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 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
>>>
>>> That you're
>>>
>>> > "They you're"?
>>>
>>> No, "That you're."
>>>
>>> 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. 
>>>
>>> Yes
>>>
>>
>> > Dumbass.
> 
> 
> Look who's talking.
> 
>
Look who's listening -

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GUFFAW!