Resurrection Day!

"I am Nell Coles.  It is my lot
to lie within the parish plot, rolled in a strip of poorhouse sheet
that had ado to reach my feet; nailed in a pinewood box, so thin
already it lets water in,
and tumbled here with naught to show
a Christian creature bides below.
To right and left the gentlefolk
are put to bed in three-inch oak;
linen-shrouded, lapped in lead;
smooth-turfed and tended, foot to head;
held safely in by curb and stone --
yet would I choose to change with none,
who, spite of pomp and high estate,
are of the dead most desolate.
All graves are hard, but none has less
of comfort or of kindliness --
tho' roofs be sound and walls be dry --
than those wherein my betters lie.
All graves are cold; but I knew cold
and lack and shivering of old.
I did not, as these great ones come
unpractised to a cheerless home.
Yet, praised be God, here at mine end
my poverty is turned my friend;
for at my elbow I can see
the shapes of bygone company --
Poll Makepeace; merryman Tom Finch,
and Lightfoot's Joan; can, at a pinch
throw out a jest to Silas King
shall set his rib-bones rattling;
and while my old jaw hangs in place
match tales with Martha Boniface --
what time the dead do lie alone
until the final Trump is blown.
When, even on that awful Day,
I think to be more blest than they;
for as they grapple, heave and strain
and strive to reach the light again,
all unnumbered I'll have found
my way up thro' the shuddering ground,
and scrambled with no trouble at all
by rocking tombs and shafts that fall,
past twisting cross and groaning urn--
out of my station, out of turn--
first in the place, the first to stand,
grave-gear bunched in my either hand,
making my bob, and like a nell,
crying 'Good day, Lord Gabriel!' "

Pauper's Piece  Ada Jackson
in Country Life magazine 1970

.

Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial

"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.  A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, when few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne."

Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall  or, a Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk.
Sir Thomas Browne

Reading at "Fernley", Cookham

"What he read, besides the Bible, was largely a closed book to me.  But conversation with my brother, Sydney, was one means of glimpsing his mind.  Another was to take a look at the old card table.  Occupying most of the space was the old Bible given to him by Mr Hatch, often opened at Job.  Struggling for space round its fringes would be Byron, Keats, Donne, Urn Burial, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Possessed.  He was heavily influenced by Dostoevski.  Later, referring to those days, he regretted struggling so long with Carlyle's French Revolution.

He was unorthodox in in the manner of his reading.  During his whole life, I never knew him sit in a comfortable chair, for this or any other purpose.  He was a hard-chair reader, and sat at a table more often than not, with his legs screwed round one another at the ankles; and a funny oil lamp usually provided the light."

Stanley Spencer by his brother Gilbert    Gilbert Spencer

Emily Bronte draft

"First worship God,  he that forgets to pray

Bids not himself good morrow nor good day."

George Herbert
Inscribed on Prayer board from Haworth Old Church, now in Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth, W. Yorks.



Emily Bronte, by Patrick Branwell Bronte, 1833
National Portrait Gallery, London
NPG1724 National Portrait Gallery, London
www.creativecommons.org

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heather and the harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, wondering how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

A Valediction: of the booke

"This Booke, as long-liv'd as the elements,
Or as the world's form, this all-graved tome
In cypher writ, or new made Idiome,
We for loves clergy only'are instruments:
When this book is made thus,
Should againe the ravenous
Vandals and Goths inundate us,
Learning were safe; in this our Universe
Schooles might learne Sciences,  Spheares Musick,  Angels Verse."

Songs and Sonets  John Donne

A Ghost in the machine, Part 3.

Archy creates a situation  3:   the foregoing--

"lines hopping from key
to key in the shadow and being anxious
to finish my
god my god cried henry losing his nerve
the machine is writing all by itself it
is a ghost and threw himself face
downward on the bed and hid his face in the
pillow and kept on saying my god my
god it is a ghost and the woman screamed
and said it is
tom higginbotham s ghost that s whose ghost
it is oh i know whose
ghost it is my conscience tells me i
jilted him when we were studying
stenography together
at the business college and he went into
a decline and died and i have always
known in my heart that he
died of unrequited love o what a
wicked girl i was and he has come
back to haunt me
i have brought a curse upon you henry chase
him away says henry trembling so the bed
shook chase him away mable you coward you
chase him away yourself says mable and both
lay and recriminated and recriminated
with their heads under the covers hot
night though it was while i wrote
the foregoing lines but after
a while it came out henry had a
stenographer on his conscience too and
they got into a row and got so
mad they forgot to be scared i will
close now this house is easily seen from the
railroad station and the woman sits in
the window and writes i will be behind the waste
paper receptacle outside the station door
come and get me i am foot sore and weary
they are still quarrelling as i
close i can do no less than
say thank you mable and henry
in advance for mailing this
                                                archy"

Archy & Mehitabel  Don Marquis

A Ghost in the machine, Part 2.

Archy creates a situation

".............a moment ago i was
interrupted by a woman s voice what
was that noise she said nothing at all
said a man s voice you are always
hearing things at night but it
sounded as if my typewriter were clicking she
insisted go to sleep said he then
i clicked it some more henry get up she said
there s someone in the house a moment
later the light was turned on and
they both stood in the doorway of the room now
are you satisfied he said you
see there is no one in here at
all i was hiding in the shadow under the
keys they went back into
their bed room and i began to write
the foregoing lines

henry henry she said do you hear that
i do he says it is nothing but the
house cooling off it always cracks that way
cooling off nothing she said not a
hot night like this then said henry it
is cracking with the heat i tell you
she said that is the typewriter clicking well
he said you saw for yourself the room was
empty and the door was locked it can t
be the typewriter to prove it to you
i will bring it in here he did so the
machine was set down
in the moonlight which came in one of
 the windows with the key side in the
shadow there he said look at it and see
for yourself it is not being operated by any one
just then i began to write the foregoing..."

(to be continued)
Archy & Mehitabel  Don Marquis

Lost in the Indian Ocean

November 1782  The aftermath of the hurricane on the Raynha de Portugal:

"I joined in searching amongst the heap of rubbish in the great cabin for anything worth preserving. ...After ransacking in a mass of dirt, so blended together it was difficult to separate for a long time, I got hold of a small tin case, much bruised but unbroken.  This I took to Mr Barretto as he lay in his hammock, who joyfully exclaimed it was the ship's papers.  He requested I would carefully open it and, should they be wet, get them dried, as they were of the utmost importance to him.  I directly set about it, but alas! they were totally useless, the ink being entirely effaced although written upon parchment, most of them separating into pieces in attempting to unfold them.  The only one that was at all legible, and that only partially, was Mr Barretto's Portuguese naturalisation.

Having lent my aid for the service of my friends, I next thought of my own concerns, and accordingly went to look after my escritoire,.... Upon opening it and examining the contents, everything in the way of paper was completely destroyed except three letters that I had received after all the others, and put into a leather pocket-book....What I lamented above everything else, though of no intrinsic value, was the loss of the large book in which I had copied the journals of every voyage I had made, and the remarkable circumstances that had occurred.  This was utterly destroyed, as well as my admission as an attorney of the Court of the King's bench and solicitor of the Court of Chancery which were in it."

Memoirs of a Georgian Rake   William Hickey,  edited by Roger Hudson for The Folio Society

The wreck of the "Blanchefleur"

" 'This little fan and these tarnished slipper-buckles,'  the Abbe now said, giving his host a mournful smile, 'come, monsieur, out of that great Indiaman, the Blanchefleur.   A total loss, an utter wreck, my son, Mary save us.  The fine ship, the pride of the owners, officers and hands, has been broken among surges and rocks.  The coast of Africa, a savage place. ... Christ's pity! -- it's there the Blanchefleur struck and foundered.'


'Thomas Pidgeon knows all, ah me! that may now ever be known of the loss of the Blanchefleur.  He was a servant in that fatal ship, and, monsieur, you shall hear from his own lips a story of disaster, extraordinary peril, and tears.'


The young steward ceased, and looked, with a kind of questioning in the eyes, at the priest.  Lucy made a small movement, compassionate and woeful.  Stanyhurst  watched a candle burning out, with little jumps of flame, in its socket.  The priest gazed steadily, with a smile  kind and quiet, at the sailor.  No one spoke until Thomas Pidgeon again went on with the story.  And now, and through the remainder of the sailor's words, a low rumble, far or near, seemed, gradually to fill the chamber from without, to arise and enter and resound about the walls, and echo in the air; a noise distinct from and blending with, the constant dropping of rain.  Early industry was awake, and all the wheels of London beginning to revolve once more.

'Everything ended',  the young steward said;  'it all ended like now I must tell'. "

All Night at Mr. Stanyhurst's   Hugh Edwards
with an Introduction by Ian Fleming in 1963

Flight of King James II

"hage the 31 of january

...but ended yesterday with voilence  as all great things do but kings: ours whent out: Lyke a farding candele: and has given us by this convension an occasion not of amending the goverment: but of melting itt down and make all new:..."

Carey Mordaunt, Viscountess Mordaunt,  later countess of Monmouth and, later, of Peterborough
from The Hague to John Locke,  January 1689
Correspondence of John Locke   ed. E.S. De Beer