Graham Greene, "The Lost Childhood"

I remember distinctly the suddenness
with which a key turned in a lock
and I found I could read .. All a
long summer holiday I kept my secret,
as I believed: I did not want anybody
to know that I could read. I suppose
I half consciously realized even then
that this was the dangerous moment.



      

    I expunge the stain of

    remembering the Little

    Father and his Czarina

    beneath the White House

    Christmas trees, toying

    with children's dreams -

    as I recall a fragment

    from an essay in plain

    sight of every visitor

    to my home, every day  -

    who lets one trust the

    lessons we must learn.

Graham Greene
The Lost Childhood
  and Other Essays
Viking, 1951©

Origins of Wednesday lxxxvi: Socratic cynic on the line

   He called to ask me if I still
   believed in the existence of
   Cetera, because at my age the
   promises of Et must have worn
   a little thin, right? I didn't
   know how to cope with this co-
   nundrum, to think of "and" as
   stripped of all connection, a
   constant tease without a term, 
   as if he'd always be with us.

Christmas Eve Dryden, revisited

I think a scan of precedents will
find that my custom of reading in
John Dryden on Christmas Eve has
been inspired by his brilliant 
translation of Aeneid. I haven't
any inhibition against admitting,
I love Dryden, because he's safe
from superfluous reprisals. That
said, as stoutly as I've champi-
oned to myself, at least, the 
music of his Aeneid, this year
in America, as this year in my
aging, has found me this evening
grateful for his lovely phrasing
of Virgil's bucolic masterpiece,
Georgics. There is not a poem be-
fore Pope's which I revisit more
constantly, or one which better
typifies my respect for music.

This year, I need the great mig-
ration of the priceless treasure
more, even than Aeneas' searches.
Say what one will, for defaults
in our study of Latin, that we
had such conduits as Pope and
Dryden to absolve us in their
mercy is, to me, a gift of God.
The night can withstand another.

Oh, fortunate farmers, he

famously had begun, in the

2nd book of Georgics, and 

every schoolboy will smile

to recognize, Shakespeare:

         O happy if he knew his happy state!

            The swain who, free from business and debate,

            Receives his easy food from nature's hand

            And just returns of cultivated land!

            No palace with a lofty gate he wants

            To pour out tides of early visitants.

            With eager eyes devouring as they pass

            The breathing figures of Corinthian brass.

            No statues threaten from high pedestals;

            No Persian arras hides his homely walls

            With antique vests which through their shady fold

            Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.

            He boasts no wool, whose native white is dyed

            with purple poison of Assyrian pride.

            No costly drugs of Araby defile

            With foreign scents the sweetness of his oil.

            But easy quiet, a secure retreat,

            A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,

            With homebred plenty the rich owner bless,

            And rural pleasures crown his happiness ..

                    Ye sacred muses, with wise beauty fired,

            My soul is ravished and my brain inspired.

John Dryden

1631 - 1700

Selected Poems

  The Country

  [fragments]

1697

Steven N. Zwicker

  and David Bywaters

  editors

Penguin Classics, 2001©

  

Christmas cracker

    A man has to hold his mouth open

    a long time before a roasted par-

    tridge flies into it.

African proverb, cited in our book of

the year, a timely escape from a year

absorbed in waiting for a government.

Hank Shaw

Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail

  Upland birds and small

  game from field to feast

H&H Books

Orangevale, California

2018©