"The comings and goings of man have their seasons.
"They are no more mysterious than the annual cycle of the planet, and no less."
-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION: HIDING PLACE IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 555-556 AT p. 555.
"There is a Tide in the affayres of men,
"Which, taken at the Flood, leads on to Fortune;
"Omitted, all the voyage of their life,
"Is bound, in Shallowes, and in Miferies.
"On such a full sea are we now afloat;
"And we must take the current when it serves,
"Or lose our ventures."
-copied, in part, from here.
Two comments on the Shakespeare quote:
it is appropriate to van Rijn;
it is only partly relevant to my life - I did not take the tide at the flood and have remained in the shallows but have not been bound in miseries.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I'm pretty sure the Book of Ecclesiastes has similar comments about human lives.
Sean
Speaking of the Bard and "life":
“Life ... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5
Have a Great Day!
-kh
Shakespeare was a philosopher.
Andersonian/Anglish Shakespeare:
(https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/1066_and_All_Saxon)
To be, or not to be: that is the ask-thing:
Is’t higher-thinking in the brain to bear
The slings and arrows of outrageous dooming
Or to take weapons ‘gainst a sea of bothers
And by againstwork end them? To die; to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand lifesome dints
That flesh is deathboon to: ti’s a withalling
Heartsomely wish’d for. To die; to sleep;
To sleep; mayhap to dream; ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this deathsome ring
Must give us halt. There’s the highdeem
That makes a woehap of so lasting life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of tide,
The overgrinder’s wrong, the proud man’s scorn,
The pangs of backthrown love, the moot’s slow-fare,
The pride of stewardship, and all the spurns
That bearsome worth of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his own noise-end make
With a bare bodkin? Who would burdens bear
To grunt and sweat under a heavy life
But that the dread of something after death,
The unfreshfounden land from whose far bourn
No forthfarer comes back, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we ken not of?
Thus inthought does make fleefights of us all,
And thus the hereborn hue of doing-will
Is sicklied o’ver with the wan cast of thought
And undertakings of great pith and driving
With this onlook their flowings turn awry
And lose the name of doing.
-kh
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