[lbo-talk] A propos of Nothing in Particular

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Feb 28 17:37:21 PST 2007


And Mr Lourpee sat on the floor of the pension dining-room Or perhaps it was in the alcove And about him lay a great mass of pastells, That is, stubbs and broken pencils of pastell, In pale indeterminate colours. And he admired the Sage of Concord

"Too broad ever to make up his mind." And the mind of Lourpee at fifty Directed him into a room with a certain vagueness As if he wd. neither come in nor stay out As if he wd. go neither to the left nor the right And his painting reflected this habit. And Mrs Kreffle's mind was made up, Perhaps by the pressure of circumstance, . . .

Canto XXVIII

On their own feet they came, or on shipboard, Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back, Old civilisations put to the sword. Then they and their wisdom went to wrack: No handiwork of Callimachus, Who handled marble as if it were bronze, Made draperies that seemed to rise When sea-wind swept the corners, stands; His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem Of a slender palm, stood but a day; All things fall and are built again, And those who build them again are gay.

From "Lapis Lazuli"

Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?

by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Why should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante once Live to bear children to a dunce; A Helen of social welfare dream, Climb on a wagonette to scream. Some think it a matter of course that chance Should starve good men and bad advance, That if their neighbours figured plain, As though upon a lighted screen, No single story would they find Of an unbroken happy mind, A finish worthy of the start. Young men know nothing of this sort, Observant old men know it well; And when they know what old books tell And that no better can be had, Know why an old man should be mad.

[Frankly, I think that nearly every line is wrong, even vicious, here, but they do have that old swing.]

MADAM, Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice, almighty gold, That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven, And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given, Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court, To every squire, or groom, that will report Well or ill, only all the following year, Just to the weight their this day's presents bear; While it makes huishers serviceable men, And some one apteth to be trusted then, Though never after; whiles it gains the voice Of some grand peer, whose air doth make rejoice The fool that gave it; who will want and weep, When his proud patron's favors are asleep; While thus it buys great grace, and hunts poor fame; Runs between man and man; 'tween dame, and dame; Solders crack'd friendship; makes love last a day; Or perhaps less: whilst gold bears all this sway, I, that have none to send you, send you verse.


>From "EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND" by Ben Jonson

The Icosasphere

Marianne Moore

'In Buckinghamshire hedgerows

the birds nesting in the merged green density,

weave little bits of string and moths and feathers

and thistledown,

in parabolic concentric curves'

and, working for concavity, leave spherical feats

of rare efficiency;

whereas through lack of integration,

avid for someone's fortune,

three were slain and ten committed perjury,

six died, two killed themselves, and two paid

fines for risks they'd run.

But then there is the icosasphere

in which at last we have steel-cutting at its

summit of economy,

since twenty triangles conjoined, can wrap one

ball or double-rounded shell

with almost no waste, so geometrically

neat, it's an icosahedron. Would the engineers

making one,

or Mr. J. O. Jackson tell us

how the Egyptians could have set up seventy-eight-

foot solid granite vertically?

We should like to know how that was done.



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