“My Own Heart” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Public domain ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2017 It's the birthday of newspaper columnist Don Marquis, born in Walnut, Illinois (1878), who created the characters Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel the alley cat. Archy was a former free verse poet who "sees life from the underside now." He wasn't able to reach the shift key so everything he wrote was in lower case. And Mehitabel was an alley cat with questionable morals who insisted that she was Cleopatra in one of her former lives.
A famous quote attributed to French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville in 1840 is this: "I sought for the key to America's greatness and genius in her harbors … in her fertile fields and boundless fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
A famous quote attributed to French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville in 1840 is this: "I sought for the key to America's greatness and genius in her harbors … in her fertile fields and boundless fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
Garrison.....The second stanza from "My Own Heart," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. S.J. is worth our reading. Grabs us who look it does.....
" It moves our heart: Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile."
A poet that pumps our heart full force....Tom K