racked carcases make ill anatomies
So last night I went to sleep right after reading The True Law of Free Monarchies and it caused me to dream weird things. Except I don't remember exactly what they were. I have the vague sense Milton was somehow involved. *is alarmed*
(The True Law was an odd read, incidentally, since I'd not read it before, yet pretty much everything in it was terribly familiar. Also, the part where he talks about the Israelites' insistence on a king in the book of Samuel is rather a funky bit of exegesis. James' reading of it goes something like: monarchy is ordained by God, in the sense that a) it's the same structure as the divine hierarchy, and b) God allowed it when the Israelites wanted a king, but although some of the people who hold the office are going to be nasty, there's no way out of it once they've got a king; the people are bound to obey him no matter what. Of course, what he's doing here is trying to reclaim a passage that's cited often by antimonarchical writers -- George Buchanan's De Regno et Regali Potestate deals with it in that capacity [Buchanan, interestingly, was James' tutor, and I think I may have been in grad school too long as that gave me all sorts of Bloomian anxiety-of-influence vibes] and some years later Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates does as well.)
Exam stress is clearly coming back to me in full force, now that I have the language thing worked out. I am thinking of reducing my online time reasonably drastically, though we'll see how long that lasts.
Because I have nothing else to say that's interesting, I shall post some poetry, since I have been rereading the Songs and Sonnets, and my love for John Donne is great and squishy.
The Good-Morrow
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to others worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
What ever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.
(The True Law was an odd read, incidentally, since I'd not read it before, yet pretty much everything in it was terribly familiar. Also, the part where he talks about the Israelites' insistence on a king in the book of Samuel is rather a funky bit of exegesis. James' reading of it goes something like: monarchy is ordained by God, in the sense that a) it's the same structure as the divine hierarchy, and b) God allowed it when the Israelites wanted a king, but although some of the people who hold the office are going to be nasty, there's no way out of it once they've got a king; the people are bound to obey him no matter what. Of course, what he's doing here is trying to reclaim a passage that's cited often by antimonarchical writers -- George Buchanan's De Regno et Regali Potestate deals with it in that capacity [Buchanan, interestingly, was James' tutor, and I think I may have been in grad school too long as that gave me all sorts of Bloomian anxiety-of-influence vibes] and some years later Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates does as well.)
Exam stress is clearly coming back to me in full force, now that I have the language thing worked out. I am thinking of reducing my online time reasonably drastically, though we'll see how long that lasts.
Because I have nothing else to say that's interesting, I shall post some poetry, since I have been rereading the Songs and Sonnets, and my love for John Donne is great and squishy.
The Good-Morrow
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to others worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
What ever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.