Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

There are things I miss, but not enough to pay the price for having them.
“The Old Man Dreams”
Oh for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I’d rather laugh, a bright-haired boy,
Than reign, a gray-beard king.
Off with the spoils of wrinkled age!
Away with Learning’s crown!
Tear out life’s Wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!
One [...]

And now, because I couldn’t turn up a copy of this online today1 when I wanted to refer to it during a heated discussion of US foreign policy, and I had to go pull out the book, I present:
Silence Falls On Mecca’s Walls
Silence falls on Mecca’s walls
And true believers turn to stone:
A granite wind from [...]

This is how things happen: First, author Sarah Monette mentions a LiveJournal that posts a poem every Monday.
I follow this link and make a note to come back later and look for poets I am not familiar with.
And as I start looking over the list the first thing that grabs me is a post of [...]

While that last piece was read at Santayana’s death, I’m slightly more enamoured with a piece he wrote on the death of a friend, simply entitled “To W.P.“.
It’s not too long, so you could go read the whole thing. Here are two bits that particularly resonate with parts of my personal philosophy:
Another, if I would, [...]

George Santayana began as a poet, and, though he came to be known as philosopher, teacher and critic, a poet he remained. There was nothing blank, free or modern about his verses’; they rhymed, and what he had to say often sounded like a translation from the Latin classics, with which he was intimately familiar. [...]

You know what I want, that is ridiculously expensive, and that I can in no way practically justify, but which I still have a serious hankering for?
A sword cane.

At least twice a week for the last couple of months, I’ve spent some time looking at the photos at the Burger Knives sword cane pages–especially the [...]

AN EXCUSE FOR NOT RETURNING THE VISIT OF A FRIEND
Do not be offended because
I am slow to go out. You know
Me too well for that. On my lap
I hold my little girl. At my
Knees stands my handsome little son.
One has just begun to talk.
The other chatters without
Stopping. They hang on my clothes
And follow my every [...]

Extracted from The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore, Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes.
As by the shore, at break of day,
A vanquished chief expiring lay,
Upon the sands, with broken sword,
       He traced his farewell to the free;
And there the last unfinished word
       He dying wrote, was “Liberty!”
At night a sea-bird shrieked the knell
Of him who thus [...]

Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down
We warned you before
and nothing that you built has stood
Hear it as you lean over your blueprint
Hear it as you roll up your sleeve
Hear it once again
Any system you contrive without us
will be brought down
You have your drugs
You have your guns
You have your Pyramids your Pentagons
With all [...]

And so we’ve had another night
Of poetry and poses
And each man knows he’ll be alone
When the sacred ginmill closes.
And so we’ll drink the final glass
Each to his joy and sorrow
And hope the numbing drink will last
‘Till opening tomorrow.
And when we stumble back again
Like paralytic dancers
Each knows the question he must ask
And each man knows the [...]

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been delighted to find a whole bunch of Santayana stuff at archive.org, including a poetry collection I was unfamiliar with.
Well, while in Boston, I’ve been using stolen moments to work my way through that collection. I haven’t made much headway with the initial sections–there’s a two-part [...]

Years ago I read through Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld books. Those of you who have read them will recall that Richard Burton1 (along with lots of other historical personages) played a pretty big role in the series.
One of the indirect results of my doing that reading was that I was driven to find a copy [...]