High Brow for the Week:

Your After Work Cocktail today is:
Perfect Manhattan
Ingredients:
2 oz. Bourbon
1 dash Dry Vermouth & Sweet Vermouth
Garnish w/ a Lemon or Lime Twist
(Hey, you rich Uncle drank them)

Poem for the Day:

XI.
DOST thou remember ever, for my sake,
When we two rowed upon the rock-bound lake?
How the wind-fretted waters blew their spray
About our brows like blossom-falls of May
One memorable day?

Dost thou remember the glad mouth that cried--
"Were it not sweet to die now side by side,
To lie together tangled in the deep
Close as the heart-beat to the heart--so keep
The everlasting sleep?"


Dost thou remember? Ah, such death as this
Had set the seal upon my heart's young bliss!
But, wrenched asunder, severed and apart,
Life knew a deadlier death: the blighting smart
Which only kills the heart.


XII.
LIKE some wild sleeper who alone at night
Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
With death below and only stars above;
I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep,
Along the edges of life's perilous steep,
The lost somnambulist of love.

I, in broad day, go walking in a dream,
Led on in safety by the starry gleam
Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall;
Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day,
Startled to find how far I've gone astray,
I dash my life out in my fall.

From: Songs and Sonnets, by Mathilde Blind,
Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly, London 1893

(Thanks! to Sam from the book store for turning me onto his writing, its heavy you have to read it a few times to get what he is really talking about, and its never what you think it is, what fun)

Today’s Bill:
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd.It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath.It is twice blest:It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." --From Merchant of Venice (IV, I, (184-186)

Greek God of the Day:
Persephone: ( Roman Proserpina ) Greek goddess of the underworld. Daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Once, while picking flowers in the Vale of Nysa (reputedly in Sicily), she was abducted by Hades, who forced her to become his wife in the underworld. The gods, concerned that her mother's grief was causing the earth's vegetation to shrivel and die, sent Hermes to negotiate for her return. He succeeded in gaining Hades permission but, because Persephone had eaten a single pomegranate seed while in the underworld, she was only allowed to return to her mother for two thirds of the year. The earth's vegetation was believed to prosper during the two thirds of the year that Persephone was with her mother and waste away during the third spent in the underworld. This paralleled the cycle of the seasons in the Mediterranean, where late summer is a period of drought. The celebration of this story became the central part of the Eleusinian mysteries. She was referred to as Kore ("girl" or "maiden") in her association with Demeter, and some scholars believe she was only an aspect of Demeter and not a deity in her own right. Certainly the story of Persephone was inseparable from that of Demeter, as was her worship. In Orphism, a mystery religion centering around the similar legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Quote of the Day:
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Baruch Spinoza
Dutch Jewish philosopher (1632 - 1677)
(I always liked Spinoza, but all this time I thought he was a Pole)

I remain, humbled like only I can be,

JQP esq.