From Persia Again

This time one that I have always found to be a true tear-jerker.

XVIII

I sometimes think that never blows so red
 The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
 That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
 Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head. 

Until the next time 

The Lacunae of Life

"At the age of thirty-seven,

She realised she'd never,

Ride to Paris in a sports-car,

With the warm wind in her hair."

How many times has one heard someone say "I wish I'd done XXX"? Edith Piaf famously sang "Non, je ne regrette rien" but I fear that if that were true, she was a rara avis indeed.

I am currently reading The Evening Colonnade, a collection of articles and reviews by the late Cyril Connolly; it has taken only a few pages to serve to remind me how appalling - how lacking - has been my education; this then is one of a number of lacunae in my own life.

I have previously (I am sure) quoted Mark Twain's famous dictum: "The classics: something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read."  Well Connolly makes the classics, by which I mean such as Swift, Pope, Dryden, Voltaire and many others, sound so rich and rewarding.  Had I only the education to appreciate them; I know them only by name.  Perhaps the classics serve to illustrate to us certain eternal truths?  I have recently been quoting verses from The Rubâ'iyât of Omar Khayyám; now read the following from Jonathan Swift, quoted by Connolly in a review of a biography of Swift by Nigel Dennis:

"God in His wisdom, hath been pleased to load our declining years with many sufferings, with diseases, and decays of nature, with the death of many friends, and the ingratitude of more... with a want of relish for all worldly enjoyments, with a general dislike of persons and things, and though all these are very natural effects of increasing years, yet they were intended by the Author of our being to ween [sic] us gradually from our fondness of life, the nearer we approach towards the end of it."

I might add to Swift's tragic words, that with age comes regret and reflection - hence perhaps this piece.

The current UK eduction budget is £99 billions; in 2005 it was £65.7 billions.  Last week my mother was talking to a teen-aged girl who is to start at University this year; a pleasant girl etc., but my mother was staggered when she found that the girl had never even heard of the Second World War; "what's that?" she asked!  One might reasonably ask what those are like who fail to qualify for University; £99 billions - one cannot help posing the question.  I remember years ago feeling inadequate because I couldn't remember the ins and outs of Cobbett and the Corn Laws or the South Sea Bubble.

Yet I maintain that I have no education; this of course is far from being the only lacuna in my life; any regulars will of course know very well what the principal one is, or perhaps I should say "who she is." And of course, there are more.

I shall now return to The Evening Colonnade and depress myself further; so many books, so little time.

Until the next time.

Yet More Persian Wisdom

The Rubâ'iyât attributed to Omar Khayyám, is said to be in fact a collection of writings probably from Khayyám's time (12th century) to around the 17th century.

And as we know them they were of course the wonderful work of Edward Fitzgerald, who appears in places to have contributed a few lines of his own; he was entitled to: he was a genius.

So I wonder which wise man wrote the following stunningly beautiful and tear-inducing lines?

LXXIII

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
 To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
 Would not we shatter it to bits---and then
 Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Until the next time.

Another Gem from Persia

XXXII

There was a Door to which I found no Key:
 There was a Veil past which I could not see:
 Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
 There seemed---and then no more of THEE and ME.

Some more another day. 

Until the next time 

Wise and Beautiful Words

From Edward Fitzgerald's wonderful working of ancient Persian verses, known as The Rubâ'iyât of Omar Khayyám:

XLIX

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
 Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
 Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
 And one by one back in the Closet lays.

'Tis very likely that I shall be quoting again from this wonderful poem.

Until the next Time

More Poetry

Or in this case, Poëtry.  I have expressed elsewhere my admiration and respect for poets, and here bow before one of the masters of the art and shamelessly quote him for my own base ends.

I have restored the correct spelling and capitalisation, because I am a pedant, and that would go down well if shee were stalkinge here (or at least would have...)

The Triple Foole

I am two fooles, I know,

      For loving, and for saying so

          In whining poëtry;

But where's that wiseman, that would not be I,

          If she would not deny?

Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes

    Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,

I thought, if I could draw my paines

    Through Rime's vexation, I should them allay.

Griefe brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,

For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

      But when I have done so,

      Some man, his art and voice to show,

          Doth Set and sing my paine;

And, by delighting many, frees againe

          Griefe, which verse did restraine.

To Love and Griefe tribute of Verse belongs,

    But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.

Both are increased by such songs,

    For both their triumphs so are published,

And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;

Who are a little wise, the best fooles be. 

By John Donne of course, written some time between 1593 and 1601. 

   And here's something which is possibly even older; it perhaps comes from Persia but not from the famous Rubâ'iyát, but is quoted in the introduction to the edition I have by Professor Reynold Nicholson; I have not been able to locate the origin:

How tyrant-like doth Destiny disdain,

To stretch a pitying hand to helpless pain,

But when she stumbles on a bleeding heart

Stabs deeper yet and slays once more the slain.

Until the next time 

(Sorry about the bizarre format of this post, but HTM 'Ell is totally beyond me: if it plays up, there's not a damned thing I can do about it).