Alexander Pope

“Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool.
But you yourself may prove to show it,
Every fool is not a poet.”

― Alexander Pope

Break, Break, Break BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Break, break, break,

         On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

         The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

         That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

         That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

         To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

         And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break

         At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

         Will never come back to me.


Break, Break,Break is an elegy by Alfred Lord Tennyson on the death of his friend Arthur Hallam. The author imagines to be standing near the cliff on the seashore and addressing to the sea waves which are lashing the rocks repeatedly.

"Ah, are you digging on my grave?" - Thomas Hardy

Ah, are you digging on my grave
My loved one?--planting rue?"
--"No; yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
That I 'should not be true.'"

Then who is digging on my grave?
My nearest dearest kin?"
--"Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.'"

But someone digs upon my grave?
My enemy?--prodding sly?"
--"Nay; when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie."

Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say--since I have not guessed!"
--"0 it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog, who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

Ah, yes! You dig upon my grave . . .
Why flashed it not on me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among humankind
A dog's fidelity!"

Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting-place."

This poem, written in the form of a dialogue and first published in the Saturday Review for 27 September 1913, is a good illustration of Hardy's often grim sense of humor, and of his tendency to expose romantic or sentimental illusions about love, life, and death. The satirical dialogue, which was first published in the Saturday Review later appeared in volume form in Satires of Circumstance: Lyrics and Reveries (London: Macmillan, 1914). Checked against The Works of Thomas Hardy (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1994), pp. 310-11.

Hegel

What Hegel said

Books
1- The Phenomenology of  Spirit (1807)
2- The Science of Logic
3- Elements of the Philosophy of Right


1. Important parts of ourselves can be found in history.
    Every era can be looked at as a respiratory of a particular kind of wisdom.
    Progress is never linear. There is wisdom at every stage which points us to the task of the historian.
To be a historian is to be someone who should rescue, from the past, those ideas that're most needed to compensate for the blind spots of the present.

2. Learn from ideas you dislike.
the bits of the truth are always getting scattered even in unappealing, or peculiar places and we should dig them out by asking always, 'what sliver of sense and reason might be contained in otherwise frightening or foreign phenomena?'
Nationalism is the need for people to feel proud of where they come from, to identify with something beyond merely their own achievements, and to anchor their identities beyond the ego.

3. Progress is messy.
The painful stepping from era to era is inevitable.

4. Art has a purpose.
Hegel vigorously rejected the idea that art is for art's sake.
All art has a job to do. We need them so that important insights can become powerful and helpful in our lives.
'Art is the sensuous presentation of ideas.'

5. We need new institutions.
Correct, active, effective.
Institutions allow for the scale of time and power the big projects need to become effective in the world.


Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)