Discovery
Life is a long discovery, isn’t it?
You only get your wisdom bit-by-bit.
If you have luck you’ll find in early youth
How dangerous it is to tell the truth.
And next you learn how dignity and peace
Are the ripe fruit of patient avarice.
You find that middle life goes racing past
You find despair and at the very last
You find as you are giving up the ghost
That those who loved you best
Despised you most.
Hillaire Belloc
Does someone with real authorization to be at this site want to post this for the requestor on the Lost Quotes page? Thanks.
Les
Thank you Les. I knew most of it but kept getting it muddled, it used to be in my commonplace book but I think it got thrown out in a fit of tidieness. Maybe I'll start a new one.
Jenny
Can someone explain this exchange of messages?
Post Edited (11-29-03 06:46)
[www.emule.com] />
No posting on that phorum without creating a login name and password.
And why is that?
There was some talk about other sites being ruined by destructive posters. I infer "they" can block the riffraff, by user name and/or IP address, that way.
Send me what you know about The poem Duncton Hill. Need a complete analysis.
By 8 p.m. 14th/04/04
Duncton Hill. Need a complete analysis.
By 8 p.m. 14th/04/04
What I know about Duncton Hill: zilch.
Here is a complete analysis of what I know:
I hope it has reached you by 8pm.
Thankyou for your request.
Duncton Hill
He does not die that can bequeath
Some influence to the land he knows,
Or dares, persistent, interwreath
Love permanent with the wild hedgerows;
He does not die, but still remains.
The spring’s superb adventure calls
His dust athwart the woods to flame;
His boundary river’s secret falls
Perpetuate and repeat his name.
He rides his loud October sky:
He does not die. He does not die.
The beeches know the accustomed head
Which loved them, and a peopled air
Beneath their benediction spread
Comforts the silence everywhere;
For native ghosts return and these
Perfect the mystery in the trees.
So, therefore, though myself be crosst
The shuddering of that dreadful day
When friend and fire and home are lost
And even children drawn away -
The passer-by shall hear me still,
A boy that sings on Duncton Hill.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953
There is an excellent biography of Belloc here:
[www.sspx.ca] />
Les
I guess we have to add interwreath and athwart to Ian's word list, but I only found two instances of interwreath being used, the other by Keats.
I would think HB's gist would be found in the first stanza and the last:
He does not die that can bequeath
Some influence to the land he knows,
Ok, it's another how-can-I-keep-from-dying poem.
The passer-by shall hear me still,
A boy that sings on Duncton Hill.
Since my legacy lives on, so then do I.