The Hammock Papers: Luck.

05 May 2020

Luck.

The LINCOLNSHIRE POACHER

When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire
Full well I served my master for more than seven year
Till I took up with poaching, as you will quickly hear
Oh! 'tis my delight on a shiny night, in the season of the year

As me and my comrades were setting of a snare
'Twas then we seed the gamekeeper - for him we did not care
For we can wrestle and fight, my boys and jump o'er anywhere
Oh! 'tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year

As me and my companions were setting four or five
And taking up on him again, we caught the hare alive
We caught the hare alive, my boys, and through the woods did steer
Oh! 'tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year

I threw him on my shoulder and then we trudged home
We took him to a neighbour's house, and sold him for a crown
We sold him for a crown, my boys, but I did not tell you where
Oh! 'tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year

Bad luck to every magistrate that lives in Lincolnshire
Success to every poacher that wants to sell a hare
Bad luck to every gamekeeper that will not sell his deer
Oh! 'tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year

Anonymous

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL