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

Rudy Canoza <[email protected]> posted:
> 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?
> 
> Look who's xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx 

Trolling, Rudy?

That would be you.

😏

-- 
Poetry and songs of Will Dockery:
https://www.reverbnation.com/willdockery