The word of the sweetest song and all songs...

19 days until my birthday!
Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Whitman

"THE ROUNDED CATALOGUE DIVINE COMPLETE"

    [Sunday---- -- ----. --Went this forenoon to church. A college professor, Rev. Dr.----, gave a fine sermon, during which I caught the above words; but the minister included in his "rounded catalogue" letter and spirit, only the esthetic things, and entirely ignored what I name in the following:]
The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas'd,
The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage
The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,
Venom and filth, serpents, the ravonous sharks, liars, the dissolute;
(What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth's orbic scheme?)
Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,
The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.

-- Walt Whitman


The fascinating thing about Whitman is the way he's able to be downright cheerful on matters most people would be writing dirges about. Heck, even when he is writing a dirge, it comes out positive:

Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate around the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

(from "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.")


AS I WATCH'D THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGHING

As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)


Yes, the latest school shooting is on my mind. I found out about it through a Diary-L flame war just before uploading yesterday's entry, and, for a moment, considered not uploading it at all. The tone seemed wrong.

But life goes on.

Whitman helps.

I'm going off to read "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" before getting to work on that paper I have due today. You might want to consider doing the same.

 Contact

Back
Forth
Archives
Index
Necklace | Cheap Vitamin Store | Invitations | NJ | Personals Yahoo