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.

Try to keep up.