Laudator Temporis Acti

Now, the pine as a species has a stiff trunk and curled branches, its leaves are thin, and its twigs are long. It is gnarled yet noble, unconstrained and overspreading, entangled and intricate. So when wind passes through it, it is neither obstructed nor agitated. Wind flows through smoothly with a natural sound. Listening to it can relieve anxiety and humiliation, wash away confusion and impurity, expand the spirit and lighten the heart, make one feel peaceful and contemplative, cause one to wander free and easy through the skies and travel along with the force of Creation. It is well suited to gentlemen who seek pleasure in mountains and forests, delighting in them and unable to abandon them....Gazing at the pines soothed my eyes; listening to the pines soothed my ears. I escaped from my duties and with this leisure time wandered free and easy here and there without any worldly concerns to perplex the mind. I can feel happy here and pass the entire day this way.

Man comes to read me an essay. Know nothing about the subject: thought he was going to write on something else. Essay finished: must say something: try to find fault with his facts. Man confronts me with array of statistics, apparently genuine: if so nothing more to say. Criticise his grammar: man offended. Interview rather painful, till concluded by entrance of nine-thirty man with Latin prose. Rather superior young man, who considers himself a scholar. Suggest that part of his vocabulary is not according to classical usage: proves me wrong by reference to dictionary. Is not surprised to find me mistaken. Wish that Higher Education had stopped in Board Schools and not got down to undergraduates.

Man at ten, with a desire to learn. Stays till near eleven discussing his chances in the schools at great length. Presently comes to his prospects in life. Would send me to sleep if he wouldn't ask me questions.

Eleven: no more men, thank goodness.

Ragged mountain rocks efface the path.
Twilight comes to the temple where bats hover.
Outside the hall I sit on steps and gaze at torrential new rain.
Banana leaves are wide, the cape jasmine is fat.
A monk tells me the ancient Buddhist frescos are good
and holds a torch to show me, but I can barely see.
I lie quiet in night so deep even insects are hushed.
From behind a rise the clear moon enters my door.

In the dawn I am alone and lose myself,
wandering up and down in mountain mist.
Then colors dazzle me: mountain red, green stream,
and a pine so big ten people linking hands can't encircle it.
Bare feet on slick rock as I wade upstream.
Water sounds—shhhh, shhhh. Wind inflates my shirt.
A life like this is the best.
Why put your teeth on the bit, let people rein you in?
O friends,
how can we grow old without returning here?

Rough were the mountain-stones, and the path very narrow;
And when I reached the temple, bats were in the dusk.
I climbed to the hall, sat on the steps, and drank the rain-washed air
Among the round gardenia-pods and huge banana-leaves.
On the old wall, said the priest, were Buddhas finely painted,
And he brought a light and showed me, and I called them wonderful.
He spread the bed, dusted the mats, and made my supper ready,
And, though the food was coarse, it satisfied my hunger.
At midnight, while I lay there not hearing even an insect,
The mountain moon with her pure light entered my door....
At dawn I left the mountain and, alone, lost my way:
In and out, up and down, while a heavy mist
Made brook and mountain green and purple, brightening everything.
I am passing sometimes pines and oaks, which ten men could not girdle,
I am treading pebbles barefoot in swift-running water—
Its ripples purify my ear, while a soft wind blows my garments....
These are the things which, in themselves, make life happy.
Why should we be hemmed about and hampered with people?
O chosen pupils, far behind me in my own country,
What if I spent my old age here and never went back home?

Lecture to be delivered at ten o'clock to Honours men, on point of ancient custom: very interesting: Time of Roman Dinner, whether at 2.30 or 2.45. Have got copious notes on the subject somewhere: must read them up before lecture, as it never looks well to be in difficulties with your own MS.—looks as if you hadn't the subject at your fingers' ends. Notes can't be found. Know I saw them on my table three weeks ago, and table can't have been dusted since then. Oh, here they are: illegible. Wonder what I meant by all these abbreviations. Never mind: can leave that part out. Five minutes past ten.

Lecture-room pretty full: two or three scholars, with air of superior intelligence: remainder commoners, in attitudes more or less expressive of distracted attention. One man from another college, looking rather de trop. Had two out-college men last time: different men, too: disappointing. Begin my dissertation and try to make abstruse subject attractive: 'learning put lightly, like powder in jam.' Wish that scholar No. 1 wouldn't check my remarks by reference to the authority from whom my notes are copied. Why do they teach men German? Second scholar has last number of the 'Classical Review' open before him. Why? Appears afterwards that the 'Review' contains final and satisfying reductio ad absurdum of my theory. Man from another college asks if he may go away. Certainly, if he wishes. Explains that he thought this was Mr. ——'s Theology lecture. Seems to have taken twenty minutes to find out his mistake. Wish that two of the commoners could learn to take notes intelligently, and not take down nothing except the unimportant points. Hope they won't reproduce them next week in the schools.

Ten fifty-five: peroration Interrupted by entrance of lecturer for next hour. Begs pardon: sorry to have interrupted: doesn't go, however. Peroration spoilt. Lecture over: general sense of relief. Go out with the audience, and overhear one of them tell his friend that, after all, it wasn't so bad as last time. Mem., not to go out with audience in future.

How was I born? Whence am I? Why came I here? To depart again? How can I learn aught, knowing nothing? I was nothing and was born; again I shall be as at first. Nothing and of no worth is the race of men. But serve me the merry fountain of Bacchus; for this is the antidote of ills.

How was I born? whence am I? why did I come? to go again: how can I learn anything, knowing nothing? Being nothing, I was born; again I shall be as I was before; nothing and nothing-worth is the human race. Come then, serve to me the joyous fountain of Bacchus; for this is the drug counter-charming ills.

Whence was I born, and how?
  How was I born, and why?
Alas! I nothing know,
  But, born, that I must die.
From nothing I was born;
To nothing must return.
The end and the beginning
  Of life is nothingness—
Of losing, or of winning,
  Of pleasure, or distress.
Then give me wine at least;
There's nought left but to feast.

How born, and where, and why? To go I came;
  And knowing nothing, nothing learn I can.
Nothing I was when born; and still the same
  Nothing shall be. Such is the race of man.
The pleasure-loving cup of Bacchus fill;
'Tis the sole antidote for every ill.

πῶς γενόμην; πόθεν εἰμί; τίνος χάριν ἦλθον; ἀπελθεῖν;
  πῶς δύναμαί τι μαθεῖν, μηδὲν ἐπιστάμενος;
οὐδὲν ἐὼν γενόμην πάλιν ἔσσομαι ὡς πάρος ἦα·
  οὐδὲν καὶ μηδὲν τῶν μερόπων τὸ γένος.
ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε μοι Βάκχοιο φιλήδονον ἔντυε νᾶμα·
  τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι κακῶν φάρμακον ἀντίδοτον.

Labels: nunc est bibendum

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer. I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Beak downward staring. I said, "My dear bird we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you." But how beautiful he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes—
What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.

When you reach this point you are doomed. Far better to have stayed at home with the TV and a case of beer. If the happy thought arrives too late, crawl into the shade and contemplate the lonely sky. See those big black scrawny wings far above, waiting? Comfort yourself with the reflection that within a few hours, if all goes as planned, your human flesh will be working its way through the gizzard of a buzzard, your essence transfigured into the fierce greedy eyes and unimaginable consciousness of a turkey vulture. Whereupon you, too, will soar on motionless wings high over the ruck and rack of human suffering. For most of us a promotion in grade, for some the realization of an ideal.

The tirade against dirt so constantly heard is probably the most tiresome item of the stock in trade of housekeepers' communications. Poor dirt! Pulverized rock, tried by frost, purified by fire, washed by the rain and dried by the innocent sunshine, and yet more roundly abused than anything else in Nature. Thank Goodness, I love the dirt! Love to walk on it, to play in it; yes, to burrow waist-deep in it and, emerging into the light of day, feel that I am not an unfit object for the blessed sun to see. Better still, I am duly thankful that I am comparatively free from the restraints of those habitations where a speck of dirt is held in as great horror as a crime.

Let him that will, ascend the tott'ring Seat
Of Courtly Grandeur, and become as great
As are his mounting Wishes; as for me,
Let sweet Repose, and rest my portion be;
Give me some mean obscure Recess; a Sphere
Out of the Road of Business, or the fear
Of falling lower, where I sweetly may
My self and dear Retirement still enjoy:
Let not my Life, or Name, be known unto
The Grandees of the Times, tost to and fro
By Censures, or Applause; but let my Age
Slide gently by, not overthwart the Stage
Of Publick Action; unheard, unseen,
And unconcerned, as if I ne'er had been.
And thus while I shall pass my silent days
In shady Privacy, free from the Noise
And bustles of the World, then shall I
A good old Innocent Plebeian die.
Death is a meer surprize, a very Snare
To him that makes it his lifes greatest care
To be a publick Pageant, known to All,
But unacquainted with Himself doth fall.

Stet quicumque volet potens
aulae culmine lubrico:
me dulcis saturet quies.
obscuro positus loco
leni perfruar otio,
nullis nota Quiritibus
aetas per tacitum fluat.
sic cum transierint mei
nullo cum strepitu dies,
plebeius moriar senex.
illi mors gravis incubat
qui, notus nimis omnibus,
ignotus moritur sibi.

• Beatus Ille
• The Fall of Princes
• In Leisure and Obscurity
• In Calm Leisure Let Me Rest

Go damned Melancholy, get thee hence,
Thou hell-bred fury, torment of the mind,
Weakner of wit, abuser of the sence,
Within whose bounds al mischiefs are confin'd
Thou sullen sin, souls torture day and night,
Health-killing humour, Harbinger of Death,
Grave to content, darkner of beauties light,
Unto all good thou art the floud of Leath;
A waking dream, a spur to jealousie;
A fond conveyer of a thousand toyes;
The ready path which leads to Lunacie,
Is this bereaver of our earthly joyes:
  The Gods, I think, when we deserv their curse,
  Inflict this plague, because there is no worse.

A sudden wakin', a sudden weepin';
A li'l suckin', a li'l sleepin';
A cheel's full joys an' a cheel's short sorrows,
Wi' a power o' faith in gert to-morrows.

Young blood red-hot an' the love of a maid;
One glorious day as'll never fade;
Some shadows, some sunshine, some triumphs, some tears;
An' a gatherin' weight o' the flyin' years.

Then auld man's talk o' the days behind 'e;
Your darter's youngest darter to mind 'e;
A li'l dreamin', a li'l dyin',
A li'l lew corner o' airth to lie in.

Crede mihi, bene qui latuit, bene vixit.

I'm glad you're willing to give the word an airing. Perhaps it will be condemned to remain a hapax or will the benevixitists among us at last be tempted to break cover, come out of the closet/hut/burrow/attic/cellar/lair (briefly) and whisper "My name is _________ and I'm a benevixitist". I hope in any case that no factional strife will break out with the more radical lathebiosasts. In matters latuitarian I'm latitudinarian. An anchorite's as good as an eremite and we can all live happily apart under our respective stones.

Towards a glossary of benevixitist heraldry:

lion couchant (in very tall grass)
mantled helm (visor lowered)
moon decrescent
castle triple towered

Mottoes: latenter vivendum; cavendo tutus

The larch, the birch and the eagle fern
And granite grey;
The cry of the kine and the song of the burn
Down Dartmoor way.

A league-long tramp to a lifted stone
Under the sky;
Long lustral hours superbly alone—
My soul and I.

For you be the kingdoms that you list,
The seas you will;
And mine a white rainbow in the mist
On a heather hill.

Let us consider, too, how differently young and old are affected by the words of some classic author, such as Homer or Horace. Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical common-places, neither better nor worse than a hundred others which any clever writer might supply, which he gets by heart and thinks very fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully, in his own flowing versification, at length come home to him, when long years have passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him, as if he had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an Ionian festival, or among the Sabine hills, have lasted generation after generation, for thousands of years, with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the current literature of his own day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival.

Alcon, the wood-god, wandering his realm,
Found his son Astries in the meadowland
At sunset, squatted on a fallen pine
And much intent upon a swarm of gnats.
To whom the godling: "Father, I have stayed
This hour to wonder at yon tiny folk,
Who dart, and hum, and make so much a-do,
Mad with the sunlight. What it is they seek
And whom they praise, and why, I do not know;
But as the hour grows old, and twilight hills
Put on the purple, this I see—that they
With wilder zeal do dash this way and that,
And where each in a foot of space had range,
Now flits he two, and shriller grows the cry,
Larger the host, and greater its concern.
Dost note?" Whereat brown Alcon plucked a root
And beat it on the pine, and briefly spake:
"Aye! aye! they call it 'progress'!" And the sun
Sank on the forest, and the night was chill.

Yet Arcadius felt conscious of a change in Pan, and before the deity stumped off upon his night-hidden way, he spoke to him.

"How is it with you yourself, dear God?" he asked. "It has ever been the selfish mortal's custom to fling his troubles upon an immortal director and load the divine shoulders with burdens often of his own making; yet I do not stint my love, and love, being quick-sighted, perceives a change."

"It is with me as with all of us in whom mankind puts trust and faith," replied the god. "The measure of a deity's success must ever depend upon the quality of his worshippers. The breath of our celebrants and votaries is the life in our nostrils; and as that diminishes, so must we abate. Godkind are in truth solely dependent on mankind, as light is nothing without darkness, heat nothing without cold, stability no more than a word without vicissitude and change. To-day new divine figures are at the meridian of man's worship; a new evangel draws the heart and hope of humanity; a new dynasty of Heaven is to be exalted to the central throne; but the simple theology of your Christian primitives will be soon overlaid, corrupted, lost in the usual flood of myth and metaphysic. Meantime we constellations of Olympus sink to our setting under the dawn of your Triple Sun. We pass to the limbo of vanished pantheons and mythologies; we join the gods of Assyria and Persia and Egypt in their everlasting eclipse; we diminish and melt away as the snow upon Soracte, while human hope and fear, trust and affection depart from us. Some will vanish out of the heart of man for ever; while others may loiter as loved ghosts for all time. Of such am I, and my syrinx shall yet whisper by the river, my lonely altars win their worship down many an avenue of human years. For herds must roam upon the high lands, flocks silver the water meadows; and man, thinking on the mettle of his pastures, still spare a kindly thought for the Pasturer."

Now in the noontide peace I lie
    Where waving grass is green,
With bosom open to the sky
    And not a cloud between;
At dawn, one cast from out the blue
    A shadow on my lanes,
Then vanished with the dwindling dew
    And not a wisp remains.

An hour ago I watched an ant
    Haste homeward with her spoil;
She had, by Jove his covenant,
    No quittance of her toil;
Doubtless they be a thrifty race,
    Whose works shall not depart:
O Jove, who grantest each his place,
    Teach not to me their art!

I and my kin shall pass ere long,
    And ants shall ever be;
But better now the linnet's song
    Than their eternity.
What tho my people perish soon?
    Awhile the dews we crush
Where nights of summer mould the moon
    And laughters wake the thrush.

From yonder hill I spy on man
    And marvel at his need,
Who fashions, in a season's span,
    A thousand fanes to Greed;
Perchance from each, his worship done,
    He ventures forth repaid,
But grant thou me the spendthrift sun
    And berries of the glade.

At noon great Caesar's chariot past,
    A poison on the air,
But drive he slow or drive he fast,
    The journey's end is Care—
Care, at whose throne all mortals stand
    With tinsel crowns put by,
Too weak to rove the billowed land,
    Too sad to watch the sky.

Mid ivied trunks I see her gleam,
    The nymph, my forest-mate;
She wanders by the lyric stream,
    To us articulate.
A golden house let Caesar build,
    To hold his ghosts and gods—
For me the summer eves are stilled,
    For me the flower nods.

My first Latin reading-book, I remember, was Caesar De Bello Gallico, Lib. I. I had heard vaguely of Julius Caesar as the first Roman who crossed the Channel, and found the Ancient Britons tastefully decorated with woad. Of his place in the history of Rome and of the world I knew nothing. What he was doing in Gaul was a mystery far beyond my ken. I laboriously construed his narrative at the rate of some fifteen lines a day, so that it had no continuity, no movement, no spark of interest for me. If any one had told me that it was in fact a most exciting story, how I should have stared! But no one challenged my incredulity with such a paradox. I plodded apathetically onward, little dreaming that the tedious old gentleman with his ablative absolutes was not only one of the greatest but one of the most romantic characters the world had ever seen.

The boys don't hoe like they used to do,
And the maids don't sew like they used to do;
The hen don't lay
And the hound don't bay,
And the wind don't blow like it used to do.        5

The men don't drink like they used to do,
And the girls don't wink like they used to do;
The bud don't swell
And the flow'rs don't smell;
And the folk don't think like they used to do.        10

The milk don't cream like it used to do,
And the ewes don't teem like they used to do;
The corn don't kern
And the sun don't burn;
And my head won't scheme like it used to do.        15

Bad men ban't hung like they used to be,
Good songs ban't sung like they used to be;
The jolly and wise
Have all flown to the skies;
And I ban't so young as I used to be.        20

When I first started buying antiquarian books I rejected those that had been marked, but now I find the markings sometimes more interesting than the books, and certainly revealing of the byways of human psychology.

There are, for example, those who seem to read hundreds of pages with the express purpose of finding the single spelling mistake or misprint contained in them and underlining it, putting a triumphant exclamation mark in the margin, as though finding the error established their intellectual superiority to the author. (Of course, they attribute all errors to the author and none to the printer.)

Then there are the underliners. The majority of these rarely get past the first chapter or two; some underline things so banal — Smith then went to London, for example, or The snow fell in flakes — that one wonders what kind of mind wants to commit such things to memory. Philosophy books of the Forties and Fifties, meanwhile, tend to smell strongly of tobacco.

"What are you doing Zek?" said Judge Webster to his eldest boy.
"Nothing."
"What are you doing, Daniel?"
"Helping Zek."
A tolerably correct account of most of our activity today.