Sunday, 9 December 2018

Ages Pass/Passages

Ages begin and pass:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"...it is enough that we are on our way."
-see here.

"...Falkayn thought, This was a grand era in its way. I too will miss it."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XX, p. 266.

Falkayn again:

"'The wound to the old order of things is too deep...'"
-op. cit., XXI, p. 282.

How should Falkayn and his contemporaries respond? They might take advice from Tennyson's Arthur:

 Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
“Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?        35
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led        40
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolv’d
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,        45
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.” 
 
  And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.     

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The line: "Lest one good custom should corrupt the world" puzzles me. If a custom is good how can it corrupt anything? Or am I being too literal minded?

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Feudalism was good in its time but would not fit industrial society.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

That makes sense. And I like some of the IDEAS behind feudalism, such as decentralization of power.

Sean