How can man die better?

Published in 1842, the "Lays of Ancient Rome" is collection of ballads about heroic episodes in Roman history composed by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Incidentally, Lord Macaulay is the person we should all thank for a bilingual colonial India and for the Indian Penal Code! :)

But I digress. Coming back to the Lays...

I just wrapped up Forsyth's "The Afghan"... and on a couple of occasions, the lead character quotes lines from the lead poem of the Lays, "Horatius". The poem concerns Horatius Cocles' heroic defense of the bridge to Rome against the Tuscan Army. I happened to read the poem, and while all of its 70 verses makes for an awesome read, the following lines are particularly powerful!

Then out spake brave Horatius,
the Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods

One Art

Comcast can be so good to you sometimes! You sign up as a new subscriber, speak sweetly with the operator, and you could end up with a free year-long subscription to the HBO suite of channels!

While flipping through the aforementioned channels I happened across a screening of "In Her Shoes" - this movie adaptation of the Jennifer Weiner novel, starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine, is surprisingly good and is highly recommended, but that's not what this post is about! This movie introduced me to one of my favorite poems! Believe it or not, the first time I encountered Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" was when Cameron Diaz mumbled painfully through it during this movie... and as I watched that scene again today, I couldn't help but be reminded of the beauty of those words... and the emotions behind it! Read on:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

In defense of the split infinitive...

{This post is a 'reply' to NK's comment on an earlier post of mine. You can find the original post and that comment here.}

Strictly speaking, the debate about the validity of split infinitives still rages on and using them is more a matter of personal preference than a grammatical no can do.

For my part, as far as solecisms go, I love an occasional split infinitive. Moreover, as Wikipedia sagely reminded me, one of the most famous split infinitives occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: to boldly go where no man has gone before! And I say if it works for Captain Kirk, it works for me! :-)

Actually, Wikipedia has a very fair and balanced discussion on the subject. I think this line sums it up best: "Most experts on language now agree that the split infinitive is sometimes appropriate. Those who use it consciously may see it as a form of hyperbaton, and some major poets have employed this to good effect." There! I seem to have won half the battle. Now if only I can finish that epic poem I started... ;-)

Speaking of poets and split infinitives, I would be remiss if I didn't include the Bard's Sonnet 142 here:

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:
O! but with mine compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,
That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:
Root pity in thy heart, that, when it grows,
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self-example mayst thou be denied!

Tell All The Truth...

Found this one posted on another subway wall today... Emily Dickinson's "Tell all the truth but tell it slant". MTA's "Poetry In Motion" initiative continues to entertain!

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

O Tell Me the Truth About Love

Nowhere in the U.S. does public transit have as much of a flavor and as much of a life of its own as in NYC! The sights - sometimes heartening, sometimes heart-rending, the sounds - sometimes sweet and enthralling, often times deafening, and the smells... oh the smells! Rarely are those anything but nauseating! :)

Amidst all this are the people... the quintessential New Yorkers - People who refuse to make eye-contact, lest you are one of those freaks who lurks in Central Park at night, are crushed up against others who need but the smallest of excuses to lapse into an animated discussion about that book you are reading!

Faced with such contradictions, it would be hard to imagine a curious person like me doing anything but people-watching... Alas, this breed of humans doesn't take too kindly to being stared at! Which kinda limits my options...hehe. So often times, I pick my poison - between catching up on my reading and listening to the latest podcasts, I usually have my 50 minute commute pretty well covered! :) But sometimes I just don't feel like doing either, and it is then that I keep myself busy by intently reading the subway signs and advertisements!

Anyway, recently I was pleasantly surprised to see the following lines from W.H.Auden's "O Tell Me the Truth About Love" posted in one of the subway cars:

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose,
Will it knock on my door in the morning
Or tread in the bus on my toes,
Will it come like a change in the weather,
Will its greeting be courteous or bluff,
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

You can find the full poem here.

Now I am not a big fan of Auden's work, but I must admit that I have always liked this one quite a bit. So I asked around... and realized that this was a part of the MTA's "Poetry in Motion" campaign, a 15-year old partnership between the MTA and the Poetry Society of America (PSA). Starting in 1992 with "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" by Walt Whitman, "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" by Emily Dickinson, "When You Are Old" by William Butler Yeats, and "Let There Be New Flowering" by Lucille Clifton, each year the MTA and the PSA jointly select poems that are displayed in subway cars and buses either in full or as excerpts! You can find some of the past poems here. What a brilliant idea! Nothing like a smart verse or two to brighten up one's commute - for once, I think, a bureaucratic policy seems to be doing more good than harm! :)

If thou must love me...

Some days, your heart just wants to scream out aloud... but lacks the words it needs to do it with. On some other days, you even manage to get a few words out, but they just seem so hollow... so strangely inadequate... And you wonder - if I can feel it in me, throbbing away with such great passion, why then can my brain not find that same power in the words it chooses?! (Stereotypically speaking, us men-folk are purported to be the most frequent offenders of this kind - how often we are blamed for not being able to verbalize what's truly running in our heads and our hearts! Hehe!:))

Now I am a markedly talkative bloke - you leave me in a room with some close friends and I could yap on till kingdom cometh! Hehe!:) This verbal constipation that I just mentioned is not my natural state of existence, so to speak! However, when you look at it in all honesty, it's not all that incongruous... Blessed is the one who speaks 'coz he has something to say... more often than not, we speak 'coz we can't bear the silence... And finally when we do have something to say... something truly important... truly significant... we are faced with a unique burden - how do I say it so that what comes out of my mouth is what's running in my head!?

Now don't get me wrong; this isn't merely one's fear of the 'foot-in-mouth' syndrome... I think, it's more along the lines of, "If this means so much to me that I can't bear to exist another moment without sharing it with you, how do I get it across without losing any of the intensity, the emotions, the pathos?”

It's at times like these that I keep going back to the poetry of the yesteryears. Now mind you, most of these poets were total nuts with train-wrecks for personal lives... Frequently they were suicidal... sometimes they were just sociopathic! But maybe since everything else in their lives sucked so bad, they ended up working wonders in the one area they picked to excel in - literature! Aah, what words... what thoughts... Sometimes, it feels like Browning and Shelley and Yeats and Keats traveled through time, just to peek into my heart... and then went right back, and put my feelings down on paper, in a style far better than any I could ever manage!

One such example is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 14 - "If thou must love me, let it be for nought"! For years I have tried to knock this idea into several peoples' heads... but never have I managed to do it with such class! Hehe!:)

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.