Laudator Temporis Acti

Randall Jarrell, The Breath Of Night:

The moon rises. The red cubs rolling
In the ferns by the rotten oak
Stare over a marsh and a meadow
To the farm's white wisp of smoke.
A spark burns, high in heaven.
Deer thread the blossoming rows
Of the old orchard, rabbits
Hop by the well-curb. The cock crows
From the tree by the widow's walk;
Two stars in the trees to the west,
Are snared, and an owl's soft cry
Runs like a breath through the forest.
Here too, though death is hushed, though joy
Obscures, like night, their wars,
The beings of this world are swept
By the Strife that moves the stars.

A beautiful poem, but I find the last line a bit puzzling. Traditionally, it isn't Strife that moves the stars, but Love. See, for example, the last line of Dante's Paradiso: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle."

Niko Tinbergen, Curious Naturalists (New York: Basic Books, 1958), chapter 16:

It seems to me that no man need be ashamed of being curious about nature. It could even be argued that this is what he got his brains for and that no greater insult to nature and to oneself is possible than to be indifferent to nature.

....

Scientific examination naturally requires concentration, a narrowing of interest, and the knowledge we gained through this has meant a great deal to us. But it has become increasingly clear to me how valuable have been the long periods of relaxed, unspecified, uncommitted interest.

....

The curious naturalist often feels sorry for those of his fellow-men who miss such an experience; and miss it unnecessarily, because it is there, to be seen, all the time. Nor is reading about it anything more than a poor substitute; direct, active observation is the only real thing.

Related post: The Investigation of Nature.

Gary A. Rendsburg, "The Mock of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 50.3 (July 1988) 414-417 (at 414):

One of the most memorable scenes in the entire Bible is the contest between Elijah the prophet of Yahweh and the 450 prophets of Baal atop Mt. Carmel. The confrontation, recorded in 1 Kings 18, called on both parties to attempt to produce rain, with the Baal prophets going first and Elijah scheduled second. When the former's efforts from morning until noon had produced no results, Elijah began to taunt his opponents about the inefficacy of their god. His exact words were as follows: "Shout in a loud voice, for he is a god, kî śîaḥ wekî śîg lô, or he may be on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping or waking up" (1 Kgs 18:27).

The words left untranslated apparently form a hendiadys, i.e., the use of two words (śîaḥ and śîg) to express one idea (compare the English "bits and pieces" or "odds and ends"). Unfortunately, however, none of the usual meanings of these Hebrew words fits the present context, so the phrase has proved to be enigmatic for scholars.

Rendsburg in his article argues that śîg (go aside, move away) means to go aside for the purpose of defecating (Targum Jonathan translates it as a euphemism for ease oneself) and that śîaḥ means to urinate (there are cognates with this meaning in other Semitic languages). He concludes (at 416):

In short, there is good reason to conclude that both elements in the hendiadys, śîaḥ and śîg, refer to excretion and that the phrase should be rendered "he may be defecating/urinating." These would certainly be powerful words from the mouth of Elijah and would be a most appropriate mock of the Canaanite god Baal.

Unfortunately, I don't know Hebrew, so I can't judge how plausible this interpretation is. There can be no question of any classical influences, but like Old Porteous, I always come back to the Greeks and the Romans, or, in this case, the Greeks.

First, on "going aside," see Xenophon, Education of Cyrus 1.2.16 (tr. Walter Miller):

There remains even unto this day evidence of their moderate fare and of their working off by exercise what they eat: for even to the present time it is a breach of decorum for a Persian to spit or to blow his nose or to appear afflicted with flatulence; it is a breach of decorum also to be seen going apart [ἰόντα ποι] either to make water or for anything else of that kind. And this would not be possible for them, if they did not lead an abstemious life and throw off the moisture by hard work, so that it passes off in some other way.

Second, on the bodily functions of gods, see the passages collected at Holy Ordures and Noctes Scatologicae: Divine Flatulence, to which add Aristophanes, Clouds 373 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson), where, after learning that clouds cause rain, Strepsiades says:

And imagine, before now I thought that rain is Zeus pissing through a sieve!

καίτοι πρότερον τὸν Δί' ἀληθῶς ᾤμην διὰ κοσκίνου οὐρεῖν.

J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, Oxford Introduction to Proto-European and the Proto-European World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 126, connect Greek οὐρέω (ouréō = urinate) with Hittite warsa- (rainfall) and Sanskrit várṣati (rain). Some derive Greek οὐρανός (ouranós = sky, heaven, cf. Latin and English Uranus) from a root that is also the source of ouréō: see Gregory Nagy, Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 275, who cites Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, II, 446-447. One is supposed to be able to search Frisk at the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary web site, but I have consistently bad luck with this tool. It almost always responds to my queries with "Sorry, the server may be busy: please try your request later!" M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 137, discussing the suffix *-nos, derives Greek Ouranós from *Worsanos = lord of rain.

Hat tip: Rick Brannan, Humor in Ancient Literature (the meme).

Linnie Marsh Wolfe, ed., John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938; rpt. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p. 69:

This was my 'method of study': I drifted about from rock to rock, from stream to stream, from grove to grove. Where night found me, there I camped. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and try to hear what it had to say. When I came to moraines, or ice-scratches upon the rocks, I traced them, learning what I could of the glacier that made them. I asked the boulders I met whence they came and whither they were going. I followed to their fountains the various soils upon which the forests and meadows are planted; and when I discovered a mountain or rock of marked form and structure, I climbed about it, comparing it with its neighbors, marking its relations to the forces that have acted upon it, glaciers, streams, avalanches, etc., in seeking to account for its form, finish, position, and general characters. It is astonishing how high and far we can climb in mountains that we love, and how little we require food and clothing. Weary at times, with only the birds and squirrels to compare notes with, I rested beneath the spicy pines, among the needles and burrs, or upon the plushy sod of a glacier meadow, touching my cheek to its gentians and daisies. No evil consequence from 'waste of time,' concerning which good people who accomplish nothing make such a sermonizing, has befallen me.

Thanks very much to Dr. Robert J. O'Hara for the following email:

I'm enjoying your series of blog posts on trees and groves. Here's another you may like -- George Wither's "When I behold the havocke and the spoyle" (1635):

http://rjohara.net/teaching/uncg/biology-105-poems#wither

And there's also Stanley Kunitz's "The War Against the Trees" (1958):

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-waragainsttrees/poem.html

Many thanks for the interesting posts.

George Wither, When I behold the havocke and the spoyle:

When I behold the Havocke and the Spoyle,
Which (ev'n within the compasse of my Dayes)
Is made through every quarter of this Ile,
In Woods and Groves (which were this Kingdomes praise)
And, when I minde with how much greedinesse,
We seeke the present Gaine in every thing;
Not caring (so our Lust we may possesse)
What Dammage to Posterity we bring:
They doe, me-thinkes, as if they did foresee,
That, some of those, whom they have cause to hate,
Should come in Future-times, their Heires to be:
Or else, why should they such things perpetrate:
For, if they thinke their Children shall succeed;
Or, can believe, that they begot their Heires;
They could not, surely, doe so foule a Deed,
As to deface the Land, that should be theirs.
What our Forefathers planted, we destroy:
Nay, all Mens labours, living heretofore,
And all our owne, we lavishly employ
To serve our present Lusts; and, for no more.
 But, let these carelesse Wasters learne to know,
That, as Vaine-Spoyle is open Injury;
So, Planting is a Debt, they truely owe,
And ought to pay to their Posterity.
Selfe-love, for none, but for it selfe, doth care;
And, onely, for the present, taketh paine:
But, Charity for others doth prepare;
And, joyes in that, which Future-Time shall gaine.
 If, After-Ages may my Labours blesse;
 I care not, much, how Litle I possesse.

Stanley Kunitz, The War Against the Trees:

The man who sold his lawn to standard oil
Joked with his neighbors come to watch the show
While the bulldozers, drunk with gasoline,
Tested the virtue of the soil
Under the branchy sky
By overthowing first the privet-row.
Forsythia-forays and hydrangea-raids
Were but preliminaries to a war
Against the great-grandfathers of the town,
So freshly lopped and maimed.
They struck and struck again,
And with each elm a century went down.
All day the hireling engines charged the trees,
Subverting them by hacking underground
In grub-dominions, where dark summer's mole
Rampages through his halls,
Till a northern seizure shook
Those crowns, forcing the giants to their knees.
I saw the ghosts of children at their games
Racing beyond their childhood in the shade,
And while the green world turned its death-foxed page
And a red wagon wheeled,
I watched them disappear
Into the suburbs of their grievous age.
Ripped from the craters much too big for hearts
The club-roots bared their amputated coils,
Raw gorgons matted blind, whose pocks and scars
Cried Moon! On a corner lot
One witness-moment, caught
In the rear-view mirrors of the passing cars.

Related posts: Like Another Erysichthon; The Fate of Old Trees; Scandalous Misuse of the Globe; The Groves Are Down; Massacre; Executioners; Anagyrasian Spirit; Butchers of Our Poor Trees; Cruel Axes; Odi et Amo; Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre; Hornbeams; Protection of Sacred Groves; Lex Luci Spoletina; Turullius and the Grove of Asclepius; Caesarian Section; Death of a Noble Pine; Two Yew Trees in Chilthorne, Somerset; The Fate of the Shrubbery at Weston; The Trees Are Down; Hornbeams; Sad Ravages in the Woods; Strokes of Havoc; Maltreatment of Trees; Arboricide; An Impious Lumberjack; Erysichthon in Ovid; Erysichthon in Callimachus; Vandalism.

George Orwell, Coming Up For Air, III.1:

It's always that way with old Porteous. All his talk is about things that happened centuries ago. Whatever you start off with it always comes back to statues and poetry and the Greeks and Romans. If you mention the Queen Mary he'll start telling you about Phoenician triremes. He never reads a modern book, refuses to know their names, never looks at any newspaper except The Times and takes a pride in telling you he's never been to the pictures. Except for a few poets like Keats and Wordsworth he thinks the modern world—and from his point of view the modern world is the last two thousand years—just oughtn't to have happened.

I'm part of the modern world myself, but I like to hear him talk. He'll stroll round the shelves and haul out first one book and then another, and now and again he'll read you a piece between little puffs of smoke, generally having to translate it from the Latin or something as he goes. It's all kind of peaceful, kind of mellow. All a little like a schoolmaster, and yet it soothes you, somehow. While you listen you aren't in the same world as trams and gas-bills and insurance companies. It's all temples and olive trees, and peacocks and elephants, and chaps in the arena with their nets and tridents, and winged lions and eunuchs and galleys and catapults, and generals in brass armour galloping their horses over the soldiers' shields.

Richard Wilbur, Riddle:

Where far in forest I am laid,
In a place ringed around by stones,
Do not look for melancholy shade,
And have no thoughts of buried bones;
For I am bodiless and bright,
And fill this glade with sudden glow;
The leaves are washed in under-light;
Shade lies upon the boughs like snow.

Albert Bierstadt, My Camp in the Rocky Mountains

Greek Anthology 9.234 (Crinagoras, tr. D.L. Page):

How long, poor fool, fluttering on hopes as high as the chilly clouds, my soul, will you sketch dream upon dream of riches? Nothing comes to man's possession of its own accord. Pursue rather the Muses' gifts, and leave these dim phantoms of the mind to fools.

ἄχρι τεῦ, ἆ δείλαιε, κεναῖς ἐπὶ ἐλπίσι, θυμέ,
  πωτηθεὶς ψυχρῶν ἀσσοτάτω νεφέων
ἄλλοις ἄλλ' ἐπ' ὄνειρα διαγράψεις ἀφένοιο;
  κτητὸν γὰρ θνητοῖς οὐδὲ ἓν αὐτόματον.
Μουσέων ἀλλ' ἐπὶ δῶρα μετέρχεο, ταῦτα δ' ἀμυδρά
  εἴδωλα ψυχῆς ἠλεμάτοισι μέθες.

Gow and Page, commentary (The Garland of Philip) on line 4:

The point seems to be that it is no good merely dreaming of riches, hoping that they will fall into your lap; wealth will come only with effort—a kind of effort beyond the power of Crinagoras, who will be well advised to stop dreaming of becoming a millionaire and to make good use of the talents which the Muses have given him.

Walter de la Mare, Trees:

Of all the trees in England,
    Her sweet three corners in,
Only the Ash, the bonnie Ash
    Burns fierce while it is green.

Of all the trees in England,
    From sea to sea again,
The Willow loveliest stoops her boughs
    Beneath the driving rain.

Of all the trees in England,
    Past frankincense and myrrh,
There's none for smell, of bloom and smoke,
    Like Lime and Juniper.

Of all the trees in England,
    Oak, Elder, Elm and Thorn,
The Yew alone burns lamps of peace
    For them that lie forlorn.

Related post: Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.