Re: Speaking of Whitman as Karla did on rap...

Will-Dockery wrote:
>  >> Rudy Canoza wrote:
>  >> Will Dockery wrote:
>  >>
>  >>> Rudy Canoza wrote:
>  >>> Will Dockery wrote:
>  >>>
>  >>>
>  >>> Rudy Canoza <rc> posted:
>  >>>
>  >>> MummyChunk wrote:
>  >>> [email protected] wrote:
>  >>>
>  >>> The appendix to Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers had this eulogy
>  >>> delivered
>  >>> by Robert Green Ingersoll, a copy of which I pluck from a Book
>  >>> of Wisdom
>  >>> site where such items are available to Humanists and
>  >>> Freethinkers:
>  >>>
>  >>> A TRIBUTE TO WALT WHITMAN.
>  >>>
>  >>> Camden, N.J., March 30, 1892.
>  >>>
>  >>> MY FRIENDS: Again we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face
>  >>> to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great
>  >>> American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead
>  >>> before us, and we have met to pay a tribute to his greatness
>  >>> and his worth.
>  >>>
>  >>> I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid
>  >>> the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain. He
>  >>> was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy.
>  >>> He was so great that he rose above the greatest that he met
>  >>> without arrogance, and so great that he stooped to the lowest
>  >>> without conscious condescension. He never claimed to be lower
>  >>> or greater than any of the sons of men.
>  >>>
>  >>> He came into our generation a free, untrammeled spirit, with
>  >>> sympathy for all. His arm was beneath the form of the sick. He
>  >>> sympathized with the imprisoned and despised, and even on the
>  >>> brow of crime he was great enough to place the kiss of human
>  >>> sympathy.
>  >>>
>  >>> One of the greatest lines in our literature is his, and the
>  >>> line is great enough to do honor to the greatest genius that
>  >>> has ever lived. He said, speaking of an outcast: "Not till the
>  >>> sun excludes you do I exclude you."
>  >>>
>  >>> His charity was as wide as the sky, and wherever there was
>  >>> human suffering, human misfortune, the sympathy of Whitman bent
>  >>> above it as the firmament bends above the earth.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was built on a broad and splendid plan -- ample, without
>  >>> appearing to have limitations -- passing easily for a brother
>  >>> of mountains and seas and constellations; caring nothing for
>  >>> the little maps and charts with which timid pilots hug the
>  >>> shore, but giving himself freely with recklessness of genius to
>  >>> winds and waves and tides; caring for nothing as long as the
>  >>> stars were above him. He walked among men, among writers, among
>  >>> verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and
>  >>> tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was the poet of that divine democracy which gives equal
>  >>> rights to all the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the
>  >>> great American voice; uttered a song worthy of the great
>  >>> Republic. No man ever said more for the rights of humanity,
>  >>> more in favor of real .
>  >>> democracy, of real justice. He neither scorned nor cringed, was
>  >>> neither tyrant nor slave. He asked only to stand the equal of
>  >>> his fellows beneath the great flag of nature, the blue and
>  >>> stars.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was the poet of Life. It was a joy simply to breathe. He
>  >>> loved the clouds; he enjoyed the breath of morning, the
>  >>> twilight, the wind, the winding streams. He loved to look at
>  >>> the sea when the waves burst into the whitecaps of joy. He
>  >>> loved the fields, the hills; he was acquainted with the trees,
>  >>> with birds, with all the beautiful objects of the earth. He not
>  >>> only saw these objects, but understood their meaning, and he
>  >>> used them that he might exhibit his heart to his fellow-men.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was the poet of Love. He was not ashamed of that divine
>  >>> passion that has built every home in the world; that divine
>  >>> passion that has painted every picture and given us every real
>  >>> work of art; that divine passion that has made the world worth
>  >>> living in and has given some value to human life.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was the poet of the natural, and taught men not to be
>  >>> ashamed of that which is natural. He was not only the poet of
>  >>> democracy, not only the poet of the great Republic, but he was
>  >>> the Poet of the human race. He was not confined to the limits
>  >>> of this country, but his sympathy went out over the seas to all
>  >>> the nations of the earth.
>  >>>
>  >>> He stretched out his hand and felt himself the equal of all
>  >>> kings and of all princes, and the brother of all men, no matter
>  >>> how high, no matter how low.
>  >>>
>  >>> He has uttered more supreme words than any writer of our
>  >>> century, possibly of almost any other. He was, above all
>  >>> things, a man, and above genius, above all the snow-capped
>  >>> peaks of intelligence, above all art, rises the true man,
>  >>> Greater than all is the true man, and he walked among his
>  >>> fellow-men as such.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was the poet of Death. He accepted all life and all death,
>  >>> and he justified all. He had the courage to meet all, and was
>  >>> great enough and splendid enough to harmonize all and to accept
>  >>> all there is of life as a divine melody.
>  >>>
>  >>> You know better than I what his life has been, but let me say
>  >>> one thing. Knowing, as he did, what others can know and what
>  >>> they cannot, he accepted and absorbed all theories, all creeds,
>  >>> all religions, and believed in none. His philosophy was a sky
>  >>> that embraced all clouds and accounted for all clouds. He had a
>  >>> philosophy and a religion of his own, broader, as he believed
>  >>> -- and as I believe -- than others. He accepted all, he
>  >>> understood all, and he was above all.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was absolutely true to himself. He had frankness and
>  >>> courage, and he was as candid as light. He was willing that all
>  >>> the sons of men should be absolutely acquainted with his heart
>  >>> and brain. He had nothing to conceal. Frank, candid, pure,
>  >>> serene, noble, and yet for years he was maligned and slandered,
>  >>> simply because he had the candor of nature. He will be
>  >>> understood yet, and that for which he was condemned -- his
>  >>> frankness, his candor -- will add to the glory and greatness of
>  >>> his fame.
>  >>>
>  >>> He wrote a liturgy for mankind; he wrote a great and splendid
>  >>> psalm of life, and he gave to us the gospel of humanity -- the
>  >>> greatest gospel that can be preached.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was not afraid to live, not afraid to die. For many years
>  >>> he and death were near neighbors. He was always willing and
>  >>> ready to meet and greet this king called death, and for many
>  >>> months he sat in the deepening twilight waiting for the night,
>  >>> waiting for the light.
>  >>>
>  >>> He never lost his hope. When the mists filled the valleys, he
>  >>> looked upon the mountain tops, and when the mountains in
>  >>> darkness disappeared, he fixed his gaze upon the stars.
>  >>>
>  >>> In his brain were the blessed memories of the day, and in his
>  >>> heart were mingled the dawn and dusk of life.
>  >>>
>  >>> He was not afraid; he was cheerful every moment. The laughing
>  >>> nymphs of day did not desert him. They remained that they might
>  >>> clasp the hands and greet with smiles the veiled and silent
>  >>> sisters of the night. And when they did come, Walt Whitman
>  >>> stretched his hand to them. On one side were the nymphs of the
>  >>> day, and on the other the silent sisters of the night, and so,
>  >>> hand in hand, between smiles and tears, he reached his
>  >>> journey's end.
>  >>>
>  >>> From the frontier of life, from the western wave-kissed shore,
>  >>> he sent us messages of content and hope, and these messages
>  >>> seem now like strains of music blown by the "Mystic Trumpeter"
>  >>> from Death's pale realm.
>  >>>
>  >>> To-day we give back to Mother Nature, to her clasp and kiss,
>  >>> one of the bravest, sweetest souls that ever lived in human
>  >>> clay.
>  >>>
>  >>> Charitable as the air and generous as Nature, he was negligent
>  >>> of all except to do and say what he believed he should do and
>  >>> should say.
>  >>>
>  >>> And I to-day thank him, not only for you but for myself, --
>  >>> for all the brave words he has uttered. I thank him for all the
>  >>> great and splendid words he has said in favor of liberty, in
>  >>> favor of man and woman, in favor of motherhood, in favor of
>  >>> fathers, in favor of children, and I thank him for the brave
>  >>> words that he has said of death.
>  >>>
>  >>> He has lived, he has died, and death is less terrible than it
>  >>> was before. Thousands and millions will walk down into the
>  >>> "dark valley of the shadow" holding Walt Whitman by the hand.
>  >>> Long after we are dead the brave words he has spoken will sound
>  >>> like trumpets to the dying.
>  >>>
>  >>> And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man's tomb. I
>  >>> loved him living, and I love him still.
>  >>>
>  >>> ****     ****
>  >>>
>  >>> This post from 20 years ago regarding Ingersoll’s tribute
>  >>> refuses to shrink Whitman into a “great poet” and instead
>  >>> insists on a great human - someone whose democracy was lived as
>  >>> sympathy: “Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.”
>  >>> The eulogy’s most moving thread, for me, is how it makes
>  >>> courage feel ordinary and usable: Whitman “not afraid to live,
>  >>> not afraid to die,” steady in the twilight, holding hands with
>  >>> both “smiles and tears.”
>  >>>
>  >>> Twenty years on, it reads like a reminder that the point of free
>  >>> thought isn’t just disbelief, it’s a wider, kinder
>  >>> belonging.
>  >>>
>  >>> For some in this group - a helpful thought perhaps?
>  >>>
>  >>>
>  >>> > We do know that
>  >>>
>  >>>
>  >>> They you're
>  >>>
>  >>>
>  >>>
>  >>
>  >> "They you're"? Sober up Donkey.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > Spell lame much, Rudy?
>  >
>  >

Nope, you didn't make a spelling error, you engaged your froth-nozzle
and not your pickled brain, while post editing again.

>ry to keep up.