Spirit.

The American Revolution began on this day, at this hour, in 1775.

CONCORD HYMN

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 

   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood 

   And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept; 

   Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 

And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

   Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 

   We set today a votive stone; 

That memory may their deed redeem, 

   When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 

   To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 

   The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Birthday, Charles Baudelaire

The Poet is a kinsman of the clouds

Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;

But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,

He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.

Charles Baudelaire, born on this day in 1821, from "The Albatross"

One.

The TABLES TURNED

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

He, too, is no mean preacher:

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless—

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

William Wordsworth

Happy Birthday, Henry Rowe 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

Wild.

Spenser, The Shepherd's Calendar: March, 1898

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: MARCH

March month of 'many weathers' wildly comes

In hail and snow and rain and threatning hums

And floods: while often at his cottage door

The shepherd stands to hear the distant roar

Loosd from the rushing mills and river locks

Wi thundering sound and over powering shocks

And headlong hurry thro the meadow brigs

Brushing the leaning sallows fingering twigs

In feathery foam and eddy hissing chase

Rolling a storm oertaken travellers pace

From bank to bank along the meadow leas

Spreading and shining like to little seas

While in the pale sunlight a watery brood

Of swopping white birds flock about the flood

Yet winter seems half weary of its toil

And round the ploughman on the elting soil

Will thread a minutes sunshine wild and warm

Thro the raggd places of the swimming storm

And oft the shepherd in his path will spye

The little daisey in the wet grass lye

That to the peeping sun enlivens gay

Like Labour smiling on an holiday

And where the stunt bank fronts the southern sky

By lanes or brooks where sunbeams love to lye

A cowslip peep will open faintly coy

Soon seen and gatherd by a wandering boy

A tale of spring around the distant haze

Seems muttering pleasures wi the lengthening days

Morn wakens mottld oft wi may day stains

And shower drops hang the grassy sprouting plains

And on the naked thorns of brassy hue

Drip glistning like a summer dream of dew

While from the hill side freshing forest drops

As one might walk upon their thickening tops

And buds wi young hopes promise seemly swells

Where woodman that in wild seclusion dwells

Wi chopping toil the coming spring decieves

Of many dancing shadows flowers and leaves

And in his pathway down the mossy wood

Crushes wi hasty feet full many a bud

Of early primrose yet if timely spied

Shelterd some old half rotten stump beside

The sight will cheer his solitery hour

And urge his feet to stride and save the flower

Muffld in baffles leathern coat and gloves

The hedger toils oft scaring rustling doves

From out the hedgrows who in hunger browze

The chockolate berrys on the ivy boughs

And flocking field fares speckld like the thrush

Picking the red awe from the sweeing bush

That come and go on winters chilling wing

And seem to share no sympathy wi spring

The stooping ditcher in the water stands

Letting the furrowd lakes from off the lands

Or splashing cleans the pasture brooks of mud

Where many a wild weed freshens into bud

And sprouting from the bottom purply green

The water cresses neath the wave is seen

Which the old woman gladly drags to land

Wi reaching long rake in her tottering hand

The ploughman mawls along the doughy sloughs

And often stop their songs to clean their ploughs

From teazing twitch that in the spongy soil

Clings round the colter terryfying toil

The sower striding oer his dirty way

Sinks anckle deep in pudgy sloughs and clay

And oer his heavy hopper stoutly leans

Strewing wi swinging arms the pattering beans

Which soon as aprils milder weather gleams

Will shoot up green between the furroed seams

The driving boy glad when his steps can trace

The swelling edding as a resting place

Slings from his clotted shoes the dirt around

And feign woud rest him on the solid ground

And sings when he can meet the parting green

Of rushy balks that bend the lands between

While close behind em struts the nauntling crow

And daws whose heads seem powderd oer wi snow

To seek the worms-and rooks a noisey guest

That on the wind rockd elms prepares her nest

On the fresh furrow often drops to pull

The twitching roots and gathering sticks and wool

Neath trees whose dead twigs litter to the wind

And gaps where stray sheep left their coats behind

While ground larks on a sweeing clump of rushes

Or on the top twigs of the oddling bushes

Chirp their 'cree creeing' note that sounds of spring

And sky larks meet the sun wi flittering wing

Soon as the morning opes its brightning eye

Large clouds of sturnels blacken thro the sky

From oizer holts about the rushy fen

And reedshaw borders by the river Nen

And wild geese regiments now agen repair

To the wet bosom of broad marshes there

In marching coloms and attention all

Listning and following their ringleaders call

The shepherd boy that hastens now and then

From hail and snow beneath his sheltering den

Of flags or file leavd sedges tyd in sheaves

Or stubble shocks oft as his eye percieves

Sun threads struck out wi momentery smiles

Wi fancy thoughts his lonliness beguiles

Thinking the struggling winter hourly bye

As down the edges of the distant sky

The hailstorm sweeps-and while he stops to strip

The stooping hedgbriar of its lingering hip

He hears the wild geese gabble oer his head

And pleasd wi fancys in his musings bred

He marks the figurd forms in which they flye

And pausing follows wi a wandering eye

Likening their curious march in curves or rows

To every letter which his memory knows

While far above the solitary crane

Swings lonly to unfrozen dykes again

Cranking a jarring mellancholy cry

Thro the wild journey of the cheerless sky

Full oft at early seasons mild and fair

March bids farewell wi garlands in her hair

Of hazzel tassles woodbines hairy sprout

And sloe and wild plumb blossoms peeping out

In thickset knotts of flowers preparing gay

For aprils reign a mockery of may

That soon will glisten on the earnest eye

Like snow white cloaths hung in the sun to drye

The old dame often stills her burring wheel

When the bright sun will thro the window steal

And gleam upon her face and dancing fall

In diamond shadows on the picturd wall

While the white butterflye as in amaze

Will settle on the glossy glass to gaze

And oddling bee oft patting passing bye

As if they care to tell her spring was nigh

And smiling glad to see such things once more

Up she will get and potter to the door

And look upon the trees beneath the eves

Sweet briar and ladslove swelling into leaves

And damsin trees thick notting into bloom

And goosberry blossoms on the bushes come

And stooping down oft views her garden beds

To see the spring flowers pricking out their heads

And from her apron strings she'll often pull

Her sissars out an early bunch to cull

For flower pots on the window board to stand

Where the old hour glass spins its thread of sand

And maids will often mark wi laughing eye

In elder where they hang their cloaths to drye

The sharp eyd robin hop from grain to grain

Singing its little summer notes again

As a sweet pledge of Spring the little lambs

Bleat in the varied weather round their dams

Or hugh molehill or roman mound behind

Like spots of snow lye shelterd from the wind

While the old yoes bold wi paternal cares

Looses their fears and every danger dares

Who if the shepherds dog but turns his eye

And stops behind a moment passing bye

Will stamp draw back and then their threats repeat

Urging defiance wi their stamping feet

And stung wi cares hopes cannot recconsile

They stamp and follow till he leaps a stile

Or skulking from their threats betakes to flight

And wi the master lessens out of sight

Clowns mark the threatning rage of march pass bye

And clouds wear thin and ragged in the sky

While wi less sudden and more lasting smiles

The growing sun their hopes of spring beguiles

Who often at its end remark wi pride

Days lengthen in their visits a 'cocks stride'

Dames clean their candlesticks and set them bye

Glad of the makeshift light that eves supply

The boy returning home at night from toil

Down lane and close oer footbrig gate and style1

Oft trembles into fear and stands to hark

The waking fox renew his short gruff bark

While badgers eccho their dread evening shrieks

And to his thrilling thoughts in terror speaks

And shepherds that wi in their hulks remain

Night after night upon the chilly plain

To watch the dropping lambs that at all hours

Come in the quaking blast like early flowers

Demanding all the shepherds care who find

Warm hedge side spots and take them from the wind

And round their necks in wary caution tyes

Long shreds of rags in red or purple dyes

Thats meant in danger as a safty spell

Like the old yoe that wears a tinkling bell

The sneaking foxes from his thefts to fright

That often seizes the young lambs at night

These when they in their nightly watchings hear

The badgers shrieks can hardly stifle fear

They list the noise from woodlands dark recess

Like helpless shrieking woman in distress

And oft as such fears fancying mystery

Believes the dismal yelling sounds to be

For superstition hath its thousand tales

To people all his midnight woods and vales

And the dread spot from whence the dismal noise

Mars the night musings of their dark employs

Owns its sad tale to realize their fear

At which their hearts in boyhood achd to hear

A maid at night by treacherous love decoyd

Was in that shrieking wood years past destroyd

She went twas said to meet the waiting swain

And home and friends ne'er saw her face again

Mid brakes and thorns that crowded round the dell

And matting weeds that had no tongues to tell

He murderd her alone at dead midnight

While the pale moon threw round her sickly light

And loud shrieks left the thickets slumbers deep

That only scard the little birds from sleep

When the pale murderers terror frowning eye

Told its dread errand that the maid shoud dye

Mid thick black thorns her secret grave was made

And there ere night the murderd girl was laid

When no one saw the deed but god and he

And moonlight sparkling thro the sleeping tree

Around-the red breast might at morning steel

There for the worm to meet his morning meal

In fresh turnd moulds that first beheld the sun

Nor knew the deed that dismal night had done

Such is the tale that superstition gives

And in her midnight memory ever lives

That makes the boy run by wi wild affright

And shepherds startle on their rounds at night

Now love teazd maidens from their droning wheel

At the red hour of sunset sliving steals

From scolding dames to meet their swains agen

Tho water checks their visits oer the plain

They slive where no one sees some wall behind

Or orchard apple trees that stops the wind

To talk about springs pleasures hoveing nigh

And happy rambles when the roads get dry

The insect world now sunbeams higher climb

Oft dream of spring and wake before their time

Blue flyes from straw stacks crawling scarce alive

And bees peep out on slabs before the hive

Stroaking their little legs across their wings

And venturing short flight where the snow drop hings

Its silver bell-and winter aconite

Wi buttercup like flowers that shut at night

And green leaf frilling round their cups of gold

Like tender maiden muffld from the cold

They sip and find their honey dreams are vain

And feebly hasten to their hives again

And butterflys by eager hopes undone

Glad as a child come out to greet the sun

Lost neath the shadow of a sudden shower

Nor left to see tomorrows April flower.

John Clare

Dare.

The MENTAL TRAVELLER

I travelled through a land of men,

A land of men and women too,

And heard and saw such dreadful things

As cold earth wanderers never knew.

For there the babe is born in joy

That was begotten in dire woe,

Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow;

And if the babe is born a boy

He’s given to a woman old,

Who nails him down upon a rock,

Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head,

And pierces both his hands and feet,

And cuts his heart out of his side

To make it feel both cold & heat.

Her fingers number every nerve

Just as a miser counts his gold;

She lives upon his shrieks and cries—

And she grows young as he grows old,

Till he becomes a bleeding youth

And she becomes a virgin bright;

Then he rends up his manacles

And pins her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves

Just as a husbandman his mould,

And she bcomes his dwelling-place

And garden, frutiful seventyfold.

An aged shadow soon he fades,

Wandering round and earthly cot,

Full filled all with gems and gold

Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul:

The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,

The countless gold of an aching heart,

The martyr’s groan, and the lover’s sigh.

They are his meat, they are his drink:

He feeds the beggar and the poor

And the wayfaring traveller;

For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy,

They make the roofs and walls to ring—

Till from the fire on the hearth

Alittle female babe does spring!

And she is all of solid fire

And gems and gold, that none his hand

Dares stretch to touch her baby form,

Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,

If young or old, or rich or poor;

They soon drive out the aged host,

A beggar at another’s door.

He wanders weeping far away

Until some other take him in;

Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,

Until he can a maiden win.

And to allay his freezing age

The poor man takes her in his arms:

The cottage fades before his sight,

The garden and its lovely charms;

The guests are scattered through the land

(For the eye altering, alters all);

The senses roll themselves in fear,

And the flat earth becomes a ball,

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away—

A desert vast without a bound,

And nothing left to eat or drink

And a dark desert all around.

The honey of her infant lips,

The bread and wine of her sweet smile,

The wild game of her roving eye

Does him to infancy beguile.

For as he eats and drinks he grows

Younger and younger every day;

And on the desert wild they both

Wander in terror and dismay.

Like the wild stag she flees away;

Her fear plants many a thicket wild,

While he pursues her night and day,

By various arts of love beguiled.

By various arts of love and hate,

Till the wide desert planted o’er

With labyrinths of wayward love,

Where roams the lion, wolf and boar,

Till he becomes a wayward babe

And she a weeping woman old.

Then many a lover wanders here,

The sun and stars are nearer rolled,

The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy

To all who in the desert roam,

Till many a city there is built,

And many a pleasant shepherd’s home.

But when they find the frowning babe

Terror strikes through the region wide;

They cry, ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’

And flee away on every side.

For who dare touch the frowning form

His arm is withered to its root,

Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee

And every tree does shed its fruit;

And none can touch that frowning form,

Except it be a woman old;

She nails him down upon the rock,

And all is done as I have told.

William Blake

Invent.

Young, The Meeting Place, 2012

ANSWER to the QUESTION HOW CAN YOU BECOME a POET

take the leaf of a tree

trace its exact shape

the outside edges

and inner lines

memorize the way it is fastened to the twig

(and how the twig arches from the branch)

how it springs forth in April

how it is panoplied in July

by late August

crumple it in your hand

so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness

chew its woody stem

listen to its autumn rattle

watch it as it atomizes in the November air

then in winter

when there is no leaf left

invent one

Eve Merriam

Happy Birthday, e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings, born on this day in 1894

Subsides.

Parrish, The Lantern Bearers, 1908

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Haughty.

Wyeth, Cornflowers, 1986

SEPTEMBER, 1819

Departing summer hath assumed

An aspect tenderly illumed,

The gentlest look of spring;

That calls from yonder leafy shade

Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,

A timely carolling.

No faint and hesitating trill,

Such tribute as to winter chill

The lonely redbreast pays!

Clear, loud, and lively is the din,

From social warblers gathering in

Their harvest of sweet lays.

Nor doth the example fail to cheer

Me, conscious that my leaf is sere,

And yellow on the bough:—

Fall, rosy garlands, from my head!

Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed

Around a younger brow!

Yet will I temperately rejoice;

Wide is the range, and free the choice

Of undiscordant themes;

Which, haply, kindred souls may prize

Not less than vernal ecstasies,

And passion's feverish dreams.

For deathless powers to verse belong,

And they like Demi-gods are strong

On whom the Muses smile;

But some their function have disclaimed,

Best pleased with what is aptliest framed

To enervate and defile.

Not such the initiatory strains

Committed to the silent plains

In Britain's earliest dawn:

Trembled the groves, the stars grew pale,

While all-too-daringly the veil

Of nature was withdrawn!

Nor such the spirit-stirring note

When the live chords Alcæus smote,

Inflamed by sense of wrong;

Woe! woe to Tyrants! from the lyre

Broke threateningly, in sparkles dire

Of fierce vindictive song.

And not unhallowed was the page

By wingèd Love inscribed, to assuage

The pangs of vain pursuit;

Love listening while the Lesbian Maid

With finest touch of passion swayed

Her own Æolian lute.

O ye, who patiently explore

The wreck of Herculanean lore,

What rapture! could ye seize

Some Theban fragment, or unroll

One precious, tender-hearted scroll

Of pure Simonides.

That were, indeed, a genuine birth

Of poesy; a bursting forth

Of genius from the dust:

What Horace gloried to behold,

What Maro loved, shall we enfold?

Can haughty Time be just!

William Wordsworth

Long.

MY LOST YOUTH

Often I think of the beautiful town

      That is seated by the sea;

Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,

      And my youth comes back to me.

            And a verse of a Lapland song

            Is haunting my memory still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,

      And catch, in sudden gleams,

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,

And islands that were the Hesperides

      Of all my boyish dreams.

            And the burden of that old song,

            It murmurs and whispers still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

      And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

      And the magic of the sea.

            And the voice of that wayward song

            Is singing and saying still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,

      And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,

The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,

      And the bugle wild and shrill.

            And the music of that old song

            Throbs in my memory still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,

      How it thundered o'er the tide!

And the dead captains, as they lay

In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay,

      Where they in battle died.

            And the sound of that mournful song

            Goes through me with a thrill:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the breezy dome of groves,

      The shadows of Deering's Woods;

And the friendships old and the early loves

Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves

      In quiet neighborhoods.

            And the verse of that sweet old song,

            It flutters and murmurs still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

      Across the school-boy's brain;

The song and the silence in the heart,

That in part are prophecies, and in part

      Are longings wild and vain.

            And the voice of that fitful song

            Sings on, and is never still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

There are things of which I may not speak;

      There are dreams that cannot die;

There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,

And bring a pallor into the cheek,

      And a mist before the eye.

            And the words of that fatal song

            Come over me like a chill:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Strange to me now are the forms I meet

      When I visit the dear old town;

But the native air is pure and sweet,

And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,

      As they balance up and down,

            Are singing the beautiful song,

            Are sighing and whispering still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,

      And with joy that is almost pain

My heart goes back to wander there,

And among the dreams of the days that were,

      I find my lost youth again.

            And the strange and beautiful song,

            The groves are repeating it still:

      "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Endless.

I received endless examples of what it meant to be a good dad by watching mine.

For as long as I can remember, this poem was tacked above my Dad's workbench ...

A careful man I want to be;

A little fellow follows me.
I do not dare to go astray
For fear he'll go the self same way.

I cannot once escape his eyes,
Whate'er he sees me do, he tries.
Like me he says he's going to be;
The little chap who follows me.

He thinks that I'm so very fine,
Believes in every word of mine.
The base in me he must not see;
The little chap who follows me.

I must remember as I go
Through summer's sun and winter's snow,
I'm building for the years to be;
The little chap who follows me.

Author unknown

Thanks, Pop.  I love you.  

Happy Father's Day!

Respect.

Since we're entering American-Flag-Paper-Napkin season ...

§8. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.

1. The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
2. The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
3. The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
4. The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
5. The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
6. The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.
7. The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
8. The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
9. The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
10. No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
11. The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

CONNECT

Know your role.

Birth.

Spenser, The Shepherd's Calendar, 1579

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: APRIL

I

Now infant April joins the Spring,

And views the watery sky,

As youngling linnet tries its wing,

And fears at first to fly;

With timid step she ventures on,

And hardly dares to smile,

Till blossoms open one by one,

And sunny hours beguile.

II

But finer days are coming yet,

With scenes more sweet to charm,

And suns arrive that rise and set

Bright strangers to a storm:

Then, as the birds with louder song

Each morning's glory cheer,

With bolder step she speeds along,

And loses all her fear.

III

In wanton gambols, like a child,

She tends her early toils,

And seeks the buds along the wild,

That blossoms while she smiles;

Or, laughing on, with nought to chide,

She races with the Hours,

Or sports by Nature's lovely side,

And fills her lap with flowers.

IV

The shepherd on his pasture walks

The first fair cowslip finds,

Whose tufted flowers, on slender stalks,

Keep nodding to the winds.

And though the thorns withhold the May,

Their shades the violets bring,

Which children stoop for in their play

As tokens of the Spring.

V

Those joys which childhood calls its own,

Would they were kin to men!

Those treasures to the world unknown,

When known, are wither'd then!

But hovering round our growing years,

To gild Care's sable shroud,

Their spirit through the gloom appears

As suns behind a cloud.

VI

Since thou didst meet my infant eyes,

As through the fields I flew,

Whose distance, where they meet the skies,

Was all the world I knew;

That warmth of Fancy's wildest hours,

Which fill'd all things with life,

Which heard a voice in trees and flowers,

Has swoon'd in Reason's strife.

VII

Sweet Month! thy pleasures bid thee be

The fairest child of Spring;

And every hour, that comes with thee,

Comes some new joy to bring:

The trees still deepen in their bloom,

Grass greens the meadow-lands,

And flowers with every morning come,

As dropt by fairy hands.

VIII

The field and garden's lovely hours

Begin and end with thee;

For what's so sweet, as peeping flowers

And bursting buds to see,

What time the dew's unsullied drops,

In burnish'd gold, distil

On crocus flowers' unclosing tops,

And drooping daffodil?

IX

To see thee come, all hearts rejoice;

And, warm with feelings strong,

With thee all Nature finds a voice,

And hums a waking song.

The lover views thy welcome hours,

And thinks of summer come,

And takes the maid thy early flowers,

To tempt her steps from home.

X

Along each hedge and sprouting bush

The singing birds are blest,

And linnet green and speckled thrush

Prepare their mossy nest;

On the warm bed thy plains supply,

The young lambs find repose,

And 'mid thy green hills basking lie

Like spots of ling'ring snows.

XI

Thy open'd leaves and ripen'd buds

The cuckoo makes his choice,

And shepherds in thy greening woods

First hear his cheering voice:

And to thy ripen'd blooming bowers

The nightingale belongs;

And, singing to thy parting hours,

Keeps night awake with songs!

XII

With thee the swallow dares to come,

And cool his sultry wing;

And, urged to seek his yearly home,

Thy suns the martin bring.

O! lovely Month! be leisure mine

Thy yearly mate to be;

Though May-day scenes may brighter shine,

Their birth belongs to thee.

XIII

I waked me with thy rising sun,

And thy first glories viewed,

And, as thy welcome hours begun,

Their sunny steps pursued.

And now thy sun is on thee set,

Like to a lovely eve,

I view thy parting with regret,

And linger loath to leave. —

XIV

Though at her birth the northern gale

Come with its withering sigh;

And hopeful blossoms, turning pale,

Upon her bosom die;

Ere April seeks another place,

And ends her reign in this,

She leaves us with as fair a face

As e'er gave birth to bliss!

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

Proper.

We used to have proper libraries.

Dream.

Homer, The Pumpkin Patch, 1878

"Jack-o'-Lantern, Jack-o'-Lantern,

Tell me where you hide by day?"

"In the cradle where the vapours

Dream the sunlit hours away."

"Jack-o'-Lantern, Jack-o'-Lantern,

Who rekindles you at night?"

"Any firefly in the meadow

Lends a Jack-o'-Lantern light."

John B. Tabb

Infinitude.

Poortvliet, Untitled, 1977

The FAR FIELD

I

I dream of journeys repeatedly:

Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel

Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,

The road lined with snow-laden second growth,

A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,

Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,

And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,

The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,

Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,

Where the car stalls,

Churning in a snowdrift

Until the headlights darken.

II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,

Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,

Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,

Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,

Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --

One learned of the eternal;

And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles

(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)

And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,

Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,

Blasted to death by the night watchman.

I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,

My grief was not excessive.

For to come upon warblers in early May

Was to forget time and death:

How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,

And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --

Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --

Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,

Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,

Still for a moment,

Then pitching away in half-flight,

Lighter than finches,

While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,

And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

-- Or to lie naked in sand,

In the silted shallows of a slow river,

Fingering a shell,

Thinking:

Once I was something like this, mindless,

Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;

Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;

Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,

Believing:

I'll return again,

As a snake or a raucous bird,

Or, with luck, as a lion.

I learned not to fear infinity,

The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,

The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,

The wheel turning away from itself,

The sprawl of the wave,

The on-coming water.

III

The river turns on itself,

The tree retreats into its own shadow.

I feel a weightless change, a moving forward

As of water quickening before a narrowing channel

When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;

Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent

And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --

At first a swift rippling between rocks,

Then a long running over flat stones

Before descending to the alluvial plane,

To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.

The slightly trembling water

Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;

And the crabs bask near the edge,

The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --

I have come to a still, but not a deep center,

A point outside the glittering current;

My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,

At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,

My mind moves in more than one place,

In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,

The dry scent of a dying garden in September,

The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.

What I love is near at hand,

Always, in earth and air.

IV

The lost self changes,

Turning toward the sea,

A sea-shape turning around, --

An old man with his feet before the fire,

In robes of green, in garments of adieu.

A man faced with his own immensity

Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.

The murmur of the absolute, the why

Of being born falls on his naked ears.

His spirit moves like monumental wind

That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.

He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:

The mountain with its singular bright shade

Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,

The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;

Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,

A scent beloved of bees;

Silence of water above a sunken tree :

The pure serene of memory in one man, --

A ripple widening from a single stone

Winding around the waters of the world.

Theodore Roethke

High.

SONNET to a STILTON CHEESE

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour

And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;

England has need of thee, and so have I–

She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,

League after grassy league from Lincoln tower

To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.

Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,

Like a tall green volcano rose in power.

Plain living and long drinking are no more,

And pure religion reading “Household Words”,

And sturdy manhood sitting still all day

Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;

While my digestion, like the House of Lords,

The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

G. K Chesterton

True.

Yeats, Derrynane, 1927

Rain, hail, snow and ice:

All are different,

But when they fall

They become the same water

As the valley stream.

The ways of proclaiming

The Mind vary,

But the same heavenly truth

Can be seen

In each and every one.

Cover your path

With the fallen pine needles

So no one will be able

To locate your

True dwelling place.

Ikkyu