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The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna
Making this a regular Monday thing The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna Charles Wolfe Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O’er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of…
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The Moon
more selections from the Oxford Book of English Verse The Moon Percy Bysshe Shelley I AND, like a dying lady lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp’d in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The mood arose up in the murky east, A…
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The Captive Mind, pt. 3
[Part 1], [Part 2] In the previous two posts, we’ve explored the social alienation afflicting the intellectual and the allure of the newly ascendant totalitarian ideology as a means of overcoming that alienation. I think it’s important to note that this alienation is a very real and serious thing. We are social beings and to…
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War
A deaf and dumb German girl, named Libbe or Libba, had grown fond of my cousin Armand and had followed him. I found her sitting on the grass, which had bloodied her dress: her elbows were propped on her folded and upraised knees; her hand, tangled in her thin blond hair, supported her head. She…
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The Captive Mind, pt. 2
When we last left the intellectual, he found himself increasingly drawn to the ruling ideology as a means of overcoming his alienation and general uselessness to the prevailing culture. In the new world of theory, the intellectual is not merely useful, but essential and superior. Alongside this attraction, Milosz identifies another form of alienation and…
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Observations of America
In sum, the United States give the impression of being a colony, not a mother country: they have no past, and their mores are not a result of their laws. The citizens of the New World took their place among the nations at a moment when political ideas were in the ascendant, and this explains…
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The Captive Mind, pt. 1
Over the summer, I helped teach a course on religious toleration. Of course, we read Locke, who takes as a major conceit of his argument the position that religious belief cannot be compelled by force. I took issue with this, as I do with a lot of Locke’s arguments.1 Primarily, I thought that Locke had…
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The Church of Reason and Liberty
The pictures, the sculpted and painted images, the veils, and the curtains of the monastery had been pulled down. The basilica, gutted, was now nothing but bones and shredded sinew. In the apse of the church, where the wind and the rain poured in through the broken panes of the rose-windows, a carpenter’s workbench served…
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Hanover Tigers, Memory, and Place
Eternally trying to post more and to allow myself to post more scattered thoughts and fragments. Thus, a small note from Ritter’s fanastic The Glory of Their Times. For those who’ve forgotten, the book is an oral history of baseball at the turn of the century and, in my opinion, the best thing written on the sport.…
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Dirge in the Woods
Continuing the recent poetry posting. Dirge in the Woods George Meredith A wind sways the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea.…
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Dan Yingst 