to whinny-muir thou com'st at last

Here are links to the 20th-27th poems that T.E. Lawrence wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages. They're all from his copy of the The Oxford Book of English Verse.

• To Helen, by Edgar Allan Poe
• Heraclitus, by William (Johnson) Cory
• A Lyke-Wake Dirge, anon. 17th Cent.
• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, by Christopher Marlow
• To Marguerite, by Matthew Arnold
• The Pulley, by George Herbert
• Summer Dawn, William Morris

Of this group, the 17th c. ballad has the most interest. 'A Lyke-Wake Dirge' is a popular song which appears in Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and other sources. It is described as a "charm sung ... while watching a dead body, previous to interment. The tune is doleful and monotonous, and, joined to the mysterious import of the words, has a solemn effect. The word sleet, in the chorus, seems to be corrupted from sell, or salt; a quantity of which, in compliance with a popular superstition, is frequently placed on the breast of a corpse. ... The dirge is included by John Aubrey in his Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisms, 1686-7, ... prefaced thus: — 'The beliefe in Yorke-shire was amongst the vulgar (perhaps is in part still) that after the person's death the soule went over Whinny-moore, and till about 1616-1624 at the funerale a woman came (like a Praefica), and sang the following song.'

Here is the text:

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
   — Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
  And Christe receive thy saule.

When thou from hence away art past,
   — Every nighte and alle,
To Whinny-muir thou com'st at last;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
   — Every nighte and alle,
Sit thee down and put them on;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

If hosen and shoon thou ne'er gav'st nane
   — Every nighte and alle,
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

From Whinny-muir when thou may'st pass,
   — Every nighte and alle,
To Brig o' Dread thou com'st at last;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

From Brig o' Dread when thou may'st pass,
   — Every nighte and alle,
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
   — Every nighte and alle,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,
   — Every nighte and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
  And Christe receive thy saule.

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
   — Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
  And Christe receive thy saule.

---

Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Oxford Book of English Verse HTML edition

Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, compiled by Walter Scott (W. Blackwood and sons, 1902)

George Bogle in Tibet, November 1774

This morning I read Edward Wong's article in the New York Times (The Heights Traveled to Subdue Tibet) and immediately thought of a book I stumbled across a couple of years ago. Wong's take is that the Chinese block Westerners' entry into the land of the lamas no more than the Lamas themselves used to do. He says "China’s lockdown this month is only the latest episode in a long history of both Tibetans and Chinese trying to keep the mountain kingdom closed to the outside world." He quotes Orville Schell and Peter Hopkirk, authors of books on draw of the countries isolation and consequent mystique and on local rulers' resistance to foreign influence. You'd think that a Tibetan xenophobia has always made foreigners unwelcome and yet there are a number of contrary instances.

My favorite are the journals, dispatches, and letters of George Bogle, a young Scotsman who traveled north from British India to visit the Lamas in 1774. Wong, Schell, and Hopkrik all ignore these fascinating documents which Clements Markham collected into a book, Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (London: Trübner and Co., Ludgate Hill, 1876).

You can find this book in libraries or online at Google Books and the Internet Archive.

You can read about Bogle and his quest in wikipedia and in an academic paper and a book by Kate Teltscher.

Markham gives his reason for compiling the work and "It has long been known that the first British mission to Tibet was sent by Warren Hastings in 1774 under Mr. George Bogle, B.C.S., that a great friendship was formed between Mr. Bogle and the Teshu Lama, and that intercourse was then established between the Governments of British India and Tibet. But up to the present time no full account of this important mission has been given to the world." Teltscher's publisher adds a bit of background: "In 1774 the head of the East India Company in Bengal, Warren Hastings, ... entrusted the young Scotsman George Bogle to be the first British envoy to Tibet. ... But what began as an unprecedented diplomatic mission soon acquired a different character. Bogle became smitten by what he saw, and in particular by the person of the Panchen Lama himself, with whom he struck up a remarkable friendship, fuelled by a reciprocal desire for understanding."

Here are some extracts from Bogle's writings as compiled by Markham.

1. In Bhutan on approach to Tibet:

As none of the Company's servants, and I might almost say no European, had ever visited the country which I was about to enter, I was equally in the dark as to the road, the climate, or the people; and the imperfect account of some religious mendicants, who had travelled through it, however unsatisfactory, was the only information I could collect. We passed the forts of Bowani-ganj, and Chichakotta, lately destroyed, and arrived at some new houses, in one of which we were accommodated. The house was thatched, the floor of lath of bamboo, and raised four feet from the ground; the walls of reeds, tied together with slips of bamboo; and the stair a stump of a tree, with notches cut in it. It had much the look of a birdcage, and the space below being turned into a hogstye contributed little to its pleasantness. There was not a bit of iron or rope about it. The houses for the three next stages were in the same style. The head man of the village and some of the neighbours got tipsy with a bottle of rum. A female pedlar sojourned with him; good features and shape, fine teeth, and Rubens' wife's eyes; whole dress one blanket wrapped round her, and fastened over the shoulders with a silver skewer. She drank rum too. Men, women, and children sleep higgledy- piggledy together.

The only way of transporting goods in this hilly country is by coolies. The roads are too narrow, steep, and rugged for any other conveyance, and the rivers too stony and rapid for boats. There is no particular class of people who follow this profession. The carriers are pressed from among the inhabitants, receive an allowance for victuals at the pleasure of the person on whose service they are employed, and are relieved by others procured in the same manner at the next village by order of the head man, without which not a coolie is to be had. This is a service so well established that the people submit to it without murmuring. Neither sex, nor youth, nor age exempt them from it. The burden is fastened under the arms upon their backs, with a short stick to support it while they rest themselves. Naturally strong, and accustomed to this kind of labour, it is astonishing what loads they will carry. A girl of eighteen travelled one day 15 or 18 miles, with a burden of 70 or 75 pounds weight. We could hardly do it without any weight at all.

We were provided with two tangun ponies of a mean appearance, and were prejudiced against them unjustly. On better acquaintance they turned out patient, sure-footed, and could climb the monument. Many a time afterwards, when, on the edge of a precipice, I was mounted on a skittish young horse, with a man holding him by the head and another steering him by the tail, have I thought of them. We had to cross the mountain Picha- konum,2 which hangs over Buxa-Duar; the way a narrow path, extremely steep, which went winding round the side of it.

The road led almost to the top of the mountain, and before we crossed it I turned to take another look at Bengal. It is impossible to conceive any change of country more abrupt, or any contrast more striking. To the southward the atmosphere was clear. The eye stretched over a vast tract of land, and the view was bounded only by the circular horizon.

The Bhutanese, of a constitution more robust and hardy, inhabit a country where strength is required. They have everything to transport on their backs; they are obliged to make terraces, and conduct little streams of water into them, in order to cover their rice fields, and to build houses with thick stone walls, to secure themselves from the cold.

2. On entering into the mountain kingdom:

We should have had excellent sport, but for my friend Paima's scruples. He strongly opposed our shooting, insisting that it was a great crime, would give much scandal to the inhabitants, and was particularly unlawful within the liberties of Ghumalhari. We had many long debates upon the subject, which were supported on his side by plain common-sense reasons drawn from his religion and customs; on mine, by those fine-spun European arguments, which serve rather to perplex than convince. I gained nothing by them, and at length we compromised the matter. I engaged not to shoot till we were fairly out of sight of the holy mountain, and Paima agreed to suspend the authority of the game laws, in solitary and sequestered places.

As there is little wood in the country, they cannot afford to burn their dead; but they take an equally effectual way of destroying them. The body is carried to a neighbouring mountain, and being cut and beat in pieces, is left to be devoured by the wild beasts. I went to visit one of these sepulchral mounts, and expected to find it like a charnel-house. Eagles, ravens, and hawks hovered over us; but not a vestige of mortality could I see. At length I was shown the spot where the body is laid, and could observe some fresh splinters. On the top of this gloomy hill, an aged virgin had fixed her solitary abode. I wanted much to see the inside of it. At last, after much rhetoric, I got her to open the only window of her hovel, and show her wrinkled face and dismal habitation. Having given us a kind of liquor made of wheat to drink, and muttered over many prayers for our safety, we took our leave. This female hermit subsists entirely on alms, and is held in general veneration throughout the country.

I am at a loss for a name to another custom, unless I call it polyandry. In most Eastern countries polygamy is allowed. The advocates for it compare mankind to the deer; its enemies liken them to turtle-doves. Montesquieu and other political writers insist that it is destructive of population; and the women cry out that it is unjust and unreasonable that so many of their sex should be subjected to the pleasure of one man. But in this country they have their revenge. The elder brother marries a woman, and she becomes the wife of the whole family. They club together in matrimony as merchants do in trade. Nor is this joint concern often productive of jealousy among the partners. They are little addicted to jealousy. Disputes, indeed, sometimes arise about the children of the marriage; but they are settled either by a comparison of the features of the child with those of its several fathers, or left to the determination of the mother.

The religion of the Lamas is somehow connected with that of the Hindus. The humane maxims of the Hindu faith are taught in Tibet. To deprive any living creature of life is regarded as a crime, and one of the vows taken by the clergy is to that effect. But mankind in every part of the world too easily accommodate their consciences to their passions, and the Tibetans find no difficulty in yielding obedience to this doctrine. They employ a low and wicked class of people to kill their cattle, and thus evade the commandment.

The general principle by which they determine the degree of culpability in depriving an animal of life is very ingenious. According to the doctrine of transmigration, there is a perpetual fluctuation of life among the different animals of this world, and the spirit which now animates a man may pass after his death into a fly or an elephant. They reckon, therefore, the life of every creature upon an equal footing, and to take it away is considered as a greater or smaller crime, in proportion to the benefit which thereby accrues to mankind. But I am following out disquisitions foreign from my journey.

The women are treated with greater attention [here than in the south]. In the Deb Rajah's country, whatever a countryman saves from his labour is laid out in adorning his sword with silver filigree work, or buying a square box which contains a little gilt image, and is buckled to his back. Here it is bestowed on purchasing coral and amber beads, to adorn the head of his wife. The headdress of the women is extremely neat and becoming. But the dirtiness of their hands and faces (many of which deserve a better fate) is a point which, as I cannot attempt to excuse, my partiality to the Tibetans will not allow me to enlarge upon.

Towards evening we arrived at our quarters, about three miles short of Giansn. They belong to the priest who paid us a visit on the road. The house is surrounded with willows and other trees. It has a number of small windows, and the roof is adorned with little ensigns and written banners. We were lodged in the temple, which was full of painted chests, matchlocks, bows, cushions, and other lumber. One corner was hung with mythological paintings, and below a parcel of little gilt cross-legged images, with a lamp burning before them, from which, as all the family are gone to bed, I have taken the liberty to steal some oil in order to finish this account, hoping that it will not be imputed to me as a sacrilege.

3. After becoming the guest of the Panchen Lama:

Being the first European they had ever seen, I had crowds of Tibetans coming to look at me, as people go to look at the lions in the Tower. My room was always full of them from morning till night. The Lama, afraid that I might be incommoded, sent me word, if I chose, not to admit them; but when I could gratify the curiosity of others at so easy a rate, why should I have refused it ? I always received them, sometimes exchanging a pinch of snuff, at others picking up a word or two of the language.

The Lama used to send a priest to me early every morning with some bread and tea, or some boiled rice and chopped mutton; of which last, as I always like to do at Rome as they do at Rome, I used to eat very heartily. This practice was continued till my departure for Bengal.

After two or three visits, the Lama used (except on holidays) to receive me without any ceremony, his bead uncovered, dressed only in the large red petticoat which is worn by all the gylongs, red Bulgar hide boots, a yellow cloth vest, with his arms bare, and a piece of coarse yellow cloth thrown across his shoulders. He sat sometimes in a chair, sometimes on a bench covered with tiger skins, and nobody but the Sopon Chumbo present. Sometimes he would walk with me about the room, explain to me the pictures, make remarks upon the colour of my eyes, &c. For, although venerated as God's viceregent through all the eastern countries of Asia, endowed with a portion of omniscience, and with many other divine attributes, he throws aside, in conversation, all the awful part of his character, accommodates himself to the weakness of mortals, endeavours to make himself loved rather than feared, and behaves with the greatest affability to everybody, particularly to strangers.

The weather was very cold; the water in my room used to freeze even in the day time; and I seldom stirred out of the house, where nothing was to be seen but bare hills, a few leafless trees, and a bleak and comfortless country. Some days after my arrival the Lama had given me a Tibetan dress, consisting of a purple satin tunic, lined with Siberian fox skins; a yellow satin cap, faced round with sable and crowned with a red silk tassel, and a pair of red silk Bulgar hide boots. In this I equipped myself, glad to abandon my European habit, which was both uncomfortable and exposed me to abundance of that troublesome curiosity which the Tibetans possess in a degree inferior to no other people.

I must confess the pleasantest hours I spent, before the arrival of the Pyn Cushos, were either in my audiences with the Jjama, or in playing at chess. The arrival of a large party of Kalmuks furnished me with enough of combatants. Their method of playing differs from ours, in the privilege of moving two steps being confined to the first pawn played by each party; in castling and stalemate being unknown; and in the game being reckoned equal when the king is left solus without a piece or a pawn on the board. It is a generous principle. In my first trials of skill with the Tatars, I used often to come off loser. For when a Siberian sits down to chess, he gets two or three of his countrymen to assist him; they lay all their great bare heads together canvassing and consulting about every move. At length I found out the way of managing them, and encountered them with their own weapons. If I could not get a Siberian to enter the lists with me in single combat, I engaged an equal number of Tatars on my side, and we used to beat them hollow.

I waited upon the ladies. The Chum Cusho is a cheerful widow of about five-and-forty, with a ruddy complexion, and the remains of having once been handsome. In her younger days she was a nun, and her husband, the Lama's brother, a gylong; but they happened somehow to form such a connection together as put ail end to their state of celibacy. The Lama was much displeased with his brother, and would not admit him into his presence for many years. After his death, Chum Cusho, being passed the heyday of life, resumed her religious character; and having taken up her vows of chastity, laid aside all her ornaments, dressed herself in a homely garb, and set out on pilgrimages to visit the temples in Nepal, Palpa, &C.i The Lama has since behaved to her and her children with much kindness. Her sons, the Pyn Cushos, and her daughters, the anms, were present. We had plenty of tea, mutton, broth, fruits, &c., and the old woman was as merry as a cricket.

Part of an excellent colored foldout map in Markham's book showing the route taken by Bogle; click to view full size.

Part of an excellent colored foldout map in Markham's book showing South Asia by Bogle; click to view full size.

Cover of Telscher's book.

Part of a painting showing George Bogle in Tibetan dress; from Telscher's book.

One of the Hindu trading monks who assisted Bogle; from Telscher's book.

Part of a painting showing the Panchen Lama; from Telscher's book.

Addendum:

Telscher includes this anecdote about which Bogle wrote but which Markham omits. In it Markham tells how he explained the practice to an incredulous lama:

There is a custom which although I am ashamed to mention I must not conceal. It is called duelling. The idea of There is no Reproach to an Englishman so great as to say you lye. If a Man is detected in a Lye no body will keep Company with him, everybody shuns him as an infected Person. If any Man says to another you Lye, he challenges him to fight him in single Combat. They settle the Time and Place where they are to meet, each Man goes with a Sword, attended with one friend to look on and see that every thing is fair, the two Persons fight untill one of them is disarmed is wounded or is killed.

one stone the more swings to her place

MY new-cut ashlar takes the light
  Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
  Great Overseer, I make my prayer.

If there be good in that I wrought,
  Thy hand compell'd it, Master, Thine;
Where I have fail'd to meet Thy thought
  I know, through Thee, the blame if mine.

One instant's toil to Thee denied
  Stands all Eternity's offence;
Of that I did with Thee to guide
  To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.

Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
  Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain,
Godlike to muse o'er his own trade
  And manlike stand with God again.

The depth and dream of my desire,
  The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
  Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.

One stone the more swings to her place
  In that dread Temple of Thy worth--
It is enough that through Thy grace
  I saw naught common on Thy earth.

Take not that vision from my ken;
  O, whatsoe'er may spoil or speed,
Help me to need no aid from men,
  That I may help such men as need!

This is 'A Dedication' by Rudyard Kipling, from T.E. Lawrence's copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse. It is the 19th poem he wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

I'm fond of much that Kipling wrote, including many of the jingly poems, but this one, not. I wonder why Lawrence wanted to keep it with him. In some cases, the poems he copied out of OBEV were ones he loved when young, and though he did not say that about this one (or anything at all about it), it may be that he scrawled it in his book out of juvenile remembrance. The copy of OBEV that Lawrence carried with him in Arabia has dates inscribed by some poems. This one has the date July 17, 1917, on which day he was on a British naval vessel. He had just successfully negotiated support for his plans to extend the Arab revolt northward toward Damascus.

The poem draws its images from Freemasonry. An ashlar is a dressed stone, usually rectangular looking a bit like a large brick. Freemasons use the stones as metaphors for advancement through degrees of hierarchy, from the rough-stone of the new initiate to the carefully cut and smoothed finished stone of the advanced practitioner.

The editor of Minorities writes that Kipling showed an interest in Lawrence before he read Seven Pillars. Afterwards, Lawrence wrote, Kipling 'dropped me like a stale egg.' (20.iii.28 to C. F. Shaw.)

Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

A Dedication, The Oxford Book of English Verse, HTML edition

An Index to Poetry and Recitations, by Edith Granger (A. C. McClurg & company, 1918)

Rudyard Kipling and Freemasonry

The Masonic Poetry of Rudyard Kipling (pdf) by Bro John Davies, Given before the Master, Brethren and Visitors of the Lodge of St. Michael no 2933 E.C. on Thursday 2nd February 2006.

and no birds sing

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
      Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
      And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
      So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
      And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
      With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
      Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
      Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
      And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
      And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
      And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
      And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
      A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
      And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
      'I love thee true'.

She took me to her elfin grot,
      And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
      With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
      And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
      On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
      Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
      Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
      With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
      On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
      Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
      And no birds sing.

This is 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' by John Keats, from T.E. Lawrence's copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse. It is the 18th poem he wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

The editor of Minorities says Lawrence felt Keats could be too sugary, but his music soared when he succeeded in restraining himself. He quotes a letter: "Art creation is avoidance as much as it is presentation. And it's interesting to see Keats' growth in force (and decline in sweetness) from Endymion to Hyperion." (from a letter to V. Richards written in 1922)

---

{This painting of 1893 by John Waterhouse is found on many websites; it's based on La Belle Dame Sans Merci and it illustrates the lines:

She took me to her elfin grot,
      And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes -
      So kiss'd to sleep.*}

---

Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Oxford Book of English Verse, HTML edition

---

Note: * This is from a revised version of the poem, not the one that's most anthologized:

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

-- Unpublished Poems of John Keats

whither newspapers?

Concerns about the demise of newspapers continue to occupy the minds of thoughtful bloggers. This, you might say, is more than a bit ironic, since the blog platform is potent symbol of all that's brought this on. What's to be done? Tim Spalding[1] asks whether the print news is worth saving (yes, it is) and links to Shirky's conclusion that if there is to be a solution, it's not now foreseen or foreseeable. His post evokes a couple of interesting responses giving links to other sources.

One of these is the Pew study to which other bloggers have been linking. Another is a depressing Twitter feed recording newspapers' downward spiral. The one that captured my attention, however, carps about the newspaper publishers who have failed to adjust to the times: Newspaper Publishers Are Idiots. The author is cranky John C. Dvorak and the venue is PCMag whose parent company went bankrupt last year and which was forced out of the glossy-mag business and is now trying to stay afloat as a web-only operation. It's given a good chance of succeeding since its ad revenues are robust.

Dvorak says lack of originality is the main reason the newspapers' operating model is failing. He's not wrong to point out that there's a huge amount of redundancy in news coverage. Still, having made that point he doesn't notice that the web is full of this redundancy as well and that the site for which he writes doesn't have an especially noteworthy proportion of original content. Nor does he note that complaining about newspapers is as old as journalism itself. You'd say 'why should he?' but he does ask us to compare the content of newspapers before 1850 with what we have today. He says "early newspapers consisted of local stories, summaries of events, and listings of items such as ship departures and other notices. There were no recipes, feature stories about dogs, or full-page advertisements for movies" and complains that "somewhere along the way, newspapers became more entertaining than informative."

He's not all that wrong about papers before 1850. The period of mass-circulation dailies began later in the 19th century and with them came competition for readers and advertising dollars and the rise of yellow journalism. Papers in the first half of the century were still more or less aimed at relatively well to do men in business and the professions. Nonetheless, that didn't keep them from being criticized as biased, politically-manipulated, and aggressively competitive. Dickens famously observed in his American Notes that "the foul growth of America ... strikes its fibres deep in its licentious Press."[2] And it didn't keep people of the late 19th century from feeling that the newspapers of their day were superior to those that came before.[3]

I suspect it's pretty safe to say there never has been a time when newspapers were not subject to criticism for their triviality, pandering, immorality, untruthfulness, and the like. Publishers, editors, and reporters have always had to judge how high they could set their journalistic standards and still hang on to profitability. And newspapers have always suffered the consequence of misjudgments.[4]

They've also had to judge what sorts of competition they'd get from other media[5] and how best to balance revenues from sales and from various sorts of advertising[6]. Their problems today are worse than they have been before, but as a matter of degree, not of kind. The web platform is simply -- as Shirky says -- superior to print on paper for delivery of news. And, equally unfortunately, the newspaper model for generating revenue, doesn't work on the web as well as it did in print.

Which is not to say that PCMag has come up with a satisfying solution. Its pages are over-busy with static ads and its popup ads interfere with reading and are annoying in the extreme.

In fact, having spent the morning pulling all this together, I'm coming to the conclusion that the web is in danger of evolving into a nasty melange of rabid commercial opportunism, self-serving exhibitionism, and unprincipled single-issue crankism.

---------------------------
Notes:

[1] Tim founded and runs LibraryThing, an excellent web-based bibliographic system which I highly recommend.

[2] From the conclusion:

The foul growth of America ... strikes its fibres deep in its licentious Press.

Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South; pupils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands; colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the land with giant strides; but while the newspaper press of America is in, or near, its present-abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hopeless. Year by year it must and will go back; year by year the tone of public feeling must sink lower down; year by year the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men; and year by year the memory of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more in the bad life of their degenerate child.

Among the herd of journals which are published in the States there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and credit. From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen connected with publications of this class, I have derived both pleasure and profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion; and the influence of the good is powerless to counteract the mortal poison of the bad. . . .

When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from its attacks; when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency and honor is held in the least regard; when any man in that Free Country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart; when those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon, and crush it openly, in the sight of all men; then I will believe that its influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a president to a postman; while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all; so long must its odium be upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic.

To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe, — to those who are accustomed to anything else in print and paper, — it would be impossible, without an amount of extract for which I have neither space nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in America. But if any man desire confirmation of my statement on this head, let him repair to any place in this city of London where scattered numbers of these publications are to be found, and there let him form his own opinion.

It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat more. It would be well if there were greater encouragement to lightness of heart and gayety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful without being eminently and directly useful. But here, I think, the general remonstrance, "We are a new country," which is so often advanced as an excuse for defects which are quite unjustifiable as being of right only the slow growth of an old one, may be very reasonably urged; and I yet hope to hear of there being some other national amusement in the United States besides newspaper politics.

-- American Notes for General Circulation
By Charles Dickens (Ticknor and Fields, 1867)

[3] As for example: "Charge what you will, prove what you will against the Press of New York today, nevertheless it is better in 1872 than it was in 1871; it was better in 1871 than it had ever been since Manhattan Island was discovered; and, please God, it will be better in 1873 and the years to come than it ever was before!" (American and English Studies, by Whitelaw Reid (C. Scribner's Sons, 1913)

[4]

Why, people ask, is the modem newspaper so inaccurate — to put it mildly — so given to romancing, so frivolous, so sensational, so heedless of serious things? Why are so many of its accounts incorrect in details? Why will it exploit the story of a lost puppy, and give only brief mention to a lecture on the Cretan excavations? Why will it print details of crimes, and ignore the many fine and noble movements that always are in progress? . . . The truth is that every decent newspaper publisher prints as good a newspaper as his readers will let him. He aims to give them a little better paper than they really want.

-- "The Public, The Newspaper's Problem" by H. J. Haskell (The Outlook, v. 91, Jan-Apr 1909)

Regarding failed papers, see this excellent table showing mergers of the big NYC dailies, given by the New York Public Library: Timeline: NYC Newspapers of General Circulation, 1900–1967.

[5] As for example:

The chief competition to the national newspapers of the future will not be from other newspapers, but from other methods of disseminating news.

At the people's recreation halls, with the cinematograph and the gramophone, or some more agreeable instrument of mechanical speech, all the news of the day will be given hot from its source. People may become too lazy to read, and news will be laid on to the house or office just as gas and water is now. The occupiers will listen to an account of the news of the day read to them by much improved phonographs while sitting in their garden, or a householder will have his dally newspaper printed in column form by a printing machine in his hall, just as we have tape machines in offices now.

-- The Living Age, by Eliakim Littell (Littell, Son and Co., 1913)

And:

We alluded, a week or two since, to Colonel Hoe's suggested plan of printing newspapers by photography. The gallant officer now says that 360,000 copies of a journal could be easily produced by his method in an hour. The only drawback to the realization of hie plan is the high price of the sensitive paper'which would be requisite. But doubtless if we wait a little, the Colonel will surmount this difficulty. The newspapers of the future, in fact, will probably be flashed to a wondering world without the use of paper at all.

-- The photographic news vol. 28, 1884

[6] See for example: American and English Studies, by Whitelaw Reid (Smith, Elder & Co., 1913)

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Addendum:

I turned up these things while thinking over this post.

The book, My Impressions of America, by Margot Asquith (George H. Doran company, 1922). This down-to-earth aristocrat and Prime Minister's spouse was thoroughly unimpressed with the fawning, uninformed, and sensationalist attitudes of the journalists who interviewed her.

Some quotes from (or attribued to) the New Yorker's press critic, A. J. Liebling:

News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.

The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Some entries in a bibliography of works about newspapers.

IDEAL NEWSPAPERS: NEWSPAPERS OF THE FUTURE
Brooks, Noah. Newspapers of the future. Forum, July 1890, v. 9, p. 569-578.
Crit1cizes newspapers of the day for their untruthfulness and political partisanship and describes the ideal newspaper which will come in time.

Colton, A. F. Telephone newspaper—a new marvel. Technical World, Feb. 1912, v. 16, p. 666-669. Printed in condensed form in Literary Digest, March 16, 1912, v. 44, p. 528-529.
Explains manner of working; and gives daily program.

Murray, W. H. H. Endowed press. Arena, Oct. 1890, v. 2, p. 553-559.
Criticizes newspapers of the time and offers an endowed press as a solution of the question.

-- Daily Newspapers in the United States, by Callie Wieder (H.W. Wilson, 1916)

having done that, Thou hast done

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
     Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
     And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
          For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
     Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
     A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
          For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
     My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
     Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
          I fear no more.

This is "A Hymn to God the Father" by John Donne, which Lawrence copied from the Oxford Book of English Verse into Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

With this poem, Lawrence begins to depart from his original goal of including only works by minor poets, but the inconsistency was surely of no account to him. He had little respect of consistency for its own sake and so, for example, he would torture the editors of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by varying his English renderings of Arabic names and places. Moreover his main goal was to have with him, during his travels, those poems which were most important to him in one easily portable book.

That said, the poem certainly has the musical quality that Lawrence sought and it has in fact been set to music. Its tone also meets his wish to focus on works in a minor, that is to say, pessimistic or death-concerned, key.

It bears one pun on the poet's name: "Donne" can be read for "done". Thus "Thou hast done" = "Thou has Donne". It also puns on the name of his young wife: "For I have more" = "For I have (Anne) More". These word plays, his reference to himself as a spider, and the playful admonition, "Thou hast not done" all mitigate the sin-drenched, petitionary, and self-flagellating aspects of the poem. Donne's standing tall while acknowledging his faults, forthrightly facing his own death, and yet doubting that Heaven awaits him would have appealed to Lawrence. And there is something outrageously self-confident in his final assertion that at his death "Thy Son / Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore."

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Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, ed. by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (1908)

A Hymn to God the Father, music for tenor and piano (1987)

HIDDEN SOURCES: Western Esoteric Influence on the Arts

A Hymn to God the Father

why not?

I just finished reading Tom Vanderbilt's book, Traffic, which details causes and results of Americans' passion for motor cars. He summarizes study after study on the difficulties to which this passion leads and again and again tells the reader how we lose out by preferencing cars and pickups over cycling, walking, and cruising on public transit.

He loves paradox and his subject yields up many, and partly for this reason I found it poignant that my burg, Washington DC, a car-mad city, was host recently to a National Bike Summit at which Andreas Røhl, the head of Copenhagen’s Bicycle Office, detailed how very different things could be.

It's easy to think, and say, dismissively, "well Copenhagen, what have we in common with that place?" But it takes little research to uncover some big time commonalities. Both C and DC are capitol cities, both have about the same population size, their climates are similar (C's is a bit colder and wetter and, being farther north, its winter nights are longer). Both have wealthy, mostly liberal and forward thinking, clusters of residents. From a cyclist's point of view, DC has the advantage in its compactness, but C is a bit flatter. C, overall, is safer, but DC's crime is largely located outside the areas where its upscale residents live and work.

So... Why is DC's bike policy so lame? (Not nonexistent, I'm happy to say, but truly lame all the same.)

Here's what Copenhagen can brag about.

First, a write up of Røhl's presentation from the Examiner newspaper: Best of Copenhagen bike manager's address to National Bike Summit attendees

Second, a compelling photo of bikes parked at a transit station in Copenhagen:

{Bikes in Copenhagen, click to view full size; source: procsilas' photostream on flickr}

Third, a photoblog of cycling-chic in Copenhagen: Copenhagen Cycle Chic - Streetstyle and Bike Advocacy in High Heels

Fourth, a Copenhagen bike advocacy blog: Copenhagenize

Fifth, here are extracts from the roundup on The Wash Cycle, DC's advocacy blog:

National Bike Summit Summary

I went to several free components of the National Bike Summit, but I had work to do that week so I couldn't attend much. Luckily many other people have twitblogged about it on the interspace. First Adam Voiland wrote about the Tuesday night presentation by Andreas Røhl, the head of Copenhagen’s Bicycle Office, and I watched a similar presentation by Rohl on Wednesday night. Some highlights we both gleaned.

There are about 500,000 bikes in Copenhagen. 25% of people now have cargo bikes and that is requiring them to build unique facilities to handle them. 60% of voters own bikes.

As of 2003, there's more bike traffic in downtown that automobile traffic, meanwhile safety has increased (there were 50% fewer deaths in 2003 than in 1995). The more cyclists there are the fewer accidents they have, because, he theorizes, people get used to it. They still have less than half as many cyclist as they did in 1950.

He listed the usual reasons to encourage biking: less congestion, a better environment, better health, improvement of urban life, bike changes can be implemented in a single election cycle, they're cheap and have visible effects, they reduce CO2 footprint.

They've calculate that every mile biked gives $1 in health benefits. “A 10 percent increase in cycling would save $10 million per year”

They've been instituting a Green Wave (which means retiming lights for "cyclist speed" on certain streets. This reduces travel time by 15% and makes cycling more pleasant since cyclists use less energy). They're also pulling the ASL line back for motorists, so that cyclists (who are usually placed to the right, in their own lane) are clearly visible and ahead of the motorists. This reduces the chances for right-turning cars to hit straight-going cyclists. They're also creating carless streets (which allow buses, cyclists and pedestrians).

Bike parking at train stations is a serious problem, because the train stations are handled by the National government.

The average bike trip is around four miles.

“Nobody in Copenhagen sees themselves as a 'cyclist.'"

"In the last 15 years the distance traveled on bicycle has risen by 15 percent.”

GGW found this highlight

One of Røhl's many interesting statistics came from a biennial survey of Copenhagen cyclists. When asked for the primary reason why they bicycle, a combined 61 percent of respondents said it was either because cycling was easy and fast or because it was the most convenient mode of transportation. 19 percent cited exercise, 6 percent pointed to financial reasons and a paltry 1 percent were motivated by environmental concerns.
Røhl's conclusion was that, in order for cycling to become a mainstream transportation option, it has to be promoted and planned for based primarily on its convenience.

For more on Copenhagen you can check out presentation here, here and here. And for full coverage of Røhl's talk go to bikeportland.

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Additional Links:

Cycling in Copenhagen

Copenhagen, City of Cyclists (pdf)

Livable Copenhagen: The Design of a Bicycle City (pdf)

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More Copenhagen cycling photos:

{Rush hour in Copenhagen; source: Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen / Copenhagen Cycle Chic.com via LA times}

{Waiting patiently at an intersection; lights are frequently timed to facilitate bike flow rather than auto flow; source: Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen / Copenhagen Cycle Chic.com via urbanvelo.org}

{highly functional three-wheelers are popular; source: Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen / Copenhagen Cycle Chic.com via velorution.biz}

{High-heel cycle chic; source Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen / Copenhagen Cycle Chic.com via momentumplanet.ca}

{Winter cyclist; source: Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen / Copenhagen Cycle Chic.com}

'

{More winter cyclists; source: sfucity.com}

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Comparing DC and Copenhagen:

Copenhagen has a population of 530,000 residents. It occupies 175 sq. mi. and is located on 12.58 degrees longitude, and 55.67 latitude. Washington, D.C. has a population of 570,900 residents. It occupies 68 sq. mi. and is located on -75.02 degrees longitude, and 38.82 latitude. Both have copious land set aside for parks. Both are national capitals. Both have moderate climates (although Copenhagen is colder and wetter). Washington has potential advantages of smaller area and greater population density. However, it has a lower per-capita standard of living and, of course, lacks commitment to cycling.

the insufferable sufficiency of breath

NOT unto us, O Lord,
Not unto us the rapture of the day,
The peace of night, or love's divine surprise,
High heart, high speech, high deeds 'mid honouring eyes;
For at Thy word
All these are taken away.

Not unto us, O Lord:
To us thou givest the scorn, the scourge, the scar,
The ache of life, the loneliness of death,
The insufferable sufficiency of breath;
And with Thy sword
Thou piercest very far.

Not unto us, O Lord:
Nay, Lord, but unto her be all things given--
My light and life and earth and sky be blasted--
But let not all that wealth of loss be wasted:
Let Hell afford
The pavement of her Heaven!

This is "Non Nobis" by Henry Cust. It appeared first anonymously and then with due credit in the Oxford Book of English Verse early in the 20th century. It is the 16th poem that Lawrence wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

First of a consecutive series of 11 poems that Lawrence put in Minorities out of OBEV. One (number 5) preceded and others would follow. This is not surprising since he had carried the Quiller-Couch OBEV with him during his wartime service in the Arab states.

The editor of Minorities says that Cust was a relative of a colleague of Lawrence's during the war. He relates this anecdote: "In Law­rence's copy of the O.E.V. this poem is dated 22.xi.I7. Lawrence was at Azrak on this date (see Chapter LXXXI of Seven Pillars), two days earlier he had been captured during a reconnaissance at Deraa, and brutally treated by the Turks. On the morning of the 21st he escaped, and returned to Azrak, but could not face the prospect of a winter's diplomacy there with the smooth northern townspeople who now came to make contact with the Arab forces. Instead he set out on November 23rd for Akaba."

According to his wikipedia entry, Cust was an randy aristocrat, editor of an influential periodical, and a Conservative Member of Parliament.

It says Cust was a member of a group called The Souls, were a small, loosely-knit but distinctive social group of prominent and well-born men and women including author Margot Asquith, who wrote:

Mr. Harry Cust is the last of the Souls that I intend writing about and was in some ways the rarest and the most brilliant of them all. Some one who knew him well wrote truly of him after he died:

He tossed off the cup of life without fear of it containing any poison, but like many wilful men he was deficient in will-power.

. . . Harry Cust had an untiring enthusiasm for life. At Eton he had been captain of the school and he was a scholar of Trinity. He had as fine a memory as Professor Churton Collins or my husband and an unplumbed sea of knowledge, quoting with equal ease both poetry and prose. He edited the Pall Mall Gazette brilliantly for several years. With his youth, brains and looks, he might have done anything in life; but he was fatally self-indulgent and success with my sex damaged his public career. He was a fastidious critic and a faithful friend, fearless, reckless and unforgettable.

He wrote one poem, [Non Nobis] which appeared anonymously in the Oxford Book of English Verse.

{Source3: Margot Asquith, an Autobiography}

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Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, ed. by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
Published by Clarendon Press, (Clarendon, 1908)

Margot Asquith, an Autobiography, by Margot Asquith (George H. Doran company, 1920)

An Autobiography, by Margot Asquith (George H. Doran company, 1920)

death is strong and full of blood and fair

Who hath given man speech? or who hath set therein
A thorn for peril and a snare for sin?
For in the word his life is and his breath,
     And in the word his death,
That madness and the infatuate heart may breed
     From the word's womb the deed
And life bring one thing forth ere all pass by,
Even one thing which is ours yet cannot die —
Death.. Hast thou seen him ever anywhere,
Time's twin-born brother, imperishable as he
Is perishable and plaintive, clothed with care
     And mutable as sand,
But death is strong and full of blood and fair
And perdurable and like a lord of land?
Nay, time thou seest not, death thou wilt not see
Till life's right hand be loosened from thine hand
     And thy life-days from thee.
For the gods very subtly fashion
     Madness with sadness upon earth:
Not knowing in any wise compassion,
     Nor holding pity of any worth;
And many things they have given and taken,
     And wrought and ruined many things;
The firm land have they loosed and shaken,
     And sealed the sea with all her springs;
They have wearied time with heavy burdens
     And vexed the lips of life with breath:
Set men to labour and given them guerdons,
     Death, and great darkness after death:
Put moans into the bridal measure
     And on the bridal wools a stain;
And circled pain about with pleasure,
     And girdled pleasure about with pain;
And strewed one marriage-bed with tears and fire
For extreme loathing and supreme desire.

What shall be done with all these tears of ours?
     Shall they make watersprings in the fair heaven
To bathe the brows of morning? or like flowers
Be shed and shine before the starriest hours,
     Or made the raiment of the weeping Seven?
Or rather, O our masters, shall they be
Food for the famine of the grievous sea,
     A great well-head of lamentation
Satiating the sad gods? or fall and flow
Among the years and seasons to and fro,
     And wash their feet with tribulation
And fill them full with grieving ere they go?
     Alas, our lords, and yet alas again,
Seeing all your iron heaven is gilt as gold
     But all we smite thereat in vain;
Smite the gates barred with groanings manifold,
     But all the floors are paven with our pain.
Yea, and with weariness of lips and eyes,
With breaking of the bosom, and with sighs,
     We labour, and are clad and fed with grief
And filled with days we would not fain behold
And nights we would not hear of; we wax old,
     All we wax old and wither like a leaf.
We are outcast, strayed between bright sun and moon;
     Our light and darkness are as leaves of flowers,
Black flowers and white, that perish; and the noon
     As midnight, and the night as daylight hours.
     A little fruit a little while is ours,
          And the worm finds it soon.

But up in heaven the high gods one by one
     Lay hands upon the draught that quickeneth,
Fulfilled with all tears shed and all things done,
     And stir with soft imperishable breath
     The bubbling bitterness of life and death,
And hold it to our lips and laugh; but they
Preserve their lips from tasting night or day,
     Lest they too change and sleep, the fates that spun,
The lips that made us and the hands that slay;
     Lest all these change, and heaven bow down to none,
Change and be subject to the secular sway
     And terrene revolution of the sun.
Therefore they thrust it from them, putting time away.

I would the wine of time, made sharp and sweet
     With multitudinous days and nights and tears
     And many mixing savours of strange years,
Were no more trodden of them under feet,
     Cast out and spilt about their holy places:
That life were given them as a fruit to eat
And death to drink as water; that the light
Might ebb, drawn backward from their eyes, and night
     Hide for one hour the imperishable faces.
That they might rise up sad in heaven, and know
Sorrow and sleep, one paler than young snow,
     One cold as blight of dew and ruinous rain;
Rise up and rest and suffer a little, and be
Awhile as all things born with us and we,
     And grieve as men, and like slain men be slain.

For now we know not of them; but one saith
     The gods are gracious, praising God; and one,
When hast thou seen? or hast thou felt his breath
     Touch, nor consume thine eyelids as the sun,
Nor fill thee to the lips with fiery death?
     None hath beheld him, none
Seen above other gods and shapes of things,
Swift without feet and flying without wings,
Intolerable, not clad with death or life,
     Insatiable, not known of night or day,
The lord of love and loathing and of strife
     Who gives a star and takes a sun away;
Who shapes the soul, and makes her a barren wife
     To the earthly body and grievous growth of clay;
Who turns the large limbs to a little flame
     And binds the great sea with a little sand;
Who makes desire, and slays desire with shame;
     Who shakes the heaven as ashes in his hand;
Who, seeing the light and shadow for the same,
     Bids day waste night as fire devours a brand,
Smites without sword, and scourges without rod -
     The supreme evil, God.

Yea, with thine hate, O God, thou hast covered us,
     One saith, and hidden our eyes away from sight,
And made us transitory and hazardous,
     Light things and slight;
Yet have men praised thee, saying, He hath made man thus,
     And he doeth right.
Thou hast kissed us, and hast smitten; thou hast laid
Upon us with thy left hand life, and said,
Live: and again thou hast said, Yield up your breath,
And with thy right hand laid upon us death.
Thou hast sent us sleep,and stricken sleep with dreams,
     Saying, Joy is not, but love of joy shall be;
Thou hast made sweet springs for all the pleasant streams,
     In the end thou hast made them bitter with the sea.
Thou hast fed one rose with dust of many men;
     Thou hast marred one face with fire of many tears;
Thou hast taken love, and given us sorrow again;
     With pain thou hast filled us full to the eyes and ears.
Therefore because thou art strong, our father, and we
     Feeble; and thou art against us, and thine hand
Constrains us in the shallows of the sea
     And breaks us at the limits of the land;
Because thou hast bent thy lightnings as a bow,
     And loosed the hours like arrows; and let fall
Sins and wild words and many a winged woe
     And wars among us, and one end of all;
Because thou hast made the thunder, and thy feet
     Are as a rushing water when the skies
Break, but thy face as an exceeding heat
     And flames of fire the eyelids of thine eyes;
Because thou art over all who are over us;
     Because thy name is life and our name death;
Because thou art cruel and men are piteous,
     And our hands labour and thine hand scattereth;
Lo, with hearts rent and knees made tremulous,
     Lo, with ephemeral lips and casual breath,
          At least we witness of thee ere we die
That these things are not otherwise, but thus;
     That each man in his heart sigheth, and saith,
          That all men even as I,
All we are against thee, against thee, O God most high.

This is an extract from a chorus in "Atalanta in Calydon" by Algernon Swinburne in his play Atalanta in Calydon: a tragedy (London, 1894). It is the 15th poem that Lawrence wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

In his time, Swinburne was considered to be one of England's greatest poets, worthy successor to Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. This entry my therefore seem to be a major departure from Lawrence's goal to include only minor poets in Minorities, but in fact he did not consider Swinburne to be great. In letters written in 1913 and 1927, he called him long-winded and boring. Because of its length and the hand-cramping trouble it's likely to have caused him as he transcribed it, this chorus must have had special significance in Lawrence's hierarchy of works by minor poets, set in a minor key, which have an appealing lyricism.

The editor of Minorities says Lawrence used a metaphor from the chorus in the dedication poem of Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage ours for the moment / Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind worms grew fat upon / Your substance."* Modern commentary tends to associate the lines with homosexual love, but others point out that Lawrence was not particularly strongly inclined toward either homo- or heterosexuality; he had an Oxonian tolerance for the sexual adventurism of others, but seems not himself to have been highly libidinized. The identity of "S.A.", the subject of Lawrence's dedication is thoroughly discussed in a page by Yagitani Ryôkoa called An 'S.A.' Mystery, which says that, typically of Lawrence, the initials cannot assuredly be assigned to any one person or concept.**

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{This is the second half of the extract in Lawrence's hand from Minorities; source: Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).}

{source: Special Collections and Archives, Univ of California, Irvine}

{Algernon Charles Swinburne, painting by William Bell Scott, 1860; source: victorianweb.org}

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Here is the Atalanta story from wikipedia:

Atalanta (Greek: Αταλάντη, English translation: "balanced") is a character from ancient Greek mythology.

After being told by an oracle she would be ruined if she were to marry, Atalanta set up a contest to win her hand in marriage. All of the suitors that wanted to marry her would have to race her, and if they beat her in the race, they won her hand in marriage; if not they would die by her hand. After she meets and instantly loves Hippomenes, she begs him not to race her. She fears if he loses she will have to kill him, and she has fallen in love with him on sight, but because of her competitive nature and the oracle's promise that marriage will be her demise, she must kill him should he lose – per the rules of her own contest.

Hippomenes prays to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, for help in winning the race and thus Atalanta's hand. Aphrodite, taking pity on the love-sick man, devises a plan to help Hippomenes win the race without necessarily cheating.

Aphrodite gives Hippomenes three golden apples and tells him to throw them on the race track at different stages in the race. Atalanta is distracted by these golden apples and therefore stops each time Hippomenes throws them, giving Hippomenes a slight advantage over her own speed. Hippomenes wins the race and her hand in marriage.

This page describes Atalanta's connection with Calydon.

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Notes:

* Susan H. Warren believes that a Thomas Hardy poem, He Never Expected Much, may, in turn, draw upon Lawrence's metaphor, but it is difficult to see a close correspondence. Hardy has "The World," meaning our lives in the world, speak thus:

Many have loved me desperately,
Many with smooth serenity,
While some have shown contempt of me
Till they dropped underground.

**Yagitani Ryôkoa gives the following candidates list for S.A.

* Achmed, Sheik Ahmed or 'Salim' Ahmed, otherwise Dahoum
* 'Son Altesse', Her Highness, i.e. Fareedeh el Akle -- Robert Graves
* A lay figure of literary passion -- Vyvyan Richards
* An imaginary person of neutral sex -- TE himself
* Sheikh or Sharif Ali -- Desmond Stewart
* Prince Feisal -- an article in the Beirut newspaper, L'Orient, on 1 October 1965 [Lives, McGraw-Hill ed., p.181; Panther ed., p.185]
* One is a person and one a place: Dahoum and Syria or Arabia
'as a personification as well as a person - a combination of the person and the place, a symbol of the pre-war happiness of life at Carchemish' -- A. W. Lawrence [ibid.]
* Syria and Arabia -- Fareedeh el Akle
* Sarah Aaronsohn (d.1917), a Jewish intelligence agent, sister of Aaron Aaronsohn
-- Put forward firstly by Flora Armitage in her TE biography The Desert and the Stars, Holt, New York, 1955 [p.135]. Anita Engle wrote an appendix entitled 'The Lawrence-Sarah Myth' in her book The Nili Spies, The Hogarth Press, London, 1959. Supported by a close friend of TE's, Dr Ernest Altounyan [Lives, McGraw-Hill ed., p.181; Panther ed., p.186]. I found two letters in the correspondence column of Sunday Times in 1989 and 1992 supported Sarah Aaronsohn.[*7]
* 'an idea or spirit rather than an individual' -- Michael Yardley [Backing into the Limelight: A Biography of T. E. Lawrence, Harrap, London 1985, p.48]
* 'An imaginary conception, unrelated to a particular person or place, which represented all that he had found that was fair and gentle and lovable in Arabia and its peoples' -- Anthony Nutting [Lawrence of Arabia: The Man and The Motive, Signet ed., p.234 (first published from Hollis Carter, London 1961)]

{On left: Miss Fareedeh/Fareedah or Farida el Akle, a modern-thinking Christian Arab, who taught Lawrence Arabic and was said to be embarrassingly fond of him; on right: an unusually pale-skinned Arab named Dahoum or Dahum, a waterboy or donkey boy, who Lawrence felt to be a kindred spirit and who died young. source: An 'S.A.' Mystery}

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Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

Atalanta in Calydon: a tragedy (London, Chatto & Windus, 1875)

Thomas Hardy and T. E. Lawrence: A Literary Friendship, by Susan H. Warren; Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society, Vol. VI, No. 2, Spring 1997.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence - Dedication

labour and longing and despair the long day brings

Strange grows the river on the sunless evenings!
The river comforts me, grown spectral, vague and dumb:
Long was the day; at last the consoling shadows come:
Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things!

Labour and longing and despair the long day brings;
Patient till evening men watch the sun go west;
Deferred, expected night at last brings sleep and rest:
Sufficient for the day are the days evil things!

At last the tranquil Angelus of evening rings
Night's curtain down for comfort and oblivion
Of all the vanities observed by the sun:
'Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things!'

This is 'Vesperal' by Ernest Dowson, from The Poems of Ernest Dowson, with a memoir by Arthur Symons (London, 1913). It is the 14th poem that Lawrence wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

I have previously described Dowson: here and here.

Vespers are evening prayers. The phrase "Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things!" is a variant of a line from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. Dowson was a Roman Catholic and therefore might have been familiar with the Oxford translation into English from the Latin Vulgate. I give extracts from the Gospel of Matthew from a translation of 1836 below.

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Verses 25-end of Matthew, Chapter 6:

25 § Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment?

26 Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they?

27 And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit?

28 And for raiment why are you solicitous? consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin.

29 But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.

30 And if the grass of the field, which is to-day, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?

31 Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or where with shall we be clothed?

32 For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things.

33 Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Be not therefore solicitous for to-morrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

{source: The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate; diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions, in divers languages. With annotations, references, and an historical and chronological index (Oxford, 1836) }

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Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Poems of Ernest Dowson (London, 1915)

The Poems of Ernest Dowson (New York, 1922)

Canonical hours on wikipedia

Vespers in the Catholic Encyclopedia

Vespers on wikipedia

Matthew 6:34 multilingual translations from Biblos.com

The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate; diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions, in divers languages. With annotations, references, and an historical and chronological index (Oxford, 1836)

In deinem lieben Lichte gehn

O sähst du, voller Mondenschein,
Zum letztenmal auf meine Pein,
Den ich so manche Mitternacht
An diesem Pult herangewacht:
Dann, iiber Bfichern und Papier,
Triibsel'ger Freund, erschienst du mir!
Ach! konnt' ich doch auf Bergeshoh'n
In deinem lieben Lichte gehn,
Um Bergeshohle mit Geistern schweben,
Auf Wiesen in deinem Dammer weben,
Vori allem Wissensqualm entladen,
In deinem Tau gesund mich baden!

This is an extract from Act 1, Scene 1 of Goethe's Faust. It is the 13th entry in T.E. Lawrence's manuscript pocket book which he called Minorities. I've given some English translations below.

{These illustrations come from old editions of Faust}

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Three renderings in English:

O full and splendid Moon, whom I
Have, from this desk, seen climb the sky
So many a midnight, — would thy glow
For the last time beheld my woe!
Ever thine eye, most mournful friend,
O'er books and papers saw me bend;
But would that I, on mountains grand,
Amid thy blessed light could stand,
With spirits through mountain-caverns hover,
Float in thy twilight the meadows over,
And, freed from the fumes of lore that swathe me,
To health in thy dewy fountains bathe me!

{From: FAUST, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY Harry Clarke, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH, IN THE ORIGINAL METRES, BY Bayard Taylor}

O, may you look, full moon that shines,
On my pain for this last time:
So many midnights from my desk,
I have seen you, keeping watch:
When over my books and paper,
Saddest friend, you appear!
Ah! If on the mountain height
I might stand in your sweet light,
Float with spirits in mountain caves,
Swim the meadows in twilight’ waves,
Free from the smoke of knowledge too,
Bathe in your health-giving dew!

{From: Faust Part I, (Scenes I to III) A. S. Kline 2003}

O couldst thou, light of the full moon,
Look now the last upon my pain,
Thou for whom I have sat belated
So many midnights here and waited
Till, over book and papers, thou
Didst shine, sad friend, upon my brow.

{Louis MacNeice's translation of the first half of the extract, from: Goethe's Faust, a review of a translation by Randall Jarrell (STEPHEN SPENDER, Books, New York Times, January 2, 1977. Spender calls this translation "a tour de force of formal virtuosity."}

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Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

Faust (1838)

FAUST, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY Harry Clarke, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH, IN THE ORIGINAL METRES, BY Bayard Taylor

Faust Part I, (Scenes I to III) A. S. Kline 2003

Faust Faust: a tragedy
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Bayard Taylor, James Adey Birds
Translated by Bayard Taylor
Published by F.A. Brockhaus, 1881

Songs and scenes from Goethe's Faust, ed. by Theodore Martin, et. al. 1883

Goethe's Faust, a review of a translation by Randall Jarrell (STEPHEN SPENDER, Books, New York Times, January 2, 1977

all the dragons born of pain

My thoughts came drifting down the Prison where I lay —
Through the Windows of their Wings the stars were shining —
The wings bore me away — the russet Wings and grey
With feathers like the moon-bleached Flowers — I was a God reclining:
Beneath me lay my Body's Chain and all the Dragons born of Pain
As I burned through the Prison Roof to walk on Pavement Shining.

The Wild Wind of Liberty swept through my Hair and sang beyond:
I heard the Souls of men asleep chattering in the Eaves
And rode on topmost Boughs of Heaven's single-moon-fruited Silver Wand,
Night's unifying Tree whereof the central Stars be leaves —
0 Thoughts, Thoughts, Thoughts, — Fire-angel-birds relentless —
Will you not brood in God's Star-tree and leave Red Heart tormentless!

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This is 'The Pensive Prisoner' by James Elroy Flecker, from The Collected Poems of James Elroy Flecker, with an Introduction by J.C. Squire (London, 1918). It is the 12th poem that Lawrence wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

Considered to be one of Flecker's best, the poem meets Lawrence's criteria for verses he chose to carry about with him: neither the poet nor the work is great in the usual sense, it is musical, and the tenor is anguished, yearning, and — with its impossible hopefulness — pessimistic. Still, its diction and imagery are more Romantic, in the mode of William Blake, than are most of the others.

Some of the images in this poem inspired Lawrence while writing The Mint, after Seven Pillars probably his best-known work. This extract from that memoir is from Part I, Chapter 4, p. 19:

At ten-fifteen lights out; and upon their dying flash every sound ceased. Silence and the fear came back to me. Through the white windows streaked white diagonals from the conflicting arc-lamps without. Within there ruled the stupor of first sleep, as of embryons in the natal caul. My observing spirit slowly and deliberately hoisted itself from place to prowl across this striped upper air, leisurely examining the forms stretched out so mummy-still in the strait beds. Our first lesson in the Depot had been of our apartness from life. This second vision was of our sameness, body by body. How many souls gibbered that night in the roof-beams, seeing it? Once more mine panicked, suddenly, and fled back to its coffin-body. Any cover was better than the bareness.

{ -- source: T. E. Lawrence, The Mint on the telawrence.net pages. It is The editor of Minorities, Jeremy Wilson, who draws attention to this correspondence.}

.

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{left to right: Flecker, his book, he and friend Beazley}

Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Collected Poems of James Elroy Flecker (1921)

Living age, Eighth Series, Volume IV, October, November, December, 1916, pp. 461-68 (a review of the book)

T. E. Lawrence, The Mint