Banks Wordless Wednesday

Read Full Post »

Boyd Wordless Wednesday

Read Full Post »

Under Ben Bulben

Under Ben Bulben
by William Butler Yeats

I
Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.

Here’s the gist of what they mean.

II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-digger’s toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

III
You that Mitchel’s prayer have heard,
“Send war in our time, O Lord!”
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.

IV
Poet and sculptor, do the work,
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did,
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.

Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought,
Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that there’s a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.

Quattrocento put in print
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul’s at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
And when it’s vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.

Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer’s phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought

V
Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.

VI
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Read Full Post »

Lewis Wordless Wednesday

Read Full Post »

Presented by his comrades of the First Pursuit Group

Captain Burt E. Skeel died while representing the Army Air Service in the International Air Race at Wilbur Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. He crashed in front of spectators when the wings came off his plane. A native of East Cleveland, Ohio, Skeel had served in World War I, starting in the infantry and then transferring to the Air Service, where he remained as a pilot after the war.

Maurer Maurer.
Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939.
Peter Vischer, “When Men Race with Death to Make the Air Safe.” Popular Science. January 1925.

Read Full Post »

The latest offerings

I stopped by Ray Chapman’s grave last weekend to see what the latest offerings were. The Cleveland Indians’ Chappie has been gone for 93 years, and yet, still the pilgrims come to see his grave and pay their respects.

Read Full Post »

More symbols than you can shake a stick at

Dennis Jon Walker’s tombstone is so dense with information about him that I stopped the car to see it.  On top, in addition to his name and dates of his birth and death, you get his nickname and the important familial relationships in his life.

I’m going to assume that the hose, hoe, and rake are representative of an interest in gardening or landscaping, and I think that the phrase under the globe is “world traveler.”  Clearly, dirt and dust are not friendly to this artwork.  And his career – a UPS worker, it appears.

And on this side, we have hobbies – biking and fishing.  The Ohio State symbol – an alumnus, or just a sports fan?

And on the front, a nicely artistic integration of yet another interest, photography, with his portrait.

Read Full Post »

Our beloved son, brother, and uncle

</a

There’s so much to learn about Dale Nelson’s life from his tombstone: his parents’ names, that his and his 3 siblings’ names all started with D, and that he served in Vietnam as a Navy operations specialist. He was also an Ohio State University fan, if not an alumnus. I can’t tell from my photos if that football helmet is supposed to be colored to represent a particular team or just a general enjoyment of football.

Read Full Post »

Firefighters

Williston Cemetery isn’t very big, but I found 2 firefighters buried fairly close to one another there. I can clearly make out that the second one was a volunteer, but I didn’t get a detailed enough photo of the first headstone to tell whether Mr. Apthorpe also was.

Read Full Post »

Artificer

Melvin Larimer’s stone identifies him as having been an artificer in the Spanish-American War. I might have seen other stones with the designation before, but I hadn’t noticed. On Fort Sumter’s website, I found “artificer” in their FAQ section. Paraphrasing, an artificer would have been an enlisted artillery man with a specialized skill that allowed him to supervise or organize that kind of work.

Read Full Post »