Christmas Every Day

Funeral Blues

W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

For life, larger music

    wilder laughter

       louder drums

  greater struggles

       shorter sorrows

    deeper passions

       stranger dreams

For freedom, brighter magic

    stronger witches

        endless nights

  unknown allies

        slower dances

    grand delusions

        deadly fights

For blood, more mysteries

    crueler tyrants

        harder choices

  faster rhythms

        higher voices

And if you’re like me, choose what remains,

    more fear

        deeper danger

  and death as the truest advisor.

Willis Eschenbach

Let’s try some poetry of an uplifting nature this month.

Dane-geld

Rudyard Kipling

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,

    To call upon a neighbour and to say:—

“We invaded you last night—we are quite prepared to fight,

    Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,

    And the people who ask it explain

That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld

    And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,

    To puff and look important and to say:—

“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.

    We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

    But we’ve proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

    You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,

    For fear they should succumb and go astray,

So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,

    You will find it better policy to say:—

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,

    No matter how trifling the cost;

For the end of that game is oppression and shame,

    And the nation that plays it is lost!”

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
– Marcus Aurelius

When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and
were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet
things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for
what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many
things!
- Epictetus

Knowest thou what a speck thou art in comparison with the
Universe?---That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to
Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the
greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the
resolves of the mind. Place then thy happiness in that wherein thou art
equal to the Gods.

- Epictetus

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
– Marcus Aurelius

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

• Marcus Aurelius

True instruction is this:--to learn to wish that each thing should come
to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has
disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter,
and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for
the harmony of the whole.

- Epictetus

There is no man to whom a good mind comes before an evil one. It is the evil mind that gets first hold on all of us. Learning virtue means unlearning vice. We should therefore proceed to the task of freeing ourselves from faults with all the more courage because, when once committed to us, the good is an everlasting possession; virtue is not unlearned.

• Seneca