a little summit, far and near,
Looks over tufted treetops onto all
The pleasant outer country; rising here
From rustling foliage where cuckoos call
On summer evenings, stands a belvedere,
Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrun
With flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun.
Still round the turrets of this antique tower
The bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown,
Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower,
97
Wreathing the lower surface further down,
Hide the old plaster in a very shower
Of motley blossoms like a broidered gown.
Outside, ascending from the garden grove,
A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above.
And whoso mounts by this dismantled stair
Finds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed,
Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquare
Ringed all about with a twofold arcade.
Backward dense branches intercept the glare
Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade;
Eastward the level valley-plains expand,
Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.
For through that frame the ivied arches make,
Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye,
Frequent with hamlet grove, and lucent lake
Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie;
Far to the east where billowy mountains break
In surf of snow against a sapphire sky,
Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges,
Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes;
And over plain and far sierra spread
The fulgent rays of fading afternoon,
Showing each utmost peak and watershed
All clarified, each tassel and festoon
Of floating cloud embroidered overhead,
Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn,
Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free
In peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity.
Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair;
Love's tide that launched on with a blast too strong
Sweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare,
Baffling with fond illusion's siren-song,
Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger there
Far from Youth's glowing dream, bore them along,
With purple sail and steered by seraph hands
To isles resplendent in the sunset of romance.
98
And out of this old house a flowery fane,
A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome,
They built, and furnished it with gold and grain,
And bade all spirits of beauty hither come,
And wingéd Love to enter with his train
And bless their pillow, and in this his home
Make them his priests as Hero was of yore
In her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore.
Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought,
Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste,
Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought
With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced;
Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught,
And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed
To light the lounger on some low divan,
Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.
And there was spread, upon the ample floors,
Work of the Levantine's laborious loom,
Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores
Carpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom.
Each morn renewed, the garden's flowery stores
Blushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom,
And little birds through wicker doors left wide
Flew in to trill a space from the green world outside.
And there was many a dainty attitude,
Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed,
Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stood
Fain of the bath's delight, yet still afraid
Lest aught in that palatial solitude
Lurked of most menace to a helpless maid.
Therefore forever faltering she stands,
Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands.
Close by upon a beryl column, clad
In the fresh flower of adolescent grace,
They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad,
The nude Antinous. That gentle face,
Forever beautiful, forever sad,
Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze,
99
Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smile
At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile.
And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more,
Clustering their rosy bridal bed around,
Whose scented breadth a silken fabric wore
Broidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground,
Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus bore
Or Venus' bed in her enchanted mound,
While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes,
All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise.
'Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of,
Thither with one fair spirit to retire,
Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with Love
And feast on kisses to the heart's desire;
Where by a casement opening on a grove,
Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds' choir,
A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs,
Like Credhe at the window of her golden house.
Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay,
Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned,
She lies and dreams eternity away,
Above the treetops in Broceliande,
Sometimes at twilight when the woods are gray
And wolf-packs howl far out across the lande,
Waking to love, while up behind the trees
The large midsummer moon lifts-even so loved these.
For here, their pleasure was to come and sit
Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west,
Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit
The long light slant across the green earth's breast,
And clouds upon the ranges opposite,
Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest,
Topple and break and fall in purple rain,
And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain.
Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flung
Across the luminous azure overhead,
Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung
100
The fragmentary rainbow's green and red.
Joy it was here to love and to be young,
To watch the sun sink to his western bed,
And streaming back out of their flaming core
The vesperal aurora's glorious banners soar.
Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn,
Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuli
That peeped above the mountain-tops would burn
Carmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high,
More delicate than sprays of maiden fern,
Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky,
Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night,
Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light.
And they would watch the first faint stars appear,
The blue East blend with the blue hills below,
As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws near
Into one pulse of fluid rapture grow.
New fragrance on the freshening atmosphere
Would steal with evening, and the sunset glow
Draw deeper down into the wondrous west
Round vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest.
So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore,
The snow-peaks fade to frosty, opaline,
To pearl the doméd clouds the mountains bore,
Where late the sun's effulgent fire had been
Showing as darkness deepened more and more
The incandescent lightnings flare within,
And Night that furls the lily in the glen
And twines impatient arms would fall, and then---and then . . .
Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town
With empty panniers on his little drove
Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown
Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove,
Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down
And voices singing through the leaves above
Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos
At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.
101
And he would pause under the garden wall,
Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain,
With all the sultry South in it, and all
Its importunity of love and pain;
And he would wait till the last passionate fall
Died on the night, and all was still again.
Then to his upland village wander home,
Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.
O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress,
Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays
Sweet opportunity for happiness
So brief, so passing beautiful---O days,
When to the heart's divine indulgences
All earth in smiling ministration pays
Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over,
What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!
The wake of color that follows her when May
Walks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned,
The deep horizons of a summer's day,
Fair cities, and the pleasures that abound
Where music calls, and crowds in bright array
Gather by night to find and to be found;
What were these worth or all delightful things
Without thine eyes to read their true interpretings!
For thee the mountains open glorious gates,
To thee white arms put out from orient skies,
Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits,
Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes,
Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fêtes
Eternity has travailed to devise;
Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last!
Another's turn prepares, another follows fast.
Yet not without one fond memorial
Let my sun set who found the world so fair!
Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronal
Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair,
Be thou my tablet on the temple wall!
Among the pious testimonials there,
102
Witness how sweetly on my heart as well
The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!
Speak of one then who had the lust to feel,
And, from the hues that far horizons take,
And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal,
Too deep to live for aught but life's sweet sake,
Whose only motive was the will to kneel
Where Beauty's purest benediction spake,
Who only coveted what grove and field
And sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield--A nympholept, through pleasant days and drear
Seeking his faultless adolescent dream,
A pilgrim down the paths that disappear
In mist and rainbows on the world's extreme,
A helpless voyager who all too near
The mouth of Life's fair flower-bordered stream,
Clutched at Love's single respite in his need
More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed--That coming one whose feet in other days
Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more
Than any purpose, felt the need to praise
And seek the angelic image to adore,
In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways
Counting what most makes life worth living for,
That so some relic may be his to see
How I loved these things too and they were dear to me.
I sometimes think a conscious happiness
Mantles through all the rose's sentient vine
When summer winds with myriad calyces
Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine;
I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less,
And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine
Are nerves through which that being drinks delight,
Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.
And such were theirs: the traveller without,
Pausing at night under the orchard trees,
Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt,
103
For through their song and in the murmuring breeze
It seemed angelic choirs were all about
Mingling in universal harmonies,
As though, responsive to the chords they woke,
All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.
And still they think a spirit haunts the place:
'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall
And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace
Their mimic constellations, if it fall
That one should see the moon rise through the lace
Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall,
That surely would he take great ill thereof
And famish in a fit of unexpressive love.
But this I know not, for what time the wain
Was loosened and the lily's petal furled,
Then I would rise, climb the old wall again,
And pausing look forth on the sundown world,
Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain,
The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled,
The poplar-bordered roads, and far away
Fair snowpeaks colored with the sun's last ray.
Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar
Faint song and preludes of the summer night;
Deep in the cloudless west the evening star
Hung 'twixt the orange and the emerald light;
From the dark vale where shades crepuscular
Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white,
Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell,
Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell.
~ Alan Seeger,#NFDB
652:Scene.Over Orcana. The house of Jules, who crosses its threshold with Phene: she is silent, on which Jules begins
Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you
Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,
If you'll not die: so, never die! Sit here
My work-room's single seat. I over-lean
This length of hair and lustrous front; they turn
Like an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, last
Your chinno, last your throat turns: 't is their scent
Pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever
This one way till I change, grow youI could
Change into you, beloved!
You by me,
And I by you; this is your hand in mine,
And side by side we sit: all's true. Thank God!
I have spoken: speak you!
O my life to come!
My Tydeus must be carved that's there in clay;
Yet how be carved, with you about the room?
Where must I place you? When I think that once
This room-full of rough block-work seemed my heaven
Without you! Shall I ever work again,
Get fairly into my old ways again,
Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait,
My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?
Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth
The live truth, passing and repassing me,
Sitting beside me?
Now speak!
Only first,
See, all your letters! Was't not well contrived?
Their hiding-place is Psyche's robe; she keeps
Your letters next her skin: which drops out foremost?
Ah,this that swam down like a first moonbeam
Into my world!
Again those eyes complete
Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow,
Of all my room holds; to return and rest
On me, with pity, yet some wonder too:
As if God bade some spirit plague a world,
And this were the one moment of surprise
And sorrow while she took her station, pausing
O'er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy!
What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told you of;
Let your first word to me rejoice them, too:
This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red
Bistre and azure by Bessarion's scribe
Read this line . . . no, shameHomer's be the Greek
First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!
This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type
With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and page,
To mark great places with due gratitude;
"He said, and on Antinous directed
"A bitter shaft" . . . a flower blots out the rest!
Again upon your search? My statues, then!
Ah, do not mind thatbetter that will look
When cast in bronzean Almaign Kaiser, that,
Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.
This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?
I thought you would have seen that here you sit
As I imagined you,Hippolyta,
Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.
Recall you this then? "Carve in bold relief"
So you commanded"carve, against I come,
"A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,
"Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,
"Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtle-branch.
"'Praise those who slew Hipparchus!' cry the guests,
"'While o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves
"'As erst above our champion: stand up, all!'"
See, I have laboured to express your thought.
Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms,
(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,
Only consenting at the branch's end
They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face,
The Praiser's, in the centre: who with eyes
Sightless, so bend they back to light inside
His brain where visionary forms throng up,
Sings, minding not that palpitating arch
Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine
From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off,
Violet and parsley crowns to trample on
Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,
Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.
But you must say a "well" to thatsay "well!"
Because you gazeam I fantastic, sweet?
Gaze like my very life's-stuff, marblemarbly
Even to the silence! Why, before I found
The real flesh Phene, I inured myself
To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff
For better nature's birth by means of art:
With me, each substance tended to one form
Of beautyto the human archetype.
On every side occurred suggestive germs
Of thatthe tree, the floweror take the fruit,
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,
Curved beewise o'er its bough; as rosy limbs,
Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
How I divined their capabilities!
From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk
That yields your outline to the air's embrace,
Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom;
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure
To cut its one confided thought clean out
Of all the world. But marble!'neath my tools
More pliable than jellyas it were
Some clear primordial creature dug from depths
In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself,
And whence all baser substance may be worked;
Refine it off to air, you may,condense it
Down to the diamond;is not metal there,
When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips?
Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,
Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?
Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised
By the swift implement sent home at once,
Flushes and glowings radiate and hover
About its track?
Phene? whatwhy is this?
That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!
Ah, you will dieI knew that you would die!
Phene begins, on his having long remained silent.
Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must
Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak
Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind
One half of it, beside; and do not care
For old Natalia now, nor any of them.
Oh, youwhat are you?if I do not try
To say the words Natalia made me learn,
To please your friends,it is to keep myself
Where your voice lifted me, by letting that
Proceed: but can it? Even you, perhaps,
Cannot take up, now you have once let fall,
The music's life, and me along with that
No, or you would! We'll stay, then, as we are:
Above the world.
You creature with the eyes!
If I could look for ever up to them,
As now you let me,I believe, all sin,
All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,
Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth
Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay
Never to overtake the rest of me,
All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,
Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself,
Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink,
Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so,
Above the world!
But you sink, for your eyes
Are alteringaltered! Stay"I love you, love" . . .
I could prevent it if I understood:
More of your words to me: was't in the tone
Or the words, your power?
Or stayI will repeat
Their speech, if that contents you! Only change
No more, and I shall find it presently
Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up.
Natalia threatened me that harm should follow
Unless I spoke their lesson to the end,
But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you.
Your friends,Natalia said they were your friends
And meant you well,because, I doubted it,
Observing (what was very strange to see)
On every face, so different in all else,
The same smile girls like me are used to bear,
But never men, men cannot stoop so low;
Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile,
That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit
Which seems to take possession of the world
And make of God a tame confederate,
Purveyor to their appetites . . . you know!
But still Natalia said they were your friends,
And they assented though they smiled the more,
And all came round me,that thin Englishman
With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest;
He held a paper"What we want," said he,
Ending some explanation to his friends
"Is something slow, involved and mystical,
"To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste
"And lure him on until, at innermost
"Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may findthis!
"As in the apple's core, the noisome fly:
"For insects on the rind are seen at once,
"And brushed aside as soon, but this is found
"Only when on the lips or loathing tongue."
And so he read what I have got by heart:
I'll speak it,"Do not die, love! I am yours."
Nois not that, or like that, part of words
Yourself began by speaking? Strange to lose
What cost such pains to learn! Is this more right?
I am a painter who cannot paint;
In my life, a devil rather than saint;
In my brain, as poor a creature too:
No end to all I cannot do!
Yet do one thing at least I can
Love a man or hate a man
Supremely: thus my lore began.
Through the Valley of Love I went,
In the lovingest spot to abide,
And just on the verge where I pitched my tent,
I found Hate dwelling beside.
(Let the Bridegroom ask what the painter meant,
Of his Bride, of the peerless Bride!)
And further, I traversed Hate's grove,
In the hatefullest nook to dwell;
But lo, where I flung myself prone, couched Love
Where the shadow threefold fell.
(The meaningthose black bride's-eyes above,
Not a painter's lip should tell!)
"And here," said he, "Jules probably will ask,
"'You have black eyes, Love,you are, sure enough,
"'My peerless bride,then do you tell indeed
"'What needs some explanation! What means this?'"
And I am to go on, without a word
So, I grew wise in Love and Hate,
From simple that I was of late.
Once, when I loved, I would enlace
Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and face
Of her I loved, in one embrace
As if by mere love I could love immensely!
Once, when I hated, I would plunge
My sword, and wipe with the first lunge
My foe's whole life out like a sponge
As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!
But now I am wiser, know better the fashion
How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:
And if I see cause to love more, hate more
Than ever man loved, ever hated before
And seek in the Valley of Love,
The nest, or the nook in Hate's Grove,
Where my soul may surely reach
The essence, nought less, of each,
The Hate of all Hates, the Love
Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove,
I find them the very warders
Each of the other's borders.
When I love most, Love is disguised
In Hate; and when Hate is surprised
In Love, then I hate most: ask
How Love smiles through Hate's iron casque,
Hate grins through Love's rose-braided mask,
And how, having hated thee,
I sought long and painfully
To reach thy heart, nor prick
The skin but pierce to the quick
Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight
By thy bridehow the painter Lutwyche can hate!
Jules interposes
Lutwyche! Who else? But all of them, no doubt,
Hated me: they at Venicepresently
Their turn, however! You I shall not meet:
If I dreamed, saying this would wake me.
Keep
What's here, the goldwe cannot meet again,
Consider! and the money was but meant
For two years' travel, which is over now,
All chance or hope or care or need of it.
Thisand what comes from selling these, my casts
And books and medals, except . . . let them go
Together, so the produce keeps you safe
Out of Natalia's clutches! If by chance
(For all's chance here) I should survive the gang
At Venice, root out all fifteen of them,
We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide.
[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing]
Give her but a least excuse to love me!
Whenwhere
Howcan this arm establish her above me,
If fortune fixed her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?
("Hist!"said Kate the Queen;
But "Oh!"cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'T is only a page that carols unseen,
"Crumbling your hounds their messes!")
Is she wronged?To the rescue of her honour,
My heart!
Is she poor?What costs it to be styled a donor?
Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!
("Nay, list!"bade Kate the Queen;
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'T is only a page that carols unseen,
"Fitting your hawks their jesses!")
[Pippa passes]
Jules resumes
What name was that the little girl sang forth?
Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced
The crown of Cyprus to be lady here
At Asolo, where still her memory stays,
And peasants sing how once a certain page
Pined for the grace of her so far above
His power of doing good to, "Kate the Queen
"She never could be wronged, be poor," he sighed,
"Need him to help her!"
Yes, a bitter thing
To see our lady above all need of us;
Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,
But the world looks so. If whoever loves
Must be, in some sort, god or worshipper,
The blessing or the blest one, queen or page,
Why should we always choose the page's part?
Here is a woman with utter need of me,
I find myself queen here, it seems!
How strange!
Look at the woman here with the new soul,
Like my own Psyche,fresh upon her lips
Alit, the visionary butterfly.
Waiting my word to enter and make bright,
Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.
This body had no soul before, but slept
Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free
From taint or foul with stain, as outward things
Fastened their image on its passiveness:
Now, it will wake, feel, liveor die again!
Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be Artand further, to evoke a soul
From form be nothing? This new soul is mine!
Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do?save
A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death
Without me, from their hooting. Oh, to hear
God's voice plain as I heard it first, before
They broke in with their laughter! I heard them
Henceforth, not God.
To AnconaGreecesome isle!
I wanted silence only; there is clay
Everywhere. One may do whate'er one likes
In Art: the only thing is, to make sure
That one does like itwhich takes pains to know.
Scatter all this, my Phenethis mad dream!
Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,
What the whole world except our lovemy own,
Own Phene? But I told you, did I not,
Ere night we travel for your landsome isle
With the sea's silence on it? Stand aside
I do but break these paltry models up
To begin Art afresh. Meet Lutwyche, I
And save him from my statue meeting him?
Some unspected isle in the far seas!
Like a god going through his world, there stands
One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:
And you are ever by me while I gaze
Are in my arms as nowas nowas now!
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from Orcana to the Turret. Two or three of the Austrian Police loitering with Bluphocks, an English vagabond, just in view of the Turret.
Bluphocks
So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop's Intendant's money shall be honestly earned:now, don't make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop's name into the business; we know he can have nothing to do with such horrors: we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. Oh were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas ****, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to, was the Armenian: for I have travelled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over a venerable house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity: 't was the Grand Rabbi's abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac (these are vowels, you dogs,follow my stick's end in the mudCelarent, Darii, Ferio!) and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand, a, b, c,I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you'll say"How Moses hocus-pocussed Egypt's land with fly and locust,"or, "How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish,"or, "How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his **** returned a salaam," In no wise! "ShackabrackBoachsomebody or other Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger ofStolen Goods! " So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridgemean to live soand dieAs some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon's wherry, With food for both worlds, under and upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate's supper, And never an obolus . . . (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his IntendantI possess a burning pocketful of zwanzigers) . . . To pay the Stygian Ferry!
1st Policeman
There is the girl, then; go and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. [To the rest.]
I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while: not a shutter unclosed since morning!
2nd Policeman
Old Luca Gaddi's, that owns the silkmills here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts. Never molest such a household, they mean well.
Bluphocks
Only, cannot you tell me something of this little Pippa, I must have to do with? One could make something of that name. Pippathat is, short for Felippa rhyming to Panurge consults HertrippaBelievest thou, King Agrippa? Something might be done with that name.
2nd Policeman
Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe musk-melon would not be dear at half a zwanziger! Leave this fooling, and look out; the afternoon's over or nearly so.
3rd Policeman
Where in this passport of Signor Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? What's there beside a simple signature? (That English fool's busy watching.)
2nd Policeman
Flourish all round"Put all possible obstacles in his way;" oblong dot at the end"Detain him till further advices reach you;" scratch at bottom "Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above;" ink-spirt on right-hand side (which is the case here)"Arrest him at once." Why and wherefore, I don't concern myself, but my instructions amount to this: if Signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna well and good, the passport deposed with us for our visa is really for his own use, they have misinformed the Office, and he means well; but let him stay over to-nightthere has been the pretence we suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and holding intelligence with the Carbonari are correct, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the turret with his mother, no doubt.
~ Robert Browning, Pippa Passes - Part II - Noon
,#NFDB
653:The Emigrants: Book Ii
Scene, on an Eminence on one of those Downs, which afford to the South a
view of the Sea; to the North of the Weald of Sussex. Time, an Afternoon in
April, 1793.
Long wintry months are past; the Moon that now
Lights her pale crescent even at noon, has made
Four times her revolution; since with step,
Mournful and slow, along the wave-worn cliff,
Pensive I took my solitary way,
Lost in despondence, while contemplating
Not my own wayward destiny alone,
(Hard as it is, and difficult to bear!)
But in beholding the unhappy lot
Of the lorn Exiles; who, amid the storms
Of wild disastrous Anarchy, are thrown,
Like shipwreck'd sufferers, on England's coast,
To see, perhaps, no more their native land,
Where Desolation riots: They, like me,
From fairer hopes and happier prospects driven,
Shrink from the future, and regret the past.
But on this Upland scene, while April comes,
With fragrant airs, to fan my throbbing breast,
Fain would I snatch an interval from Care,
That weighs my wearied spirit down to earth;
Courting, once more, the influence of Hope
(For "Hope" still waits upon the flowery prime)
As here I mark Spring's humid hand unfold
The early leaves that fear capricious winds,
While, even on shelter'd banks, the timid flowers
Give, half reluctantly, their warmer hues
To mingle with the primroses' pale stars.
No shade the leafless copses yet afford,
Nor hide the mossy labours of the Thrush,
That, startled, darts across the narrow path;
But quickly re-assur'd, resumes his talk,
Or adds his louder notes to those that rise
From yonder tufted brake; where the white buds
Of the first thorn are mingled with the leaves
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Of that which blossoms on the brow of May.
Ah! 'twill not be:---- So many years have pass'd,
Since, on my native hills, I learn'd to gaze
On these delightful landscapes; and those years
Have taught me so much sorrow, that my soul
Feels not the joy reviving Nature brings;
But, in dark retrospect, dejected dwells
On human follies, and on human woes.---What is the promise of the infant year,
The lively verdure, or the bursting blooms,
To those, who shrink from horrors such as War
Spreads o'er the affrighted world? With swimming eye,
Back on the past they throw their mournful looks,
And see the Temple, which they fondly hop'd
Reason would raise to Liberty, destroy'd
By ruffian hands; while, on the ruin'd mass,
Flush'd with hot blood, the Fiend of Discord sits
In savage triumph; mocking every plea
Of policy and justice, as she shews
The headless corse of one, whose only crime
Was being born a Monarch--Mercy turns,
From spectacle so dire, her swol'n eyes;
And Liberty, with calm, unruffled brow
Magnanimous, as conscious of her strength
In Reason's panoply, scorns to distain
Her righteous cause with carnage, and resigns
To Fraud and Anarchy the infuriate crowd.---What is the promise of the infant year
To those, who (while the poor but peaceful hind
Pens, unmolested, the encreasing flock
Of his rich master in this sea-fenc'd isle)
Survey, in neighbouring countries, scenes that make
The sick heart shudder; and the Man, who thinks,
Blush for his species? There the trumpet's voice
Drowns the soft warbling of the woodland choir;
And violets, lurking in their turfy beds
Beneath the flow'ring thorn, are stain'd with blood.
There fall, at once, the spoiler and the spoil'd;
While War, wide-ravaging, annihilates
The hope of cultivation; gives to Fiends,
The meagre, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,
The blasted land--There, taunting in the van
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Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;
And, in the ranks, "1 Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
"Crouch for employment."--Lo! the suffering world,
Torn by the fearful conflict, shrinks, amaz'd,
From Freedom's name, usurp'd and misapplied,
And, cow'ring to the purple Tyrant's rod,
Deems that the lesser ill--Deluded Men!
Ere ye prophane her ever-glorious name,
Or catalogue the thousands that have bled
Resisting her; or those, who greatly died
Martyrs to Liberty --revert awhile
To the black scroll, that tells of regal crimes
Committed to destroy her; rather count
The hecatombs of victims, who have fallen
Beneath a single despot; or who gave
Their wasted lives for some disputed claim
Between anointed robbers: 2 Monsters both!
"3 Oh! Polish'd perturbation--golden care!"
So strangely coveted by feeble Man
To lift him o'er his fellows;--Toy, for which
Such showers of blood have drench'd th' affrighted earth-Unfortunate his lot, whose luckless head
Thy jewel'd circlet, lin'd with thorns, has bound;
And who, by custom's laws, obtains from thee
Hereditary right to rule, uncheck'd,
Submissive myriads: for untemper'd power,
Like steel ill form'd, injures the hand
It promis'd to protect--Unhappy France!
If e'er thy lilies, trampled now in dust,
And blood-bespotted, shall again revive
In silver splendour, may the wreath be wov'n
By voluntary hands; and Freemen, such
As England's self might boast, unite to place
The guarded diadem on his fair brow,
Where Loyalty may join with Liberty
To fix it firmly.--In the rugged school
Of stern Adversity so early train'd,
His future life, perchance, may emulate
That of the brave Bernois 4 , so justly call'd
The darling of his people; who rever'd
The Warrior less, than they ador'd the Man!
But ne'er may Party Rage, perverse and blind,
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And base Venality, prevail to raise
To public trust, a wretch, whose private vice
Makes even the wildest profligate recoil;
And who, with hireling ruffians leagu'd, has burst
The laws of Nature and Humanity!
Wading, beneath the Patriot's specious mask,
And in Equality's illusive name,
To empire thro' a stream of kindred blood-Innocent prisoner!--most unhappy heir
Of fatal greatness, who art suffering now
For all the crimes and follies of thy race;
Better for thee, if o'er thy baby brow
The regal mischief never had been held:
Then, in an humble sphere, perhaps content,
Thou hadst been free and joyous on the heights
Of Pyrennean mountains, shagg'd with woods
Of chesnut, pine, and oak: as on these hills
Is yonder little thoughtless shepherd lad,
Who, on the slope abrupt of downy turf
Reclin'd in playful indolence, sends off
The chalky ball, quick bounding far below;
While, half forgetful of his simple task,
Hardly his length'ning shadow, or the bells'
Slow tinkling of his flock, that supping tend
To the brown fallows in the vale beneath,
Where nightly it is folded, from his sport
Recal the happy idler.--While I gaze
On his gay vacant countenance, my thoughts
Compare with his obscure, laborious lot,
Thine, most unfortunate, imperial Boy!
Who round thy sullen prison daily hear'st
The savage howl of Murder, as it seeks
Thy unoffending life: while sad within
Thy wretched Mother, petrified with grief,
Views thee with stony eyes, and cannot weep!-Ah! much I mourn thy sorrows, hapless Queen!
And deem thy expiation made to Heaven
For every fault, to which Prosperity
Betray'd thee, when it plac'd thee on a throne
Where boundless power was thine, and thou wert rais'd
High (as it seem'd) above the envious reach
Of destiny! Whate'er thy errors were,
167
Be they no more remember'd; tho' the rage
Of Party swell'd them to such crimes, as bade
Compassion stifle every sigh that rose
For thy disastrous lot--More than enough
Thou hast endur'd; and every English heart,
Ev'n those, that highest beat in Freedom's cause,
Disclaim as base, and of that cause unworthy,
The Vengeance, or the Fear, that makes thee still
A miserable prisoner!--Ah! who knows,
From sad experience, more than I, to feel
For thy desponding spirit, as it sinks
Beneath procrastinated fears for those
More dear to thee than life! But eminence
Of misery is thine, as once of joy;
And, as we view the strange vicissitude,
We ask anew, where happiness is found?-----Alas! in rural life, where youthful dreams
See the Arcadia that Romance describes,
Not even Content resides!--In yon low hut
Of clay and thatch, where rises the grey smoke
Of smold'ring turf, cut from the adjoining moor,
The labourer, its inhabitant, who toils
From the first dawn of twilight, till the Sun
Sinks in the rosy waters of the West,
Finds that with poverty it cannot dwell;
For bread, and scanty bread, is all he earns
For him and for his household--Should Disease,
Born of chill wintry rains, arrest his arm,
Then, thro' his patch'd and straw-stuff'd casement, peeps
The squalid figure of extremest Want;
And from the Parish the reluctant dole,
Dealt by th' unfeeling farmer, hardly saves
The ling'ring spark of life from cold extinction:
Then the bright Sun of Spring, that smiling bids
All other animals rejoice, beholds,
Crept from his pallet, the emaciate wretch
Attempt, with feeble effort, to resume
Some heavy task, above his wasted strength,
Turning his wistful looks (how much in vain!)
To the deserted mansion, where no more
The owner (gone to gayer scenes) resides,
Who made even luxury, Virtue; while he gave
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The scatter'd crumbs to honest Poverty.-But, tho' the landscape be too oft deform'd
By figures such as these, yet Peace is here,
And o'er our vallies, cloath'd with springing corn,
No hostile hoof shall trample, nor fierce flames
Wither the wood's young verdure, ere it form
Gradual the laughing May's luxuriant shade;
For, by the rude sea guarded, we are safe,
And feel not evils such as with deep sighs
The Emigrants deplore, as, they recal
The Summer past, when Nature seem'd to lose
Her course in wild distemperature, and aid,
With seasons all revers'd, destructive War.
Shuddering, I view the pictures they have drawn
Of desolated countries, where the ground,
Stripp'd of its unripe produce, was thick strewn
With various Death--the war-horse falling there
By famine, and his rider by the sword.
The moping clouds sail'd heavy charg'd with rain,
And bursting o'er the mountains misty brow,
Deluged, as with an inland sea, the vales 5 ;
Where, thro' the sullen evening's lurid gloom,
Rising, like columns of volcanic fire,
The flames of burning villages illum'd
The waste of water; and the wind, that howl'd
Along its troubled surface, brought the groans
Of plunder'd peasants, and the frantic shrieks
Of mothers for their children; while the brave,
To pity still alive, listen'd aghast
To these dire echoes, hopeless to prevent
The evils they beheld, or check the rage,
Which ever, as the people of one land
Meet in contention, fires the human heart
With savage thirst of kindred blood, and makes
Man lose his nature; rendering him more fierce
Than the gaunt monsters of the howling waste.
Oft have I heard the melancholy tale,
Which, all their native gaiety forgot,
These Exiles tell--How Hope impell'd them on,
Reckless of tempest, hunger, or the sword,
Till order'd to retreat, they knew not why,
From all their flattering prospects, they became
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The prey of dark suspicion and regret 6 :
Then, in despondence, sunk the unnerv'd arm
Of gallant Loyalty--At every turn
Shame and disgrace appear'd, and seem'd to mock
Their scatter'd squadrons; which the warlike youth,
Unable to endure, often implor'd,
As the last act of friendship, from the hand
Of some brave comrade, to receive the blow
That freed the indignant spirit from its pain.
To a wild mountain, whose bare summit hides
Its broken eminence in clouds; whose steeps
Are dark with woods; where the receding rocks
Are worn by torrents of dissolving snow,
A wretched Woman, pale and breathless, flies!
And, gazing round her, listens to the sound
Of hostile footsteps---- No! it dies away:
Nor noise remains, but of the cataract,
Or surly breeze of night, that mutters low
Among the thickets, where she trembling seeks
A temporary shelter--clasping close
To her hard-heaving heart, her sleeping child,
All she could rescue of the innocent groupe
That yesterday surrounded her--Escap'd
Almost by miracle! Fear, frantic Fear,
Wing'd her weak feet: yet, half repentant now
Her headlong haste, she wishes she had staid
To die with those affrighted Fancy paints
The lawless soldier's victims--Hark! again
The driving tempest bears the cry of Death,
And, with deep sudden thunder, the dread sound
Of cannon vibrates on the tremulous earth;
While, bursting in the air, the murderous bomb
Glares o'er her mansion. Where the splinters fall,
Like scatter'd comets, its destructive path
Is mark'd by wreaths of flame!--Then, overwhelm'd
Beneath accumulated horror, sinks
The desolate mourner; yet, in Death itself,
True to maternal tenderness, she tries
To save the unconscious infant from the storm
In which she perishes; and to protect
This last dear object of her ruin'd hopes
From prowling monsters, that from other hills,
170
More inaccessible, and wilder wastes,
Lur'd by the scent of slaughter, follow fierce
Contending hosts, and to polluted fields
Add dire increase of horrors--But alas!
The Mother and the Infant perish both!-The feudal Chief, whose Gothic battlements
Frown on the plain beneath, returning home
From distant lands, alone and in disguise,
Gains at the fall of night his Castle walls,
But, at the vacant gate, no Porter sits
To wait his Lord's admittance!--In the courts
All is drear silence!--Guessing but too well
The fatal truth, he shudders as he goes
Thro' the mute hall; where, by the blunted light
That the dim moon thro' painted casements lends,
He sees that devastation has been there:
Then, while each hideous image to his mind
Rises terrific, o'er a bleeding corse
Stumbling he falls; another interrupts
His staggering feet--all, all who us'd to rush
With joy to meet him--all his family
Lie murder'd in his way!--And the day dawns
On a wild raving Maniac, whom a fate
So sudden and calamitous has robb'd
Of reason; and who round his vacant walls
Screams unregarded, and reproaches Heaven!-Such are thy dreadful trophies, savage War!
And evils such as these, or yet more dire,
Which the pain'd mind recoils from, all are thine-The purple Pestilence, that to the grave
Sends whom the sword has spar'd, is thine; and thine
The Widow's anguish and the Orphan's tears!-Woes such as these does Man inflict on Man;
And by the closet murderers, whom we style
Wise Politicians; are the schemes prepar'd,
Which, to keep Europe's wavering balance even,
Depopulate her kingdoms, and consign
To tears and anguish half a bleeding world!-Oh! could the time return, when thoughts like these
Spoil'd not that gay delight, which vernal Suns,
Illuminating hills, and woods, and fields,
Gave to my infant spirits--Memory come!
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And from distracting cares, that now deprive
Such scenes of all their beauty, kindly bear
My fancy to those hours of simple joy,
When, on the banks of Arun, which I see
Make its irriguous course thro' yonder meads,
I play'd; unconscious then of future ill!
There (where, from hollows fring'd with yellow broom,
The birch with silver rind, and fairy leaf,
Aslant the low stream trembles) I have stood,
And meditated how to venture best
Into the shallow current, to procure
The willow herb of glowing purple spikes,
Or flags, whose sword-like leaves conceal'd the tide,
Startling the timid reed-bird from her nest,
As with aquatic flowers I wove the wreath,
Such as, collected by the shepherd girls,
Deck in the villages the turfy shrine,
And mark the arrival of propitious May.-How little dream'd I then the time would come,
When the bright Sun of that delicious month
Should, from disturb'd and artificial sleep,
Awaken me to never-ending toil,
To terror and to tears!--Attempting still,
With feeble hands and cold desponding heart,
To save my children from the o'erwhelming wrongs,
That have for ten long years been heap'd on me!-The fearful spectres of chicane and fraud
Have, Proteus like, still chang'd their hideous forms
(As the Law lent its plausible disguise),
Pursuing my faint steps; and I have seen
Friendship's sweet bonds (which were so early form'd,)
And once I fondly thought of amaranth
Inwove with silver seven times tried) give way,
And fail; as these green fan-like leaves of fern
Will wither at the touch of Autumn's frost.
Yet there are those , whose patient pity still
Hears my long murmurs; who, unwearied, try
With lenient h