[Orwn Acra]

Dance of the Macabre Mice

In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
Monsieur is on horseback. The horse is covered with mice.

This dance has no name. It is a hungry dance.
We dance it out to the tip of Monsieur's sword,
Reading the lordly language of the inscription,
Which is like zithers and tambourines combined:

The Founder of the State. Whoever founded
A state that was free, in the dead of winter, from mice?
What a beautiful tableau tinted and towering,
The arm of bronze outstretched against all evil!

Wallace Stevens

&

The Crazy Woman

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I’ll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I’ll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I’ll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
“That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May.”

Gwendolyn Brooks

[Janice D. Soderling]

Thanks, Andrew and Orwn. Three very good choices.

[Erik Olson]

On such an occasion, as appropriate as pumpkin pie, maize, or Native Americans must be Puritans, indeed; yet to think that they are so made me nearly laugh for some reason. I cannot say why. Perhaps because those history classes inculcated the excesses of the round-heads who, at worst, banned artwork in the churches as well as secular music and public dancing in the years of Cromwell's banishment of the monarchy. They are a less obvious object for encomium from, first impressions, though universally admitted and received as a trope of the holiday as pilgrim's buckled hats and harvest of corn. Ironic is that Puritan appears consistently in early use as a term of reproach used by opponents and resented by those to whom it was applied. What was coined to fortify the cause of their opponents and mock their own with derision, gained currency and eventually became what is now the received and neutral term to designate these folks:

Originally the name applied chiefly to those within the Church of England who sought further reform, especially in the direction of Presbyterianism, and who gained ascendancy during the Commonwealth period. Subsequently (and especially after the Restoration of 1660) it was applied to those who separated from the established episcopal Church as Presbyterians, Independents (Congregationalists), or Baptists, including many who were prominent in the colonization of the North American seaboard (especially New England). It is now used as a historical term without negative connotations. (OED)

Few Puritans I can think of seem to so well recommend themselves to reverence and regard, by the example of their lives, than Johnathan Edwards; I first learned about him from reading Lowell's For the Union Dead where he figures more than once. "Edwards", says Wikipedia, "is widely regarded as one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians, Edwards' theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset."

JOHNATHAN EDWARDS IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS by Robert Lowell

Edwards' great millstone and rock
of hope has crumbled, but the square
white houses of his flock
stand in the open air,

out in the cold,
like sheep outside the fold.
Hope lives in doubt.
Faith is trying to do without

faith. In western Massachusetts,
I could almost feel the frontier
crack and disappear.
Edwards thought the world would end there.

We know how the world will end,
but where is paradise, each day farther
from the Pilgrim's blues for England
and the Promised Land.

Was it some country house
that seemed as if it were
Whitehall, if the Lord were there?
so nobly did he live.

Gardens designed
that the breath of flowers in the wind
or crushed underfoot,
came and went like warbling music?

Bacon's great oak grove
he refused to sell,
when he fell,
saying, "Why should I sell my feathers?"

Ah paradise! Edwards,
I would be afraid
to meet you there as a shade.
We move in different circles.

As a boy, you built a booth
in a swamp for prayer;
lying on your back,
you saw the spiders fly,

basking at their ease,
swimming from tree to tree
so high, they seemed tacked to the sky.
you knew they would die.

Poor country Berkley at Yale,
you saw the world was soul,
the soul of God! The soul
of Sarah Pierrepont!

So filled with delight in the Great Being,
she hardly cared for anything
walking the fields, sweetly singing,
conversing with someone invisible.

Then God's love shone in sun, moon and stars,
on earth, in the waters,
in the air, in the loose wind,
which used to greatly fix your mind.
m

[Bill Carpenter]

From Ecclesiastical Sonnets by Wordsworth:

WELL worthy to be magnified are they
Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay;
Then to the new-found World explored their way,
That so a Church, unforced, uncalled to brook
Ritual restraints, within some sheltering nook
Her Lord might worship and his word obey
In freedom. Men they were who could not bend;
Blest Pilgrims, surely, as they took for guide
A will by sovereign Conscience sanctified;
Blest while their Spirits from the woods ascend
Along a Galaxy that knows no end,
But in His glory who for Sinners died.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Does anyone else remember Edgar Guest? (It takes a heap a living to make a house a home...)

Thanksgiving

Gettin’ together to smile an’ rejoice,
An’ eatin’ an’ laughin’ with folks of your choice;
An’ kissin’ the girls an’ declarin’ that they
Are growin’ more beautiful day after day;
Chattin’ an’ braggin’ a bit with the men,
Buildin’ the old family circle again;
Livin’ the wholesome an’ old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.

Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door
And under the old roof we gather once more
Just as we did when the youngsters were small;
Mother’s a little bit grayer, that’s all.
Father’s a little bit older, but still
Ready to romp an’ to laugh with a will.
Here we are back at the table again
Tellin’ our stories as women an’ men.

Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;
Oh, but we’re grateful an’ glad to be there.
Home from the east land an’ home from the west,
Home with the folks that are dearest an’ best.
Out of the sham of the cities afar
We’ve come for a time to be just what we are.
Here we can talk of ourselves an’ be frank,
Forgettin’ position an’ station an’ rank.

Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An’ I’ll put soul in my Thanksgivin’ prayers.

[Catherine Chandler]

That's Edgar Guest, Janice. Yes, I know of him because my late father loved Guest's plainspoken, homespun, heartfelt, verses.

[Janice D. Soderling]

It is, indeed. Haste is never a friend. Corrected.