Four Birthday Boys

Saturday, November 30th 2002

November 30th – four birthday boys today – four not likely to be soon forgot, although a few, even in Dakota where we take our aesthetics very seriously, may not immediately recognize the name Sir Philip Sidney (1554), the founder of the golden age of English poetry, the man there before Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Jonson, and Donne. Dead before his thirty-second birthday, there was a huge funeral for Sidney with a procession through London. The universities printed commemorative verses in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Here’s a Sidney “Song”

WHO hath his fancy pleasèd
With fruits of happy sight,
Let here his eyes be raisèd
On Nature's sweetest light;
A light which doth dissever
And yet unite the eyes,
A light which, dying never,
Is cause the looker dies.

She never dies, but lasteth
In life of lover's heart;
He ever dies that wasteth
In love his chiefest part:
Thus is her life still guarded
In never-dying faith;
Thus is his death rewarded,
Since she lives in his death.

Look then, and die! The pleasure
Doth answer well the pain:
Small loss of mortal treasure,
Who may immortal gain!
Immortal be her graces,
Immortal is her mind;
They, fit for heavenly places--
This, heaven in it doth bind.

But eyes these beauties see not,
Nor sense that grace descries;
Yet eyes deprivèd be not
From sight of her fair eyes--
Which, as of inward glory
They are the outward seal,
Which die not in that weal.

But who hath fancies pleasèd
With fruits of happy sight,
Let here his eyes be raisèd
On Nature's sweetest light!

In his An Apology for Poetry, Sidney wrote

“The historian, laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay; having much ado to accord differing writers and to pick truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth; curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties; a wonder to young folks and a tyrant in table talk; denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of virtue, and virtuous actions, is comparable to him.”

Birthday boy two is Jonathan Swift (1667), the satirist of Gulliver’s Travels fame who lived well into his seventies. It’s difficult to choose one or two of Swift’s great observations – I like “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another,” and “The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.”

Here’s Swift’s “The Sick Lion and the Ass”

A lion sunk by time's decay,
Too feeble grown to hunt his prey,
Observed his fatal hour draw nigh:
He drooped and laid him down to die.
There came by chance a savage boar,
Who trembled oft to hear him roar,
But when he saw him thus distressed
He tore and gored his royal breast.
A bull came next (ungen'rous foe),
Rejoiced to find him fall'n so low,
And with his horny-armed head
He aimed at once to strike him dead,--
He strikes, he wounds, he shocks in vain,
The lion still conceals his pain.
At length a base inglorious ass,
Who saw so many insults pass,
Came up and kicked him in the side:
'Twas this that raised the lion's pride.
He roused, and thus he spoke at length,
For indignation gave him strength:
Thou sorry, stupid, sluggish creature,
Disgrace and shame and scorn of nature!
You saw how well I could dispense
With blows from beasts of consequence!
They dignified the wounds they gave;
For none complain who feel the brave.
But you, the lowest of all brutes,
How ill your face with courage suits!
What dullness in thy looks appears!
I'd rather far (by heav'n 'tis true)
Expire by these than live by you:
A kick from thee is double death--
I curse thee with my dying breath!

The Moral

Rebukes are easy from our betters,
From men of quality and letters;
But when low dunces will affront,
What man alive can stand the brunt?

Birthday Boy three is Mark Twain. We all know what Twain (born 1835) looked like – he lived to see the return of Halley’s Comet in 1910. No one is more often quoted than Mark Twain In fact, here’s a site devoted to just his quotes.Among his great advice was “A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.”

Fourth is Winston Churchill – born in 1874, he lived to be more than ninety – in fact, on his ninetieth birthday, after a dinner party, he went to his window and gave the V-sign to the many well-wishers gathered beneath his window at Hyde Park Gate. Ten years earlier, the whole nation celebrated his eightieth birthday. Churchill gave some of the best general advice I’ve ever read: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” And what he said of Americans could be said of human beings in general: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they've tried everything else.”

November 30th – and four birthday boys – probably another born this very day – and likely in Dakota, this 30th day of November 2002.
Ev Albers