Love, Death, And Whimsy

-

Dad showed me this about 20 years ago when I was visiting my folks in Rockport. Ms. Mitchell was a retired schoolteacher, who, (wait for it) loved cats! I find this affection expressed in so fluid a manner refreshing, and in pink granite for good measure. I don't know who carved the stone but I will find out. 

 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

John Donne, Death Be Not Proud. 1633.

https://misterscribbles.blogspot.com/2019/10/two-bad-men.html 

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Father's Last Escape

-
Image
It happened in the late and forlorn period of complete disruption, at the time of the liquidation of our business. The signboard had been removed from over our shop, the shutters were halfway down, and inside the shop my mother was conducting and unauthorized trade in remnants. Adela had gone to America, and it was said that the boat on which she had sailed had sunk and that all the passengers had lost their lives. We were unable to verify this rumour, but all trace of the girl was lost and we never heard of her again.  A new age began - empty, sober and joyless, like a sheet of white paper. A new servant girl, Genya, anaemic, pale, and boneless, mooned about the rooms. When one patted her on the back, she wriggled, stretched like a snake, or purred like a cat. She had a dull white complexion, and even the insides of her eyelids were white. She was so absent-minded that she sometimes made a white sauce from old letters and invoices: it was sickly and inedible.  At that t
Read more

Two Bad Men, Said Their Murderers

-
Image
John Choate, 25 August 1818 - 3 August 1869 Crokett Choate, 1842 -3 August 1869 This tells of a grave by the dashing wave A fond friends lip that did quiver Of an eye that's hid by a leaden lid And a voice now stilled forever. John on the left.  They were originally buried where they were killed but October of that year the Refugio Masons moved the bodies to Rockport.  This was all part of the Sutton-Taylor feud, the Suttons were backed by the U. S. Government and of no particular righteousness, they were badge wearing murderers and bullies.  The two story house with the porch running around the second floor in the left background belongs to my sister.  A lovely house and the best behaved neighbors possible! Photos by Steve Davis. The man who killed them.  Sheriff.  Regulator. Murderer. https://books.google.com/books?id=PUvanZiwzdUC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=john+and+crockett+choate+death+jack+helm+gunfight&source=bl&
Read more

Roller Ball Murder

-
Image
The game, the game: here we go again. All glory to it, all things I am and own because of Roller Ball Murder. Our team stands in a row, twenty of us in salute as the corporation hymn is played by the band. We view the hardwood oval track which offers us the bumps and rewards of mayhem: fifty yards long, thirty yards across the ends, high banked, and at the top of the walls the cannons which fire those frenzied twenty-pound balls-similar to bowling balls, made of ebonite-at velocities over three hundred miles an hour. The balls careen around the track, eventually slowing and falling with diminishing centrifugal force, and as they go to ground or strike a player another volley fires. Here we are, our team: ten roller skaters, five motorbike riders, five runners (or clubbers). As the hymn plays, we stand erect and tough; eighty thousand sit watching in the stands and another two billion viewers around the world inspect the set of our jaws on .multivision. The runners, those bastards
Read more