Great van Fleet, "The Falling Sky"

Jerry Jeff Walker, "Long, Long Time"

Freedom.

Happy Birthday, Clapton

\

Eric Clapton was born on this day in 1945. 

"Motherless Children" ...

Done.

Done and done.

Thanks to Walker's Arms.

Bach, Lute Suite in E-Minor, BWV 996

Eleonor Bindman performs a transcription of the Allemande ...

Assertive.

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.

William F. Buckley Jr.

Farther.

A spoon of cream goes farther than a gallon of skim.

Jewish proverb

Important.

Mr. Russ' important questions ...

“Was he strong enough to schlep barrels of herring? Smart enough to add up a column of numbers on a brown paper bag? Could he make change? Would he look good behind the counter?” If so, “Fine, you can marry him." 

Food culture is the only culture that matters.  It transcends all others.  Art, music, literature -- all important, and will be appreciated and enhanced proportionally with the food culture in which it is found. But, as Harrison says, "If you eat badly, you are very probably living badly." 

Surrender.

To see the beauty of nature, you need total surrender. Shut your mouth, open your eyes and ears. That’s why I never learned to drive. The happiest hours of my life were spent walking the countryside with old friends before heading to a small pub or inn.

C.S. Lewis

Tavener, "The Lamb"

VOCES8 perform ...

Happy Birthday, van Gogh

van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1888

Painters — to speak only of them — being dead and buried, speak to a following generation or to several following generations through their works. Is that all, or is there more, even? In the life of the painter, death may perhaps not be the most difficult thing.

For myself, I declare I don’t know anything about it. But the sight of the stars always makes me dream in as simple a way as the black spots on the map, representing towns and villages, make me dream.

Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France.

Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star. What’s certainly true in this argument is that while alive, we cannot go to a star, any more than once dead we’d be able to take the train. So it seems to me not impossible that cholera, the stone, consumption, cancer are celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, omnibuses and the railway are terrestrial ones.

To die peacefully of old age would be to go there on foot.

Vincent van Gogh, born on this day in 1853, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, July 9 or 10, 1888

Released.

Led Zeppelin released Houses of the Holy on this day in 1973.

"The Song Remains the Same/Rain Song" ...

Ignore.

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them.

William F. Buckley Jr.

Sacred.

From Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth talks with Bill Moyers ...

CAMPBELL: You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

MOYERS: This sacred place does for you what The Plains did for the hunter.

CAMPBELL: For them, the whole world was a sacred place. But our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Get a phonograph and put on the music that you really love, even if it’s corny music that nobody else respects.

Glinka, Sonata

Michaela Špačková performs the obligatory histrionics while Viller Valbonesi accompanies ...

Happy Birthday, Schoolcraft

Illman & Sons, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1884

The BIRCHEN CANOE

In the region of lakes where the blue waters sleep

My beautiful fabric was built;

Light cedars supported its weight on the deep,

And its sides with the sunbeams are gilt.

The bright leafy bark of the betula tree,

A flexible sheathing provides;

And the fir’s thready roots drew the parts to agree,

And bound down its high swelling sides.

No compass or gavel was used in the bark,

No art but the simplest degree;

But the structure was finished and trim to remark,

And as light as a sylph’s could be.

Its rim was with tender young roots woven round,

Like a pattern of wicker-work rare;

And it pressed on the waves was as lightsome a bound,

As a basket suspended in air.

The heavens in their brightness and glory below,

Were reflected quite plain to the view;

And it moved like a swan – with as graceful a show,

My beautiful birchen canoe.

The tree on the shore as I glided along.

Seemed rushing a contrary way;

And my voyagers lightened their toll with a song,

That caused every heart to be gay.

And still as I floated by rock and by shell

My bark raised a murmur aloud;

And it danced on the waves as they rose and they fell,

Like a fay on a bright summer cloud.

I thought as I pass’d o’er the liquid expanse,

With the landscape in smiling array;

How blest I should be, if my life should advance,

Thus tranquil and sweetly away.

The skies were serene, not a cloud was in sight,

Not an angry surge beat the shore,

And I gazed on the waters and then on the light,

Till my vision could bear it no more.

Oh! long shall I think of those silver bright lakes,

And the scenes they expose to my view;

My friends – and the wishes I formed for their sakes

And my bright yellow birchen canoe.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, born on this day in 1793

Transcendental.

People predestined to gourmandism are in general of medium height; they have round or square faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips and rounded chins.  People to whom Nature has denied the capacity for such enjoyment, on the other hand, have long faces, noses, and eyes; no matter what their height, they seem to have a general air of elongation about them. They have flat dark hair, and above all lack healthy weight; it is undoubtedly they who invented trousers, to hide their thin shanks.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, from The Physiology of Taste; Or, Transcendental Gastronomy by Brillat-Savarin

Evans.

A front row seat for a 1966 Bill Evans rehearsal ...

Gibbons, Nunc Dimmitus

VOCE8 perform ...

Questioning.

Tiepolo, Head of a Boy in a Cap, 1753

Becoming more conscious means to start looking for the truth for ourselves, instead of blindly allowing ourselves to be programmed, whether from without or by an inner voice within the mind, which seeks to diminish and invalidate, focusing on all that is weak and helpless. To get out of it, we have to accept the responsibility that we have bought into the negativity and have been willing to believe it. The way out of this, then, is to start questioning everything. 

David R. Hawkins, from Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

Thanks, Steve.

Now.

'Tis Spring and the weekend begins now ...

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."  

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington" 

For best results, listen to these ...

April Wine, "All Over Town" 

HSAS, "My Home Town"

Triumph, "Tear the Roof Off"

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day. 

Umberto Limongiello

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, "Global a Go-Go"

Broadcasting.

World service bulletin

From the nightshift D.J.

To all wavebands on Earth

Reconnoiter on the killahertz 

This tune is going out to Marconi

To all corners of the globe

There ain't no hut in the Serengeti

Where my wavelengths do not probe ...

Something.

If I had five million pounds I'd start a radio station because something needs to be done. It would be nice to turn on the radio and hear something that didn't make you feel like smashing up the kitchen and strangling the cat.

Joe Strummer

Trio Mediæval

A medieval Sarum chant, accompanied by Catalina Vicens on organetto ...

Nuisance.

Thanks to Walker's Arms.

Image.

The New York Times once said he, "encapsulates the virile image of modern conservatism" ...

In the group chat, Hegseth posted multiple details about the impending strike, using military language and laying out when a “strike window” starts, where a “target terrorist” was located, the time elements around the attack and when various weapons and aircraft would be used in the strike. 

Sing.

Steve points to Emerson's "The Poet" ...

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact that some men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer's words are as costly and admirable to Homer as Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I took part in a conversation the other day concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill and command of language, we could not sufficiently praise. But when the question arose whether he was not only a lyrist but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of our low limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running up from the torrid Base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the ground-tone of conventional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is primary.

Arcade.

Contribution.

Some people react physically to the magic of poetry, to the moments, that is, of authentic revelation, of the communication, the sharing, at its highest level.  A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

Dylan Thomas

Happy Birthday, Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan was born on this day in 1924.

"Tenderly" ...

Happy Birthday, Campbell

When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous. Whereas the way these things are taught normally in college and school is a sampler of what this one wrote and that one wrote and you’re asked to be more interested in the date of the publication of Keats' sonnets than in what’s in them.

Joseph Campbell, who was born yesterday, in 1904

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Dreamer.

Debussy, Brouillards

Marianna Prjevalskaya performs ...

Argument.

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey

Excellent.

An excellent honey ...

Marvelous.

Tiepolo, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1735

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. 

Anaïs Nin

Happy Birthday, Frost

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just give you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

Robert Frost, born on this day in 1874

Sibelius, The Trees, Op. 75

Clare Hammond performs Number Five, "The Spruce" ...

Noble.

William F. Buckley Jr.'s ode to peanut butter ...

For many years I have labored under the burden of an unrequited passion. What have I done for it, in return for all it has done for me? Nothing. But I have wondered what I could use as what the journalists call a “peg.”

I have found one. This may strike some of the literal-minded as attenuated, but it goes as follows: This is the centennial year of the Tuskegee Institute, which was founded on the Fourth of July, 1881, by Booker T. Washington. Tuskegee continues to be a remarkable institution, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is the head of a committee of illustrious men and women who are devoting themselves to raising $20 million to encourage it in its noble work.

What noble work? We have arrived at step two. It was, among other things, the principal academic home of George Washington Carver, and it was G. W. Carver who to all intents and purposes invented the peanut. What he did, more specifically, was document that the cultivation of the peanut despoiled the land far less than the cultivation of cotton, and then he set out to merchandise the peanut in order that there might be a market for it.

He discovered an estimated three hundred uses for it, many of them entirely removed from the peanut’s food value. But it is this, of course, that is the wonder of the peanut. The Encyclopedia Britannica informs us that “pound for pound peanuts have more protein, minerals, and vitamins than beef liver, more fat than heavy cream, and more food energy (calories) than sugar.” And George Washington Carver discovered — peanut butter.

I have never composed poetry, but if I did, my very first couplet would be:

I know that I shall never see

A poem lovely as Skippy’s peanut butter.

When I was first married and made plain to my wife that I expected peanut butter for breakfast every day of my life, including Ash Wednesday, she thought me quite mad (for the wrong reasons). She has not come round, really, and this is a source of great sadness to me because one wants to share one’s pleasures.

I was hardened very young to the skeptics. When I was twelve I was packed off to a British boarding school by my father, who dispatched every fortnight a survival package comprising a case of grapefruit and a large jar of peanut butter. I offered to share my tuck with the other boys at my table. They grabbed instinctively for the grapefruit–but one after another actually spit out the peanut butter, which they had never before seen and which only that very year (1938) had become available for sale in London. No wonder they needed American help to win the war.

You can find it now in specialty shops in Europe, but I have yet to see it in anyone’s home. And it is outrageously difficult to get even in the typical American hotel. My profession requires me to spend forty or fifty nights on the road every year, and when it comes time to order breakfast over the telephone I summon my resolution–it helps to think about peanut butter when you need moral strength–and add, after the orange juice, coffee, skim milk, and whole-wheat toast, “Do you have any peanut butter?”

Sometimes the room service operator will actually break out laughing when the request is put in, at which point my voice becomes stern and unsmiling. Often the operator will say, “Just a minute,” and then she will turn, I suppose to the chef, but I can hear right through the hand she has put over the receiver–”Hey Jack. We got any peanut butter? Room 322 wants some peanut butter!” This furtive philistinism is then regularly followed by giggles all around. One lady recently asked, “How old is your little boy and does he want a peanut butter sandwich? To which I replied, “My little boy is twenty-eight and is never without peanut butter, because he phones ahead before he confirms hotel reservations.”

I introduced Auberon Waugh to cashew butter ten years ago when he first visited America, and although I think it inferior to peanut butter Auberon was quite simply overwhelmed. You can’t find it in Great Britain so I sent him a case from the Farmer’s Market. It quite changed his writing style: for about ten months he was at peace with the world. I think that was the time he said something pleasant about Harold Wilson. In the eleventh month, it was easy to tell that he had run out. It quite changes your disposition and your view of the world if you cannot have peanut butter every day.

So here is yet another reason for contributing money to the Tuskegee Institute. For all we know, but for it we’d never have tasted peanut butter. There’d be no Planter’s, no Jif, no Peter Pan–that terrible thought reminds us of our indebtedness to George Washington Carver.

William F. Buckley Jr.’s From Buckley's column, “On the Right," National Review, March 26, 1981

Happy Birthday, Elton

Elton John was born on this day in 1947.

Debut album. Side One. Track One ...

Mott The Hoople, "Rock and Roll Queen"

Williams, "Raiders March"

Vividly.

It is important not to be caught short. It is my private opinion that many of our failures in politics, art, and domestic life come from our failure to eat vividly.

Jim Harrison

Happy Birthday, O'Connor

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and myself is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.

I want very much to succeed in the world with what I want to do. I have prayed to You about this with my mind and my nerves on it and strung my nerves into a tension over it and said, 'oh God, please', and 'I must', and 'please, please'. I have not asked You, I feel, in the right way. Let me henceforth ask You with resignation--that not being or meant to be a slacking up in prayer but a less frenzied kind, realizing that the frenzy is caused by an eagerness for what I want and not a spiritual trust. I do not with to presume. I want to love.

Oh God, please make my mind clear.

Please make it clean.

I ask You for a greater love for my holy Mother and I ask her for a greater love for You.

Please help me to get down under things and find where You are.

I do not mean to deny the traditional prayers I have said all my life; but I have been saying them and not feeling them. My attention is always very fugitive. This way I have it every instant. I can feel a warmth of love heating me when I think & write this to You. Please do not let the explanations of the psychologists about this make it turn suddenly cold. My intellect is so limited, Lord, that I can only trust in You to preserve me as I should be.

Flannery O'Connor, born on this day in 1925

Mozart, Fantasia in D Minor, K. 397

Nikol Bóková performs ...

Forever.

Tintoretto, The Annunciation, 1587

Luke 1:26-38

26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Value.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.

Never lose a holy curiosity. Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.

Albert Einstein, from LIFE, May 2, 1955

Haydn, Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI/49, L.59

Alfred Brendel performs ...

Merely.

We shouldn't forget, as we learned in school, that normalcy is merely the psychosis of the majority.

Steve Layman

This will be framed and hung in my classroom.

Imagine.

Constable, Brightwell Church and Village, 1815

Every spring

I hear the thrush singing

in the glowing woods

he is only passing through.

His voice is deep,

then he lifts it until it seems

to fall from the sky.

I am thrilled.

I am grateful.

Then, by the end of morning,

he's gone, nothing but silence

out of the tree

where he rested for a night.

And this I find acceptable.

Not enough is a poor life.

But too much is, well, too much.

Imagine Verdi or Mahler

every day, all day.

It would exhaust anyone.

Mary Oliver

Sammy Hagar, "Rock Candy"

Eternal.

Schiele, House with Bell Tower, 1912

I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds.  Art cannot be modern.  It is primordially eternal.

Egon Schiele

Andy Summers & Robert Fripp, "I Advance Masked"

Well-Born.

JOHN BARLEYCORN

Although I knew they’d laid him low, thrashed him, hung him out to dry,

Had tortured him with water and with fire, then dashed his brains out on a stone,

I saw him in the Seven Stars, and in the Plough.

I saw him in the Crescent Moon and in the Beehive.

In the Barley Mow, my Green Man, newly born, alive, John Barleycorn.

I saw him seasonally, at harvest time, in the Wheatsheaf and the Load of Hay,

I saw him, heard his laughter in the Star and Garter and the Fountain and the Bell,

The Corn Dolly, the Woolpack and the Flowing Spring.

I saw him in the Rising Sun, the Moon and Sixpence and the Evening Star.

I saw him in the Rose and Crown, my Green Man, ancient, barely born, John Barleycorn.

He moved through Britain, bright and dark, like ale in glass.

I saw him run across the fields, towards the Gamekeeper, the Poacher and the Blacksmith’s Arms.

He knew the Ram, the Lamb, the Lion and the Swan,

White Hart, Blue Bull, Red Dragon, Fox and Hounds.

I saw him in the Three Goats’ Heads, the Black Bull and Dun Cow, Shoulder of Mutton, Griffin, Unicorn.

Green Man, beer-born, good health, long life, John Barleycorn.

I saw him festively, when people sang for victory, for love and New Year’s Eve,

In the Raven and the Bird in Hand, the Golden Eagle, the Kingfisher, the Dove.

I saw him grieve and mourn, a shadow at the bar, in the Falcon, the Marsh Harrier,

The Sparrowhawk, the Barn Owl, Cuckoo, Heron, Nightingale.

A pint of bitter in the Jenny Wren for my Green Man, alone, forlorn, John Barleycorn.

Britain’s soul, as the crow flies, so flew he.

I saw him in the Holly Bush, the Yew Tree, the Royal Oak, the Ivy Bush, the Linden.

I saw him in the Forester, the Woodman.

He history: I saw him in the Wellington, the Nelson, Marquis of Granby, Wicked Lady, Bishop’s Finger.

I saw him in the Ship, the Golden Fleece, the Flask

The Railway Inn, the Robin Hood and Little John.

My Green Man, legend-strong, reborn, John Barleycorn.

Scythed down, he crawled, knelt, stood.

I saw him in the Crow, Newt, Stag, all weathers, noon or night.

I saw him in the Feathers, Salutation, Navigation, Knot, the Bricklayer’s Arms, Hop Inn, the Maypole and the Regiment, the Horse and Groom, the Dog and Duck, the Flag.

And where he supped the past lived still.

And where he sipped the glass brimmed full.

He was in the King’s Head and Queen’s Arms. I saw him there:

Green Man, well-born, spellbound, charming one, John Barleycorn.

Carol Ann Duffy

Solitude.

Thomson, Canoe Lake, 1917

For we fishers at dawn are not ordinary men.

We embrace the food of solitude,

trolling back and forth, back and forth,

until a sound strikes our mouths with the taste of grace.

Jim Lenfestey

Meant.

Morris, Trellis Wallpaper, 1862

Patience.

Kent, Pelagic Reverie, 1920

The OLD ASTRONOMER to HIS PUPIL

Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,

When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;

He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how

We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,

Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,

And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,

And the obliquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,

You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,

What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and wiles;

What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,

But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight;

You will need them, mine observer, yet for many another night.

I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known.

You "have none but me," you murmur, and I "leave you quite alone"?

Well then, kiss me, -- since my mother left her blessing on my brow,

There has been a something wanting in my nature until now;

I can dimly comprehend it, -- that I might have been more kind,

Might have cherished you more wisely, as the one I leave behind.

I "have never failed in kindness"? No, we lived too high for strife,

Calmest coldness was the error which has crept into our life;

But your spirit is untainted, I can dedicate you still

To the service of our science: you will further it? you will!

There are certain calculations I should like to make with you,

To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true;

And remember, "Patience, Patience," is the watchword of a sage,

Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age.

I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap;

But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleep

So be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name;

See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame.

I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak;

Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak:

It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,

God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars.

Sarah Williams

Beethoven, Trio for Two Oboes and English Horn, Op. 87

The Ditirambe Trio performs ...

Produce.

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

William Morris, born on this day in 1834