Shropshire Quotes

Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised I'd throw the thought away. To put the world between us We parted stiff and dry: 'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.' 'Fare well, I will,' said I. If e'er, where clover whitens The dead man's knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you Starts in the trefoiled grass, Halt by the headstone shading The heart you have not stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word.

I to my perils Of cheat and charmer Came clad in armour By stars benign. Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine. The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers' meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready When trouble came.

How clear, how lovely bright, How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play; How heaven laughs out with glee Where, like a bird set free, Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day. To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before. Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.

Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

Lie you easy, dream you light, And sleep you fast for aye; And luckier may you find the night Than ever you found the day.

When I Was One-And-Twenty When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.” But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, “The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.” And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

With Rue My Heart Is Laden With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.

Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust; Bear the fruit that bear you must; Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.

The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do: My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two. But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest, The brains in my head and the heart in my breast. Oh, grant me the ease that is granted so free, The birthright of multitudes, give it to me, That relish their victuals and rest on their bed With flint in the bosom and guts in the head.

You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.

The half-moon westers low, my love, And the wind brings up the rain; And wide apart lie we, my love, And seas between the twain. I know not if it rains, my love, In the land where you do lie; And oh, so sound you sleep, my love, You know no more than I.

It meant that Crowley had been allowed to develop Manchester, while Aziraphale had a free hand in the whole of Shropshire. Crowley took Glasgow, Aziraphale had Edinburgh (neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes,* but both reported it as a success).

I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone with misery, all they can Is to hate their fellow man; - from Poem XLI

Was I better? Before Shropshire I'd felt broken, as though I would fall should the scaffold of my work be removed. I didn't feel that now, but there was a fine crack through the middle of me, and I suspected it might never mend. I remembered Lizzie apologising to Mrs Lloyd the first time she stayed to chat, for the chip in the cup. 'A chip doesn't stop it from holding tea,' Mrs Lloyd had said.

Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera....

If it chance your eye offends you, Pluck it out lad, and be sound: 'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you, And many a balsam grows on ground. And if your hand or foot offend you, Cut it off, lad, and be whole; But play the man, stand up and end you, When your sickness is your soul.

White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way. The world is round, so travellers tell, And straight through reach the track, Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well, The way will guide one back. But ere the circle homeward hies Far, far must it remove: White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.

Oh fair enough are sky and plain, But I know fairer far: Those are as beautiful again That in the water are; The pools and rivers wash so clean The trees and clouds and air, The like on earth was never seen, And oh that I were there. These are the thoughts I often think As I stand gazing down In act upon the cressy brink To strip and dive and drown; But in the golden-sanded brooks And azure meres I spy A silly lad that longs and looks And wishes he were I.

Right you guessed the rising morrow And scorned to tread the mire you must: Dust's your wages, son of sorrow, But men may come to worse than dust. Souls undone, undoing others,- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

In the morning, in the morning, In the happy field of hay, Oh they looked at one another By the light of day. In the blue and silver morning On the haycock as they lay, Oh they looked at one another And they looked away.

They say my verse is sad: no wonder. Its narrow measure spans Rue for eternity, and sorrow Not mine, but man's This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not.

Others, I am not the first, Have willed more mischief than they durst: If in the breathless night I too Shiver now, 'tis nothing new. More than I, if truth were told, Have stood and sweated hot and cold, And through their veins in ice and fire Fear contended with desire. Agued once like me were they, But I like them shall win my way Lastly to the bed of mould Where there's neither heat nor cold. But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.

Down in lovely muck I’ve lain, Happy till I woke again.

Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man.

It meant that Crowley had been allowed to develop Manchester, while Aziraphale had a free hand in the whole of Shropshire.

Loveliest of Trees Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping

All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping is!

Shake hands, we shall never be friends; give over: I only vex you the more I try. All's wrong that ever I've done and said, And nought to help it in this dull head: Shake hands, goodnight, goodbye. But if you come to a road where danger Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share, Be good to the lad that loves you true And the soul that was born to die for you, And whistle and I'll be there.

And who are these people you amuse? JACK. Oh, neighbours, neighbours. ALGERNON. Got nice neighbours in your part of Shropshire? JACK. Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them. ALGERNON. How immensely you must amuse them!

I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family - the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons." "England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons." "Tolerably so, sir." "No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?" "Presumably not, sir." "And what sort of a specimen is this one?" "I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance." "Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence?" "No, sir. I should not care to venture such liberal odds.

If truth in hearts that perish Could move the powers on high, I think the love I bear you Should make you not to die. Sure, sure, if steadfast meaning, If single thought could save, The world might end to-morrow, You should not see the grave. This long and sure-set liking, This boundless will to please, -Oh, you should live for ever If there were help in these. But now, since all is idle, To this lost heart be kind, Ere to a town you journey Where friends are ill to find.

Ale, man, Ale's the stuff to drink, for fellows whom it hurts to think.

It nods and curtseys and recovers When the wind blows above, The nettle on the graves of lovers That hanged themselves for love. The nettle nods, the wind blows over, The man, he does not move, The lover of the grave, the lover That hanged himself for love.

Along the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. 'Oh who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love.' And sure enough beneath the tree There walks another love with me, And overhead the aspen heaves Its rainy-sounding silver leaves; And I spell nothing in their stir, But now perhaps they speak to her, And plain for her to understand They talk about a time at hand When I shall sleep with clover clad, And she beside another lad.

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.

When the lad for longing sighs, Mute and dull of cheer and pale, If at death's own door he lies, Maiden, you can heal his ail. Lovers' ills are all to buy: The wan look, the hollow tone, The hung head, the sunken eye, You can have them for your own. Buy them, buy them: eve and morn Lovers' ills are all to sell. Then you can lie down forlorn; But the lover will be well.

Westward on the high-hilled plains Where for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veins Frets the changeless blood of man. ... There, when hueless is the west And the darkness hushes wide, Where the lad lies down to rest Stands the troubled dream beside. There, on thoughts that once were mine, Day looks down the eastern steep, And the youth at morning shine Makes the vow he will not keep.

When I watch the living meet, And the moving pageant file Warm and breathing through the street Where I lodge a little while, If the heats of hate and lust In the house of flesh are strong, Let me mind the house of dust Where my sojourn shall be long. In the nation that is not Nothing stands that stood before; There revenges are forgot, And the hater hates no more; Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

Tis the old wind in the old anger, But then it threshed another wood.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see; Lie long high snowdrifts in the hedge That will not shower on me.

Rumor had it that during the last home stand, someone had called the stadium ticket office asking what time the game started and was told, “What time can you be here?

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. Think rather,--call to thought, if now you grieve a little, The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation-- Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?

From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I. Now--for a breath I tarry Nor yet disperse apart-- Take my hand quick and tell me, What have you in your heart. Speak now, and I will answer; How shall I help you, say; Ere to the wind's twelve quarters I take my endless way.

Medical journals from 1905 to 1915 are rife with articles on “vibratory massage” and the many things it cures. Weakened hearts and floating kidneys. Hysterical cramp of the esophagus and catarrh of the inner ear. Deafness, cancer, bad eyesight. And lots and lots of prostate problems. A Dr. Courtney W. Shropshire, writing in 1912, was impressed to note that by means of “a special prostatic applicator, well lubricated, attached to the vibrator, introduced to the rectum” he was “able to empty the seminal vesicles of their secretions.” Indeedy. Shropshire’s patients returned every other day for treatment, no doubt also developing a relationship with the vibration machine.

There pass the careless people That call their souls their own: Here by the road I loiter, How idle and alone. Ah, past the plunge of plummet, In seas I cannot sound, My heart and soul and senses, World without end, are drowned. His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away. There flowers no balm to sain him From east of earth to west That's lost for everlasting The heart out of his breast. Here by the labouring highway With empty hands I stroll: Sea-deep, till doomsday morning, Lie lost my heart and soul.

The muster roll for the 1300 campaign noted that Hugh fitz Heyr, a Shropshire landowner of little consequence, was obliged by the terms of his tenure to serve in the king’s war ‘with bow and arrow’. It also noted that ‘as soon as he saw the enemy he shot his arrow, then went home’.

In my own shire, if I was sad Homely comforters I had: The earth, because my heart was sore, Sorrowed for the son she bore; And standing hills, long to remain, Shared their short-lived comrade's pain. And bound for the same bourn as I, On every road I wandered by, Trod beside me, close and dear, The beautiful and death-struck year: Whether in the woodland brown I heard the beechnut rustle down, And saw the purple crocus pale Flower about the autumn dale; Or littering far the fields of May Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay, And like a skylit water stood The bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads, The season range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men; And these are not in plight to bear, If they would, another's care. They have enough as 'tis: I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone with misery, all they can Is to hate their fellow man; And till they drop they needs must still Look at you and wish you ill.

additional half-decade. Charles Finley was furious,

Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never; I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.

And Bill Virdon, the incumbent manager, maintained all the charm and charisma of an old man’s nut sack. Martin knew too well that somewhere, George Steinbrenner was watching and listening.

IV REVEILLE Wake: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning Strands upon the eastern rims. Wake: the vaulted shadow shaatters, Trampled to the floor it spanned, And the tent of night in tatters Straws the sky-pavilioned land. Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying: Hear the drums of morning play; Hark, the empty highways crying "Who'll beyond the hills away?" Towns and countries woo together, Forelands beacon, belfries call; Never lad that trod on leather Lived to feast his heart with all. Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive. Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

When I examine my mind and try to discern clearly in the matter, I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas. No truth, it seems to me, is too precious, no observation too profound, and no sentiment too exalted to be expressed in prose. The utmost I could admit is that some ideas do, while others do not, lend themselves kindly to poetical expression; and that those receive from poetry an enhancement which glorifies and almost transfigures them, and which is not perceived to be a separate thing except by analysis.

And friends abroad must bear in mind Friends at home they leave behind. Oh, I shall be stiff and cold When I forget you, hearts of gold; The land where I shall mind you not Is the land where all's forgot. And if my foot returns no more To Teme nor Corve nor Severn shore, Luck, my lads, be with you still By falling stream and standing hill, By chiming tower and whispering tree, Men that made a man of me. About your work in town and farm Still you'll keep my head from harm, Still you'll help me, hands that gave A grasp to friend me to the grave.

Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, ’tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’ Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, There’s brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world’s not. And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: The mischief is that ’twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, I’d face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul’s stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all that springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. —I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

Growing up where she did, Beatrix had developed a romantic and adventurous nature, and she had no outlet for it any more. The happiest times I can remember spending with them were when we drove out - twice, I think - to the Long Mynd for a picnic. Roger had long since traded in his motorbike and scraped together enough money to buy a second-hand Morris Minor. Somehow we all squeezed into this (I seem to recall sitting in the front passenger seat, Beatrix sitting behind me with the baby on her lap) and drove out for the afternoon to those wonderful Shropshire hills. I wonder if you have ever walked on them yourself, Imogen. They are part of your story, you know. So many things have changed, changed beyond recognition, in the almost sixty years since the time I'm now recalling, but the Long Mynd is not one of them. In the last few months I have been too ill to walk there, but I did manage to visit in the last spring, to offer what I already sensed would be my final farewells. Places like this are important to me - to all of us - because they exist outside the normal timespan. You can stand on the backbone of the Long Mynd and not know if you are in the 1940s, the 2000s, the tenth or eleventh century... It is all immaterial, all irrelevant. The gorse and the purple heather are unchanging, and so are the sheeptracks which cut through them and criss-cross them, the twisted rocky outcrops which surprise you at every turn, the warm browns of the bracken, the distant greys of the conifer plantations, tucked far away down in secretive valleys. You cannot put a price on the sense of freedom and timelessness that is granted to you there, as you stand on the high ridge beneath a flawless sky of April blue and look across at the tame beauties of the English countryside, to the east, and to the west a hint of something stranger - the beginnings of the Welsh mountains

Herzog might have been willing to do that. But this season he apparently felt that it was his obligation as a responsible citizen to alert the public back in North Texas that something dreadful was about to happen. Poor Whitey was trying to cry out a warning, like somebody shouting to the captain of the Hindenburg to turn on the “No Smoking” sign.

Isis is the Egyptian mother goddess of magick, whose worship prevailed in the Greco-Roman world.  Her name means “Throne”, reflected in her headdress which is shaped like a throne.  Her spouse was originally Osiris, but became Serapis in the Greco-Roman myths, and her son became transformed from Horus to Harpocrates. Evidence of her worship in Britain has been found in an inscription on a jug  found in Southwark (London).[369]  The inscription on the jug indicates an Iseum (Isis temple) in London, but the location of this temple has yet to be determined.  An altar found in Blackfriars records the restoration of a temple to Isis in the third century CE, further reinforcing evidence of her worship.[370]  It has been suggested by some modern writers that the river Isis in Oxfordshire was named after this goddess, though this may in fact be a coincidence. The name of the river Isis is most probably a contraction of the name Thamesis. It is likely that "Thamesis" is a Latinisation of the Celtic river names "Taom"(Thames) and"Uis"(is), giving "Taom-Uis"meaning "The pouring out of water". An engraved onyx intaglio found at Wroxeter (Shropshire) dating to the third century CE shows Isis bearing a sistrum in her right hand.[371]  Another gem from Lockleys (Hertfordshire) dating to the fourth century CE shows Isis standing between Bes and a lioness, all surrounded by a serpent ouroboros.[372]

VIII 'Farewell to barn and stack and tree, Farewell to Severn shore. Terence, look your last at me, For I come home no more. 'The sun burns on the half-mown hill, By now the blood is dried; And Maurice amongst the hay lies still And my knife is in his side. 'My mother thinks us long away; 'Tis time the field were mown. She had two sons at rising day, To-night she'll be alone. 'And here's a bloody hand to shake, And oh, man, here's good-bye; We'll sweat no more on scythe and rake, My blood hands and I. 'I wish you strength to bring you pride, And a love to keep you clean, And I wish you luck, come Lammastide, At racing on the green. 'Long for me the rick will wait, And long will wait the fold, And long will stand the empty plate, And dinner will be cold.' IX On moonlit heath and lonesome bank The sheep beside me graze; And yon the gallows used to clank Fast by the four cross ways. A careless shepherd once would keep The flocks by moonlight there, And high amongst the glimmering sheep The dead man stood on air. They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail: The whistles blow forlorn. And trains all night groan on the rail To men that die at morn. There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night, Or wakes, as may betide, A better lad, if things went right, Than most that sleep outside. And naked to the hangman's noose The morning clocks will ring A neck God made for other use Than strangling in a string. And sharp the link of life will snap, And dead on air will stand Heels that held up as straight a chap As treads upon the land. So here I'll watch the night and wait To see the morning shine, When he will hear the stroke of eight And not the stroke of nine; And wish my friend as sound a sleep As lads' I did not know, That shepherded the moonlit sheep A hundred years ago.

ALGERNON: I suspected that, my dear fellow! I have Bunburyed all over Shropshire on two separate occasions. Now, go on. Why are you Ernest in town and Jack in the country? JACK: My dear Algy, I don’t know whether you will be able to understand my real motives. You are hardly serious enough. When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. It’s one’s duty to do so. And as a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness, in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes. That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple. ALGERNON: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! JACK: That wouldn’t be at all a bad thing. ALGERNON: Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don’t try it. You should leave that to people who haven’t been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers. What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know. JACK: What on earth do you mean? ALGERNON: You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose. Bunbury is perfectly invaluable. If it wasn’t for Bunbury’s extraordinary bad health, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to dine with you at Willis’s to-night, for I have been really engaged to Aunt Augusta for more than a week.

he importance and influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can scarcely be exaggerated. A century after Darwin’s death, the great evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Ernst Mayr, wrote, ‘The worldview formed by any thinking person in the Western world after 1859, when On the Origin of Species was published, was by necessity quite different from a worldview formed prior to 1859… The intellectual revolution generated by Darwin went far beyond the confines of biology, causing the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age.’1 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s biographers, contend, ‘Darwin is arguably the best known scientist in history. More than any modern thinker—even Freud or Marx—this affable old-world naturalist from the minor Shropshire gentry has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet.’2 In the words of the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, ‘Almost no one is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. The Darwinian theory is a scientific theory, and a great one, but that is not all it is… Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves.’3 Dennett goes on to add, ‘If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.’4 The editors of the Cambridge Companion to Darwin begin their introduction by stating, ‘Some scientific thinkers, while not themselves philosophers, make philosophers necessary. Charles Darwin is an obvious case. His conclusions about the history and diversity of life—including the evolutionary origin of humans—have seemed to bear on fundamental questions about being, knowledge, virtue and justice.’5 Among the fundamental questions raised by Darwin’s work, which are still being debated by philosophers (and others) are these: ‘Are we different in kind from other animals? Do our apparently unique capacities for language, reason and morality point to a divine spark within us, or to ancestral animal legacies still in evidence in our simian relatives? What forms of social life are we naturally disposed towards—competitive and selfish forms, or cooperative and altruistic ones?’6 As the editors of the volume point out, virtually the entire corpus of the foundational works of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes to Kant to Hegel, has had to be re-examined in the light of Darwin’s work. Darwin continues to be read, discussed, interpreted, used, abused—and misused—to this day. As the philosopher and historian of science, Jean Gayon, puts it, ‘[T]his persistent positioning of new developments in relation to a single, pioneering figure is quite exceptional in the history of modern natural science.

SHROPSHIRE Cardew Hall wouldn’t be open daily to visitors until the first of June, so Ding knew her arrival there was going to be unexpected, which was exactly what she wanted it to be. Unexpected and, if she could manage it, unacknowledged and

as one of the most frequent bridesmaids in Shropshire, I thought I was exemplary. Which was quite a feat given the messes I normally got myself into. I’d even had a bridal magazine want to do a feature on me, I was that proficient at it.

By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle

Men that made a man of me. About your work in town and farm Still you'll keep my head from harm, Still you'll help me, hands that gave A grasp to friend me to the grave.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

His answer was to read to me—in a deep, richly cadenced voice that gave me my first glimmering that words could be as eloquent as music—but it was all poetry of loss and mourning: “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” A Shropshire Lad, and T. S. Eliot. One line from “East Coker” was especially worrisome:

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called “Keep to-morrow dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all.

A Horrid History of Christmas: Horrible Happening & Frightening Festivities Bristol Murders Cornish Murders (with John Van der Kiste) Dorset Murders Hampshire Murders Herefordshire Murders More Bristol Murders More Cornish Murders (with John Van der Kiste) More Hampshire Murders More Somerset Murders (with John Van der Kiste) Murder by Poison: A Casebook of Historic British Murders Oxfordshire Murders Shropshire Murders Somerset Murders (with John Van der Kiste) West Country Murders (with John Van der Kiste)

THE TRANSLATOR Marlaine Delargy is based in Shropshire in the United Kingdom. She studied Swedish and German at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth,

Richard, Earl of Bradford Richard, the seventh Earl of Bradford, is an experienced and reputable restaurateur. Also an author and an Internet business owner, Lord Bradford is the proprietor of Weston Park, a beautiful estate in Shropshire. As president of the Foundation for Conductive Education in Birmingham from 1991 to 1994, Lord Bradford worked closely with Diana, who was patron of the foundation at that time. The greatest legacy that she has left is the two young princes. Despite the pressure that has been upon them, they are wonderfully normal and she must be delighted at the way they have turned out.

Colonel Richard Lee was the younger son of an old Shropshire family. He emigrated to Virginia ca. 1640 and became Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Sir William Berkeley’s chief lieutenant. For long and loyal service, he received vast holdings of land and by 1663 owned at least seven plantations and many servants and slaves. Colonel Lee was immensely proud of his lineage. His Saxon family was as ancient as the Berkeley’s had been and looked down upon England’s Norman nobility as coarse and vulgar upstarts.

Shropshire, the fatlands of Gloucestershire,

The Devil’s Chair The Stiperstones in Shropshire are connected with a range of local folklore. They were stolen from the devil by a giantess after his apron-strings broke scattering stones, but he then made her apron-strings break casing the five stones to scatter. However the stones dropped by the giantess were connected with a prophecy, which said that if the stones sank into the earth then England would come to ruin. The devil frequently visits the stones to try and force them into the earth so he can claim all the souls in England, and sits on the stone called the Devil’s Chair, trying to force it into the earth.xxix Another

I Hoed and trenched and weeded, And took the flowers to fair: I brought them home unheeded; The hue was not the wear. So up and down I sow them For lads like me to find, When I shall lie below them, A dead man out of mind. Some seed the birds devour, And some the season mars, But here and there will flower The solitary stars, And fields will yearly bear them As light-leaved spring comes on, And luckless lads will wear them When I am dead and gone.

Oh, God will save her, fear you not: Be you the men you've been, Get you the sons your fathers got, And God will save the Queen.

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Was I better? Before Shropshire I'd felt broken, as though I would fall should the scaffold of my work be removed. I didn't feel that now, but there was a fine crack through the middle of me, and I suspected it might never mend. I remembered Lizzie apologising to Mrs. Lloyd the first time she stayed to chat, for the chip in the cup. 'A chip doesn't stop it fro holding tea,' Mrs. Lloyd had said.

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Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep. V

Yes, pure English honey, collected from very contented bees. I interviewed the beekeeper myself, and he assured me the drones were treated most fairly, paid an honest wage, and given the Sabbath to rest. And now that they’ve done their service, I’ve arranged for the whole hive to be pensioned off to a charming little beech grove in Shropshire, right next to a meadow abundant with clover.

moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others. —Charles Darwin, born in Shropshire, 1809

A Dr. Courtney W. Shropshire, writing in 1912, was impressed to note that by means of “a special prostatic applicator, well lubricated, attached to the vibrator, introduced to the rectum” he was “able to empty the seminal vesicles of their secretions.” Indeedy.

Some seed the bird devours, And some the season mars, But here and there will flower The solitary stars, And fields will yearly bear them, As light-leaved spring comes on, And luckless lads will wear them When I am dead and gone.

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Along with such worthies as Almond L. Bliss, Archimedes Stevenson, Alton F. Pratt, Dusenberry J. Furman, and Deacon Ransom Todd, he was one of several hundred individuals profiled in the 1888 commemorative volume Portrait and Biographical Album of Lenawee County, Mich. That publication extoled him as a “valuable citizen” who had become known throughout the locality as a stock breeder, first of short-horn cattle, later of Shropshire fine-wool sheep and Poland-China hogs. His prize bull, Garfield—a “fine, well-proportioned animal”—was the envy of neighboring farmers.3 In addition to his business pursuits, he served in a number of official capacities, including township drain commissioner. He was a pillar of his church, St. Dominic in the township of Clinton.4

A pozitív mérleg viszont az, hogy mégsem vagyok egyedül, mert – mint ahogy már milliónyi magányos lányra és fiúra is – gondot viselnek rám a könyvek, a tévé és a zene. Boszorkányokon, farkasokon és a Wogan meglepetés-sztárvendégein nevelődöm. Minden művészet arról szól, hogy valaki mondani akar nekem valamit, ébredek rá. Ezernyien akarnak beszélni velem, ha felütöm a könyvüket, vagy bekapcsolom a műsorukat. Egy trillió telegram fontos információkkal és ötletekkel. Lehet, hogy rossz az információ vagy téves az ötlet – de legalább valamennyit megtudok róla, hogy milyen odakinn. A CNN-hírszalag teljes gőzzel pörög. Eláraszt az input. A könyvek tűnnek a leghatékonyabb forrásnak: mindegyik egy teljes élet, amelyet egyetlen nap alatt magába szívhat az ember. Gyorsan olvasok, tehát rettentő sebességgel szippantom magamba az életeket; hatot-nyolcat is hetente. Különösen tetszenek az önéletrajzok: estére elfogyasztok egy egész embert. Walesi hegyi farmerekről, a világot körbehajózó nőkről, második világháborús katonákról, háború előtti shropshire-i udvarházak gazdaasszonyairól, újságírókról és filmcsillagokról, forgatókönyvírókról, Tudor hercegekről és 17. századi miniszterelnökökről olvasok.

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