VIDEO ALERT
While incarcerated art home I found a jewel of a video from
the brothers Coen.
It is composed of 4 short (But creative) stories, THE BALLAD
OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
My favorite one is about an itinerant showman in the Old
West (1850?) who is “Partnered” with a brilliant young fellow who is devoid of
any legs and arms. We never know why he has neither, but he recites Percy
Shelley’s Poem ‘Ozymandious’ and Shakespeares’s KING HENYRY V.exhotations to
die with him to the thousands at Agincourt in France . Although he doesn’t say but a few of the
lines of each, I was intriged and can’t help sharing them with you.
Ozymandius points
out how we will not be known in the future, even if we are a King of Kings,
King Henry’s
exhortation to his troops is the ultimate cry for all to die in the service of
the current King, and don’t ask the reason why. _Kenneth Branagh is pretty hard
to top and luckily he is not around to help us in our futile wars around the
Globe .
121 blog new
Ozymandias by
Percy Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and
sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor, well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear;
‘”My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains, Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
ST. CRISPINS DAY from Shakespeare, Henry V
WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No. my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of
honour.
God’s will I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell
not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks would share from me.
For the best hope I have, O do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it Westmoreland, through my host,
Tat he which hath no stormach to the fight,
Let him depart; his
passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called
the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe, when rhis day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day , and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say, “To-morrow id Saint Crispin:
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Famliar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Glouster-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we , we happy few. We band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile’.
This day shall shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their
manhoods cheap wiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
