The Donkey

~ G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

When forests walked and fishes flew
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then, surely, I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening bray
And ears like errant wings—
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things:

The battered outlaw of the earth
Of ancient crooked will;
Scourge, beat, deride me—I am dumb—
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour—
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout around my head
And palms about my feet.

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Compare this to Aesop’s story “The Ass Carrying the Image.”

A sacred Image was being carried to the temple. It was mounted on an Ass adorned with garlands and gorgeous trappings, and a grand procession of priests and pages followed it through the streets. As the Ass walked along, the people bowed their heads reverently or fell on their knees, and the Ass thought the honor was being paid to himself.

With his head full of this foolish idea, he became so puffed up with pride and vanity that he halted and started to bray loudly. But in the midst of his song, his driver guessed what the Ass had got into his head, and began to beat him unmercifully with a stick.

“Go along with you, you stupid Ass,” he cried. “The honor is not meant for you but for the image you are carrying.”

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Do Chesterton and Aesop have the same attitude toward the donkey?

Domini est terra

The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof;
      the world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
      and established it upon the floods.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?
      or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;
      who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
      nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the LORD,
      and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him,
      that seek thy face, O Jacob.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors;
      and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
      The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors;
      and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
      The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.

~Psalm 24

The Moon was but a Chin of Gold

~Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

The Moon was but a Chin of Gold
A Night or two ago—
And now she turns Her perfect Face
Upon the World below—

Her Forehead is of Amplest Blonde—
Her Cheek—a Beryl hewn—
Her Eye unto the Summer Dew
The likest I have known—

Her Lips of Amber never part—
But what must be the smile
Upon Her Friend she could confer
Were such Her Silver Will—

And what a privilege to be
But the remotest Star—
For Certainty She take Her Way
Beside Your Palace Door—

Her Bonnet is the Firmament—
The Universe—Her Shoe—
The Stars—the Trinkets at Her Belt—
Her Dimities—of Blue—

The Grass

~Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The grass so little has to do,—
      A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
      And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes
      The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
      And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
      And make itself so fine,—
A duchess were too common
      For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass
      In odours so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
      Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
      And dream the days away,—
The grass so little has to do,
      I wish I were the hay!

The Dance

"The Kermess," by Pieter Brueghel (1520?-1569)

In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess.

~William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

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This poem and the painting are in my college literature book (of all the textbooks I kept this one gets used the most often -- yesterday's poem came from it too) while flipping through it this morning looking for a poem today. Obviously, after yesterday's post on Poetic Knowledge, this one caught my eye. While searching online for a copy of the painting to use, I found this site, which you might want to check out. It shares some information about kind of dance that might be represented in the painting plus there's a video of the kind of music they might be dancing to, and there's a link to a recording of William Carlos Williams himself reading his poem. Enjoy!

Music, poetry, and gymnastic

(Follow the discussion of Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education, by James S. Taylor at Mystie's blog)

What interested me most about the first part of chapter two is the idea of music, poetry, and gymnastic as the way to prepare your child for an education.

Quotes

[P]oetic knowledge… tends to take us inside the objects of knowledge through the immediate powers of the sense and emotions. For example, this would be the difference, for the beginner, between studying music—theory, harmony, rhythm—and actually doing music, by singing and dancing, to become, in a sense, music itself.

~*~

[S]ongs, poetry, music, gymnastic—are meant to awaken and refine a sympathetic knowledge of the reality of the True, Good, and Beautiful, by placing the child inside the experience of those transcendentals as they are contained in these arts and sensory experiences.

~*~

[T]he child's natural disposition [is] to learn by imitation; that is, not only to attempt to duplicate what they hear and see but to become the thing that is imitated…

~*~

[M]inute sifting of the particular passages of poetry, music, and movements of physical exercise to be taught [is required], so that only a balanced and refined character emerges to take up much later the rigor of those higher modes of knowledge contained in geometry, logic, and, finally, dialectic.

~*~

The “rhythm and harmony” is not meant to be restricted to music, but under the Greek notions of proportion and integration, would be applied to all prerational modes of knowledge.

Music has always been a large part of our daily lives, and about three years ago when I started using Ambleside Online’s suggestions I began reading a poem a day to the children and became more diligent in memorizing Scripture with them. Well, they’re memorizing it anyway—I’m reading it to them and hoping it sinks into myself since it seems my ability to memorize has evaporated.

Something this chapter impressed on me was that quality is very important. Not that I’m going to be a perfectionist about every poem, Psalm, and song they learn, but that at any given time we need to have one piece that we’re perfecting. Our tiny church doesn’t have a choir so my family is asked to sing during communion on occasion, so it would be a good idea to have a hymn that we’re perfecting at all times, so we can be ready when asked, but also so that they learn what excellence is. This is significant to me because I tend to be a “that’s good enough” kind of mom.

What we’re doing precious little of is gymnastic. The children spend plenty of time out-of-doors, but beyond me correcting them for their posture on occasion there’s not much that could be considered physical training. On special occasions we move the dining room table out of the way and dance country and square dances. We love that, so I should probably do more of it… find a way to incorporate it on a weekly basis, at least.

The elegant art of eighteenth-century movement was an integral part of daily living for the cultivated elite. All aspects of life related to it. Enthusiasm and excitement should never show. Lord Chesterfield, whose book of letters was in Washington’s library, cautioned his son to curb his excess of passion. “Do everything in Minuet time, speak, think, and move always in that measure, equally free from the dulness of slow, or the hurry... of quick time.” (Dec. 12, 1767, quoted in Annas 54) In his period slow time for military purposes was 60 steps per minute, quick time, 120. (Camus 7)

As might be expected, this suppression of feelings creates an inner tension and intensity that acts as a buoyant force. All movement appears to float without effort; the dancer’s sinking into a demi-plié is a push down through the heel into the floor, and the rise to the demi-coupé is a release upward. Movement is direct, the body does not sway or waver, and the paths are straight or in clear curves. This inner energy should be carried into all dance types, and, in fact, to all movement.

[from George Washington: A Biography in Social Dance, p. 123]

I love that. Doesn’t it make you want to learn the Minuet? This idea of teaching movement in one area so that it translates over to the rest of life only went out of favor recently.

I would love to learn swing dancing, too. It’s so fascinating the way the man leads and woman responds. And it has something in common with the Minuet: in both of them there are particular steps that must be learned (and the Minuet requires that the dance describe a Z-shaped pattern across the floor) but there’s no set order to the steps as in the Virginia Reel. Each dance is an improvization where the man leads by subtle cues and the woman must pay attention in order to do her part. That’s a movement that we could probably all learn a lot from.

A Limerick

~Mark Twain (1835-1910)

A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he'd tho.
    Men that he saw
    Dumping dirt near his store.
The drivers, therefore, didn't do.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Just for fun. :-D

Curdie's song

The princess Irene and her nurse, Lootie, have taken a walk up the side of the mountain and unintentionally stayed out after dark. They have gotten lost in their haste to get back home, and Lootie is terrified. Irene doesn't realize that the strange shapes she sees peeping out at them from the shadows are goblins who are the enemies of her King Papa and mean to harm her.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Before, however, she had time to grow thoroughly alarmed like [Lootie], she heard the sound of whistling, and that revived her. Presently she saw a boy coming up the road from the valley to meet them. He was the whistler; but before they met his whistling changed to singing. And this is something like what he sang:

'Ring! dod! bang!
Go the hammers' clang!
Hit and turn and bore!
Whizz and puff and roar!
Thus we rive the rocks,
Force the goblin locks. -
See the shining ore!
One, two, three -
Bright as gold can be!
Four, five, six -
Shovels, mattocks, picks!
Seven, eight, nine -
Light your lamp at mine.
Ten, eleven, twelve -
Loosely hold the helve.
We're the merry miner-boys,
Make the goblins hold their noise.'

...

'Hush! scush! scurry!
There you go in a hurry!
Gobble! gobble! goblin!
There you go a wobblin';
Hobble, hobble, hobblin' -
Cobble! cobble! cobblin'!
Hob-bob-goblin! -
Huuuuuh!'

'There!' said the boy, as he stood still opposite them. 'There! that'll do for them. They can't bear singing, and they can't stand that song. They can't sing themselves, for they have no more voice than a crow; and they don't like other people to sing.'

(George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin)

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This passage and yesterday's are connected by the idea of poetry as spiritual warfare -- something I'd like to keep an eye out for in the future.

Luxuria

For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. (Proverbs 5:3-4)

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[John, accompanied by a Guide, is traveling to the Landlord’s Island and passes through Luxuria where he sees a great crowd of men “so disfigured that he had not recognized them for men,” who are being given drink from a cup held by a “dark but beautiful woman.” The witch, for so she is, follows John offering him a drink from her cup over and over again, using soothing and almost truthful words, but John steadfastly walks on in silence.]

So she accompanied him for a long way, till the weariness of her importunity tempted him far more than any positive desire. But he forced his mind to other things and kept himself occupied for a mile or so by making the following verses:

                When Lilith means to draw me
                Within her secret bower,
                She does not overawe me
                With beauty’s pomp and power,
                Nor, with angelic grace
                Of courtesy, and the pace
            Of gliding ships, comes veiled at evening hour.

                Eager, unmasked, she lingers
                Heartsick and hunger sore;
                With hot, dry, jewelled fingers
                Stretched out, beside her door,
                Offering with gnawing haste
                Her cup, whereof who taste,
            (She promises no better) thirst far more.

                What moves me, then, to drink it?
                —Her spells, which all around
                So change the land, we think it
                A great waste where a sound
                Of wind like tales twice told
                Blusters, and cloud is rolled
            Always above yet no rain falls to ground.

                Across drab iteration
                Of bare hills, line on line,
                The long road’s sinuation
                Leads on. The witch’s wine,
                Though promising nothing, seems
                In that land of no streams,
            To promise best—the unrelished anodyne.

And by the time he had reached the word anodyne the witch was gone. But he had never in his life felt more weary, and for a while the purpose of his pilgrimage woke no desire in him.

[The Pilgrim's Regress, C.S. Lewis]

Domine, Dominus noster

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies,
that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen,
yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

~Psalm 8