What Every Literate Person Needs to Know

WoW!

mGf Din Merican yesterday -- when all our troubles seemed so far away -- gifted Desi a wonderful book titled THE ENGLISH READER, and its subheader promises what's stated in the Post Title.
For starters, an extract from the inner book flap says:

"IN THIS SEQUEL TO THE BEST-SELLING
The American Reader, mother-and-son team
DIANE RAVITCH and MICHAEL RAVITCH
have gathered together the best and most
memorable poems, essays, songs, and orations
in English history,capturing in one volume
writings that have shaped not only England,
but democratic culture around the globe.

Here are words that changed the world, words
that inspired revolutions as well as lovers, dreamers,
and singers, words that every educated person once
knew -- and shouldknow today. Framed by two
inspiring speeches -- Queen Elizabeth before the
invasion of the Spanish Armada and Winston
Churchill during the dark daysof World War II -- the
book features work by William Wordsworth and W.H.
Auden, Thomas Hobbes and John Stuart Mill, Mary
Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll and
Edward Lear, and many other equally eminent writers.

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Now DESIDERATA must pause before I continue my copying in copious and unstoppable manner, and I join the famous league of Plagiarisers, and then mfGOoDfriend in the singular
and plural wouldn't enjoy my fine company anymore! I actually meant I wouldn't be able to enjoy such finer company as Din Merican's. Both of us quote The Bard , First Paraphrase -- "To pray-play or not to pray, that's the question!" -- and Lord Alfred Tennyson, Second Paraphrase -- "Theirs is not to question why, Theirs is but to do and Die!" .

Din and Desi can quote more from Western authors, than we can from Asian writers'-- at least in my case! -- so much so I think in the olde days, they called this blardy species like us WOGs!

To be continued while Desi goes off for aMore food -- we must take goode care
of our physical bodies too -- even as I rumnate on Sundaes to provide my
lazy-BUMmer readers some food for thy soul. I don't mean any of you soul'd out,
'cos I know for sure even some UMNO members peeping in at this Opposition-inclined
writer's block -- recall +++A VOICE I fondly bantered with about being a Socialist? --
care as much as DAP and PKR members for NegaraKu. Yes, I learn that the multi-minded,
and multi-political ideological voices in Blogosphere are truly diverse -- such a beautiful and enriching requisite for democratic discourse, yes! Yes, I was taken by the closing phtrase in the book's flap introduction, viz: "... democratic culture around the globe".
Hence, someone says BUM should read BLOGGERS' UNIVERSE MALAYSIA as such a world is occupied by residents of various hues, civil, political and what-have-you.

Back @11.07PM, after searching my own Archives to retrace this:+++
Minta maaf, I was presumptious that I spotted the olde entry, which refers to somethin' aong the lines of:

If you are not a socialist before 20, you have no heart.

If you are still a socialist at 40, you have no head!

The Voice tried to but Desi's favour by qualifying the last with "You are all heart" -- It's not redemption enought, brudder Another midnight voiz; So I am asking that he pay USD50 to gain entry to BUM2008:(

I was then brought back to once-upon-a-time when one buddy of mine and I used to quote Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade when we imagined ourselves as the heroes who would win fair maidens' hearts while playing Cowboys and Indians, and we thought we bore some resemblance to John Waned and Roy Rogered-out...(The gals would think themselves Marilyn Monroe or Angie Dickinson -- they don't make heroines like them anyAmore...Dino and Desi sigh:)

Extracting from page 254, a favourite of Din's plus mine2:


ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

To strive, to seek, to fnd and not to yield ...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18909 - 1892) eventually became the most popular poet
of his age. The picture of him with his long gray beard represented the
quintessense of the poetic for Victorian England. He had not always been
the sage old, however. The failure of his first book and the death of his
closest friend, Arthur Hallam, had sent him into a long period of depression.

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DESI's observation is that that it's quite commoon for eminent writers and artists to suffer depression at some point of their life. Is it due to the fact such people over-exercised their mind and let their imagination run too wild? Sometimes I too run into a depressive mood -- am I then by extension falling,or rising, into the company of greats like Tennyson and Vincent van Gogh?(Sing the lyrics of Starry, starry night...Don McLean)

We are told (by sages of your) that we can tell a person's character by the company he/she keeps. So I also postulate, by logical extension (WARNING: my logic sometimes takes quantum leaps!) we can tell a friend's character by the books he reads...and the passages he adores.

So here's peep into mGf Din's like/love, and I hope he's not too exposed ~~
from page 261, Din highlights this bud of Tennyson's poem Ulysses:

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come,my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The souding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that te gulfs wil wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And, see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Mov'd earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

PS: As Desi hears the midnight music of the insects song
and the catty meows and the nightingales' serenade
It's time to rest my soul, my spirit too:
That my good freinds, I remember you
Even as I say Adieu ~~
I pause and seek thy patience
Come back seven night hence
and I will on Din's loves aMore tell...