Richard Nixon Resigns, Sara Teasdale, and Helen of Troy

Friday, August 8th, 2003

A perfect August day in beauuuuuuuuutiful Dakota, kola, this Friday, 8 August – one as balmy as yesterday, when we received the weest bit of rain. The water runs once more in our household after repair to the water main up the road yesterday, my beloved Twins lost but played well at Baltimore, where they split four with the Orioles to remain 3 1/2 games behind the Royals, and I awoke feeling well enough to devour two caramel rolls made for me by Idell Albers, whom my cousin Norm so wisely married. All things considered, a glorious day in a beauuuuuuuuuuuutiful spot here near the eastern shore of the mighty Missouri River.

'Twas on this day in 1968 that Richard M. Nixon accepted the Republican Party nomination for president – coming back from his 1960 defeat. Six years later to the day, Nixon resigned the presidency. In his speech on that day in 1974, Nixon said,

Begin Nixon Quote One
. . . .

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.

To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.

Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.

End Nixon Quote One

The year before in early August 1973, Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew was under attack on August 8 – he denied all charges of accepting bribes and kickbacks and blamed the press and the university, the "nattering nabobs." By October Agnew was gone. In his August 8, 1974 speech, after listing the considerable accomplishments of his administration, especially in foreign affairs, Nixon quoted Theodore Roosevelt,

Begin Nixon Quoting TR
Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."
End Nixon Quote of TR in his Resignation Speech

Curiously, Nixon had addressed, in 1972, what many consider Theodore Roosevelt's greatest mistake as president. Nixon changed to honorable discharge the dishonorable discharges of 167 black U.S. soldiers in August 1906 by President Roosevelt. Some of the men had fifteen years of honorable service, six had been awarded the Medal of Honor for their service in Cuba or the Philippines. The people of Brownsville claimed that some of the soldiers had been involved in a shooting incident leading to the death of one white citizen and the wounding of several others. None of the 167 men would admit that any had been involved, so Roosevelt punished them all and then took off for a trip to inspect the Panama Canal. He refused to change his mind in spite of considerable evidence that no black soldiers had been involved. President Nixon finally recognized the injustice and changed the discharges to honorable in 1972, giving the sole survivor of the 167 a cash payment of $25,000. Nixon gets a sip of grape juice in toast for this action.

My gulp of grape juice in toast goes to today's birthday girl, poet Sara Teasdale, born on this day in 1884. Before she decided to leave the middle world in 1933 by taking an overdose of barbiturates, Teasdale wrote some fine poetry, including poems about such legendary women as Sappho, Beatrice, and Helen of Troy. Her "Helen of Troy" is a good one:

Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn
The flames' red wings soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she
Who loves all beauty -- yet I wither it.
Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath --
Forever since my maidenhood to sow
Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep
Their bitter care above me even now.
It was the gods who led me to this lair,
That tho' the burning winds should make me weak,
They should not snatch the life from out my lips.
Olympus let the other women die;
They shall be quiet when the day is done
And have no care to-morrow. Yet for me
There is no rest. The gods are not so kind
To her made half immortal like themselves.
It is to you I owe the cruel gift,
Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,
To you the beauty and to you the bale;
For never woman born of man and maid
Had wrought such havoc on the earth as I,
Or troubled heaven with a sea of flame
That climbed to touch the silent whirling stars
And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.
Have I not made the world to weep enough?
Give death to me. Yet life is more than death;
How could I leave the sound of singing winds,
The strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,
Or shut my eyes forever to the spring?
I will not give the grave my hands to hold,
My shining hair to light oblivion.
Have those who wander through the ways of death,
The still wan fields Elysian, any love
To lift their breasts with longing, any lips
To thirst against the quiver of a kiss?
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again,
To make the people love, who hate me now.
0 My dreams are over, I have ceased to cry
Against the fate that made men love my mouth
And left their spirits all too deaf to hear
The little songs that echoed through my soul.
I have no anger now. The dreams are done;
Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see
Aught but my body's fairness, till the end,
In all the islands set in all the seas,
And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,
Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,
Men's lives shall waste with longing after me,
For I shall be the sum of their desire,
The whole of beauty, never seen again.
And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake
With "Helen!" on their lips, and in their eyes
The vision of me. Always I shall be
Limned on the darkness like a shaft of light
That glimmers and is gone. They shall behold
Each one his dream that fashions me anew; --
With hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars
Dark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow
Like burnished gold that still retains the fire.
Yea, I shall haunt until the dusk of time
The heavy eyelids filled with fleeting dreams.

I wait for one who comes with sword to slay --
The king I wronged who searches for me now;
And yet he shall not slay me. I shall stand
With lifted head and look within his eyes,
Baring my breast to him and to the sun.
He shall not have the power to stain with blood
That whiteness -- for the thirsty sword shall fall
And he shall cry and catch me in his arms,
Bearing me back to Sparta on his breast.
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!

Here's to Sara, may she rest in peace. And may this glorious day bring you laughter and love, dear kola – take good care of yourselves so that you can look out for each other.

Ev Albers