"TERENCE, this is stupid stuff..."

is the first line of my favorite poem of all time. It's by A.E. Housman, and I think he put it at the end of his collection (linked to the title above), A Shropshire Lad, because he saw it as I do - as a kind of dessert after eating the meat and vegetables of the rest of the book. Unfortunately, it's Baked Alaska following plain (but healthful) fare.

It's difficult to say anything about Housman's poetry in general, or A Shropshire Lad in particular, that he doesn't say himself in "Terence." Although, one thing he doesn't say, in any of his writings, is that the darkness of them may have been the result of the fact that he was a gay man in Victorian and Edwardian England. And abstinance didn't make him as happy as he could have been.

"Terence" is Housman's justification of the dark subjects he usually wrote about. And even knowing that - how uninspiring it sounds - I love it because it's such a personal story, with a clear moral (though without sacrificing the story, or forcing the rhyme-scheme) and a wonderful ancient history lesson to boot.

The thing's kind of a mini-epic - and it's funny, informative and sobering.

The White Man's Burden

by Rudyard Kipling.

Like it or not, you should know it.

Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden --
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times mad plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden --
The savage wars of peace --
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden --
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper --
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White man's burden --
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard --
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: --
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
"Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden --
Ye dare not stoop to less --
Nor call too loud on freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden --
Have done with childish days --
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Seems to me that, as Kipling presents the matter here, the value gained is insufficient to justify the price paid.

Not to mention the assumption that White Men should be doing these things.

This fellow has other thoughts on the matter.

Name That Tune!

A work in progress:

Physiocrats are posers as libertar-EE-ans
Objectivists hate us 'cuz we let in cretins
Conservatives hate us too for the same thing
Liberals think we're all of the Right Wing

Once you get the hang of it, feel free to try to lend a hand.

Poetry that doesn't rhyme!?

What kind of a philistine are you?!

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

7. When I read the Book

WHEN I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life?
And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life;
Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real life;
Only a few hints—a few diffused, faint clues and indirections,
I seek, for my own use, to trace out here.)

Oh, go "find" yourself!

My Favorite Poem

I suppose it's neither a very bourgeois nor philistinish to post on such a topic, but I'm in the mood, and those who know me will understand its meaning to me:

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie god knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt
- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

-- A. E. Housman

I got it here, where you can read some commentary on the background and imagery.