Your favorite poem ever

That gave me a good laugh. Thanks.

I think I agree with you. If the elephant represents our life force then I think our intuitive faculty is the cognitive correlate of the elephant itself, and it can drink from many wells.

And of course it isn’t just physicists who are subject to that deceit. Others will persist in finding their own fields the most fertile whether it is philosophy, linguistics, literature or something else. Hopefully in which ever field we search we don’t come to think of the truth we find as the Truth against which we infer the inferiority of every other approach regardless how little we may know of it. If we start off thinking either rationality is right or else irrationality reigns we will never see the spectrum of truth each field reveals or how the truth of another field, once understood, can refine your understanding of what you thought you knew about your own. Besides reality is imbued with “Perhaps edges” (credit to @Christy) too numerous to enumerate, and any selection of truths will always be incomplete. The sooner we acknowledge that, the closer we will come to the Truth.

Oops … but poetry.

Wholest each together be,
between the two a rainbow see.
All is seen through either eye
but depth requires two should try.

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I just came across Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things. This seems like a much needed balm in this time of pandemic. I hesitate to share its 11 lines since though not a youngster I believe he is still with us.

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Just came across this simple little rhymer.

Dust If You Must

by Rose Milligan

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better

To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.

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Annabel Lee by Edgar Poe.
It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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That has such a strong rhythm I wondered if anyone had set it to music. They had and Joan Baez sings it here. I had a hunch I’d heard it on her double record album called Ballad Book, but nope.

But we have a few choices on Youtube and of the ones I checked I prefer this one:

And then I found this one by an artist whose musical sense I like a lot.

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The one you like, by the youtuber Monica Gil was definitely my favorite also.

When I first read the poem (thank you for the intro) I heard it as a kind of dirge. That one came closest I thought in the musical accompaniment. And having her voice float above made that somber sound really works.

I’ve always been a horror fan and so naturally I found the works by Edgar Allen Poe probably close to 20 years ago. Most have always went with the Raven by him, which is good but Annabel Lee is my favorite and I’ve always liked The Bells also. It’s written to be read out loud.

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“Sweet Violets” is a song our family sings at every wedding. If you read (or sing) it aloud, you find yourself laughing!

Sweet Violets

There once was a farmer who took a young miss
In back of the barn where he gave her a
Lecture on horses and chickens and eggs,
And told her that she had such beautiful
Manners that suited a girl of her charms,
A girl that he wanted to take in his
Washing and ironing and then, if she did,
They could get married and raise lots of

Chorus:
Sweet violets, sweeter than the roses,
Covered all over from head to toe,
Covered all over with sweet violets.

The girl told the farmer that he’d better stop
And she called her father and he called a
Taxi and got there before very long,
'Cause someone was doing his little girl
Right for a change and so that’s why he said,
"If you marry her, son, you’re better off
Single 'cause it’s always been my belief,
Marriage will bring a man nothing but
Chorus:

The farmer decided he’d wed any way,
And started in planning for his wedding
Suit, which he purchased for only one buck,
But then he found out he was just out of
Money and so he got left in the lurch,
Standing and waiting in front of the
End of this story which just goes to show,
All a girl wants from a man is his
Chorus:

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That was new to me and I was having trouble imagining the melody but youtube helped me out.

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Thanks for posting, as I had trouble with the tune also. I had read the original post while my wife and I were watching an old John Wayne movie, The Quiet Man, and it was interesting how that song lined up with some of the Scottish folk music played in the movie as far as humor and such. Maybe not such a odd thing, as the Scot-Irish comprised a large part of the Appalachian population in America, and their traditions are carried over into American folk music.
By the way, it was interesting to watch the old movie and consider how politically incorrect it would be considered today.

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No doubt anything John Wayne did would make him seem a sucker and loser in some circles today.

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