William Blake | dual personalities

Tag: William Blake

September 8, 2020

For so the swallow and the sparrow sings

by chuckofish

You don’t believe
by William Blake

You don’t believe — I won’t attempt to make ye.
You are asleep — I won’t attempt to wake ye.
Sleep on, sleep on, while in your pleasant dreams
Of reason you may drink of life’s clear streams
Reason and Newton, they are quite two things,
For so the swallow and the sparrow sings.
Reason says ‘Miracle’, Newton says ‘Doubt’.
Aye, that’s the way to make all Nature out:
Doubt, doubt, and don’t believe without experiment.
That is the very thing that Jesus meant
When he said: ‘Only believe.’ Believe and try,
Try, try, and never mind the reason why.

Well, I hope you had a good long weekend. Mine was lovely and I feel that I accomplished a little bit too. There’s nothing like a trip to the recycling center to lighten my step.

Today is the birthday of one of my heroes (and a non-relative) Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828-1914). He is best known for his gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Following the Civil War, he served as Governor of Maine and the President of Bowdoin College.

We will toast him tonight. I am happy to say that I have been to Gettysburg and was able to cross that excursion off my bucket list several years ago. I hope I can cross something else off my bucket list this year, but chances are looking slim. Year’s end is quickly approaching, after all, and I am starting to think about Christmas. Amazing.

As always, we like to listen to Steve Earle’s fine song about Colonel Chamberlain and Little Round Top on his birthday. We’ll toast Steve too for managing to rhyme “Chamberlain”:

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February 19, 2014

Food for thought: fear not

by chuckofish

St. George window in the Princeton United Methodist Church by Tiffany Studio of New York City

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet