Monday, August 26, 2013

An extreme lack of dignity in the conduct of the state


I could almost fancy my-
self ripening too, along 
with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful 
warmth - or in watching 
the dace that darted to 
and fro in the fish-pond, 
at the bottom of the gar-
den, with here and there 
a great sulky pike hanging 
midway down the water in 
silent state, as if it 
mocked at their impertin-
ent friskings, - I had more 
pleasure in these busy-idle 
diversions than in all the 
sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and 
such like common baits of 
children.






Is this in the short list
of the brightest and most
humane prose writing this
language has heard? Ignor-
ing the intensity and del-
icacy of this writer's
bucolic similes, is there
not, when you hold your own
child close, praise for the
vision of his development?

Mr John Kerry attended the
St Paul's School. I hold a
Paulie, with several of whom
I rowed, and not a few with
whom I got drunk over cards
in those undergrad years, to
a reasonable standard of sob-
riety when introducing one to
a new war.

Now I hear, the sulky pike is
about to chastise the little
fish, for besmirching the vows
of a government which does not
reign over them. How used one

Mad as it could be portrayed
to be, I feel an obligation 
to my readers to dissect this
tragic series of remarks, as
virtually a Virgilian ledger
of the corruption of a harvest.
The sensation - and we all do
know it - of ripening under a
struggle to learn and to mas-
ter - is such, in Lamb, that 
the catastrophe of any mis-
direction feels like a dis-
avowal of nature, itself.





At the moment, however, one
has to rely on the theory of
republican government: that
all are implicated by consent
in its conduct. If one can
consent to a war precipitated
on the basis of revolting pic-
tures; if one cannot contain
one's panic when the evidence
of rage's impotency is exposed; 
if one can honestly regard death
as an instrument of instruction,
then one may assert any umbrage
as a Cause. And cut the cards.




















Elia
  Dream-Children,
  A Reverie
London Magazine
January, 1822
ibid.

Jonas Kloch












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