Hallelujah

I should say, I suppose, that this blog isn't one of those that comments on everything, and certainly not one of those that has an unwritten contract with its readers to put up something every day - it's more (a) a repository for things I want to put my hands on quickly together in the one place and (b) a spot to hoard old opinions. So, even though it's online in a number of other places,

"Hallelujah"

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah



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Commonplace Book

Modern Language Association

“Was I too hearty. Did he think me bold?

Should I have said, ‘like hell,’ and not ‘like fun’?

Does my mustache not make me look too old?

(He wants a man whose graduate work is done.)

Nebraska Wesleyan is probably cold,

I’d rather get down south of Washington.

He didn’t seem to like that joke I told;

Jeez, he’s a solemn-looking son of a gun!”

Thus the young savant ponders at his ease,
Knitting the critical brow, and on the belly
Twirling the scholarly thumb, while Ph.D's
Deal with the manuscripts of Machiavelli,
The intervocalic 'X in Portuguese,
And the unfaithfulness of Harriet Shelley.

A Salute to the Modern Language Association, Convening in the Hotel Pennsylvania

The Modern Language Association

Meets in the Hotel Pennsylvania

And the: suave greeters in consternation

Hark to the guests indulging their mania

For papers on “Adalbert Stifter as the Spokesman of Middle-Class Conservatism,”

And “The American Revolution in the Gazette de Leyde and the Affaires de l’Angleterre et de I’Amerique,”

And "Emerson and the Conflict Between Platonic and Kantian Idealism,”

And “Dialektgeographie and Textkritik,”

And “Vestris and Macready: Nineteenth-Century Management at the Parting of the Ways,”

And “Pharyngeal Changes in Vowel and Consonant Articulation,”

And "More Light. on Moliere’s Theater in 1672-73 from Le Registre d'Hubert, Archives of the Comedie Francaise,”

And “Diderot’s Theory of Imitation.”

May culture’s glossolalia, clinging

In Exhibit Rooms and Parlor A,

Sober awhile the tempestuous singing

Of fraternal conventions, untimely gay;

May your influence quell, like a panacea,

A business assembly’s financial fevers,

With the faint, sweet memory of "Observaciones sobre la aspiration de H en Andalucia,"

And "The Stimmsprung (Voice Leap) of Sievers.”

Morris Bishop

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Prince Harry

As my father once commented
"Well, yes, the royal family isn't terribly bright, but think what a waste it would be if they were."

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Philosophy II; this time it's personal

Similarly, from a list of annoying things to do;
"When people say 'How are you?' reply 'Compared to what?'

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Philosophy in the marketplace

One of the Christmas crackers had a joke that covers an entire philosophy.
"Why is a mintball small, smooth and white?"
"Because if it was huge, wrinkly and gray it'd be an elephant."

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