Discussion: Read the verse

[jst5150]

So ...

Last night, after my government-allowed two beers, I watched
"V for Vendetta" again. It's my second time seeing it. It's a fantastic
film. I have not read Alan Moore's version. I will. However, just
wanted comment on this, which has enamoured me since
watching the film:

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see of no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.


Realizing it is not much more than a UK nursery rhyme -- and
that three-quarters of the entire work is omitted, I'm
curious if these words stirred anyone else like they stirred me.

Admittedly, I knew nothing of the Gunpower Plot, Guy
Fawkes day and still no little or nothing save the
Wikipedia reference.

But this verse moved me. I'm curious if it resonates with
anyone else; or if you feel that it's just a curiosity
to be taken as mere fun prose.

v/r, Jason

[Rivana]

This quote resonated with me because I first read it when I was a child in one of my favorite books of Enid Blyton's. There is something that got to me in it, the darkness, the revolution, the sing-song rhythm.

[wordsheff]

Fun prose? It's in ballad form.

[kdnxdr]

It definately has a catching sound...........and it has all the elements of "man motivators".........so, I can see the attraction.........

As for a discussion thread, I wasn't clear what you wanted to discuss?

[jst5150]

I suppose then the discussion -- for clarification purposes -- is this:

Has anything you've read ever stirred you? Changed behaviour? Motivated you to do something, bad or good? Not the languid, "I read 'Gone with the Wing' and it made me cry" sort of things. Rather, something just rang in your head over and over, and it spurned you to a discernable behavioural shift. Or something radically different from your usual self. Impulsive?

I think that sums it up.

[Godfather]

i like it. but i didn't like the film, the film didn't move me at all. i thought it had so much potential to be great, but they ruined the whole idea.

the wind that shakes the barley moved me. they sang songs that moved me, and most of the time, i had no idea what they were saying. now that is filmaking.

[kborsden]

I see no reason
why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot

more than a mere nursery rhyme, this has historical referance to the gunpowder plot of robert catesbey and guido fawkes to blow up king james the first upon his opening of parliament. the reason: the plotters where catholics as was james, as we all know catholics have had a hard time of things in britain for a very long time, the plotters believed that james would change the laws. however, his government did nothing but endorse the harsh treatment of the catholics. although all the plotters died, fawkes recieved the harshest of penalties and was hung, drawn and quartered plus his head was stuck on a pike afterward for good measure. this "mere nursery ryhme" is actually propaganda of the regime at that time, reminding everyone not to mess with the powers that be.
now, years later we still light fireworks and burn a bonfire with the likeness of guido fawkes on top annually, we call this day guy fawkes day. a sick tradition i know.

[Rivana]

kborsden<<< I always found it a sick tradition as well. I've noticed that most traditions are kind of...cruel, once you start to think about them.
Old games and songs are often sort of cruel. Like that other old rhyme 'Ring a Ring O'Roses' for example. Or fairy tales... Take your pick, they're all sort of nasty when you get right down to it. Many are still very good and memorable in their own way though.

[kborsden]

true rivana...this little rhyme is hauntingly memorable, i wonder who it was that started it off.
as for the ring-a-ring-a-rosies thing, it was just an easy way to remember the first symptoms of the plague and was thus taught to school children. that i understand but celebrating the murder and torture of someone is just dispicable in my eyes. okey, he may have been a criminal but still...

[Rivana]

Probably a street poet of some sort. I've a mind that they were very popular in the old days both in France and England.

Yes, the song was that, but for that very reason it's also rather nasty. Reality is very often cruel after all.

As for Guy Fawkes. Yes it is sickening, people are very often that when allowed. I also find it reminisce of Christian Easter in some ways.

[kborsden]

so the way i see it, this little dirge is little more than a reminder of how cruel people have been in the past and how cruel they can be when they think no one is looking.

[Rivana]

*nod* People are the most dangerous creatures in the world as well as the cruelest. There's nothing I fear more than being at the mercy of other people's good will. *shudders*

[kborsden]

well said.

[Rivana]

Unfortunately. (Thanks.)

[wyzguy]

Ulysses
by Alfred Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

For something that changed an attitude and behavior, this is it for me.

[poetinahat]

My dad's lifelong favorite (http://www.bartleby.com/103/7.html), and one of mine, too:

Invictus
William Ernest Henley

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

[kborsden]

can human nature be changed though?
we are all, as individuals, nice people but as a congregation we cause the utmost evil and vile things.

[poetinahat]

Nature, no. Behaviour, yes. I thought the question was whether anything we'd read made us change our individual behaviour.

[kborsden]

we still act as a mass though and mob mentality is the thing that makes it all happen.

[kborsden]

this is written by an anonomous poet. i found it in a book of lost poetry. i think it says enough about how we treat those who we believe have done wrong, it is supposed to be a sonnet and altough it's not really all that good, it does speak true.


Spirits of the convicted felons

Amid the dreary yards of stone
One might find oneself alone
Lost and found outside of shadow
Upon this ground we’re told is hallowed.

Walking still never to withhold
One might think oneself a ghost
Floating now above the gallows
Where corpses hang of my fellows.

Among the township people goes
One might like oneself in host
Of screaming silence in bellows
For spirits of convicted felons.

Victims for all are avenged
While murderers go to hell.

[poetinahat]

Nice poem above. Almost sounds like a rope-skipping rhyme, in an Edward Gorey sort of way.

we still act as a mass though and mob mentality is the thing that makes it all happen.

Not always.

The written word doesn't affect us as a mob, though. If it's spoken, then it may well do so.

So, would it be correct to say that you believe that the written word is incapable of changing human behaviour?

[kborsden]

the individual is always open to change. and although all change starts with one, the masses are always those that wield power.

[kborsden]

the written word can devolope, improve, change and invoke. yet how many people nowadays really read something worth reading?
where i am, port talbot, it is that the deprived nature of people is in the foreground. we have little but act as though we have all. this makes for a very strange environment to live in. believe me when i say that mob-mentality is here as rife as the plague. in fact it is a plague, a psychotic, unforgiving, binge-drinking plague at that.

[kborsden]

is neo-naziism not ground upon the writings of many a right winged hooligan, in their own eyes a prophet?

[poetinahat]

Written words persuade people one at a time. Whether or not the idea in question is associated with mob action, the writing itself does not comprise mob-mentality initiative. People don't read things in mobs.

I'd think, by definition, reading the written word cannot possibly have mob-mentality leverage. Mob mentality denotes the impulse experienced by being in a group, and getting swept up in the movement. That doesn't happen when you're reading a book.

You raise an interesting point. Someone might well answer that reading Mein Kampf or Das Kapital, for example, changed how they acted. But it wouldn't have been through mob forces.

Is it just me, or are we off topic?

[kborsden]

yes okay just a little, and by the way i heartily agree, one person can read and alter the course of his judgement or behaviour as it is just one person who is reading. but when that one person goes into his environment his main influence is again the mob, so no, the written word cannot change an individual entirely

[poetinahat]

I agree. People are seldom unaffected by their immediate surroundings, but it takes something special for them to consciously change their own behaviour.

[Rivana]

It depends on the reader I think, if they're strong enough to let themselves be swayed by something other than 'the mob'. This however can mean influence both good or bad. One person can read the Bible, feel a change within them and go out to change other people as well, depending on this one person's gift of persuasion and other people's receptability to the message at that particular time and place.

As for words that affect us, though I can't remember changing the way I think actively from reading just one text, I have found stuff that lingers with me long after other things have become simply a part of my subconscious.
One such text is this quote by a Swedish writer I can't remember the name of right now. The book was about the 'burning times'. The words echoed my own sentiments very well so they stayed with me along with the haunting prose of that story.

(free translation)

People are afraid. Those who are afraid
need something to protect themselves with.
If they don't know what they fear,
they need something to protect themselves from.

Sad, but true. People, en masse are ruled by fear. Individuals are mostly ruled by fear as well, but at times they can choose to rise above it.

[wordsheff]

The lyrics to It's All Over Now, Baby Blue have moved me more than anything else in my life...second is probably the lyrics to Just Like a Woman

[wyzguy]

If words couldn't affect behavior and attitudes, there would be no radio commercials.