Too Soon It’s Over and Done

Winter Fundraiser 2016, Day Seven

Today is the final day of our week-long quarterly fundraiser. This has been a strange week, with weather ranging from b-r-r-r to warm rain and back again to freezing cold.

And there have been so many donations — thank you all very much! — that Dymphna and I have been scrambling. Just maintaining the record-keeping has taken nearly all of my time. It keeps pushing these fundraising posts later and later into the wee hours of each morning.

Tip jarSo I’m tired out, but it’s a good feeling knowing how many generous people are out there, each ready to hit the tip cup with a small amount for cause. Such is the essence of crowdfunding — a little bit from a lot of people, guaranteeing that Dymphna and I can continue this enterprise for another quarter.

The theme for this week’s fundraiser has been “The Age of Reason”, with daily topics drawn from the lyrics of the song “A Man for All Seasons” by Al Stewart. The full lyrics were posted on Monday, along with an embedded YouTube of the song.

This morning’s essay is inspired by these seven lines, the final lines of the song:

Well, you should try to accept what the fates are unfolding
While some say they’re sure where the blame should be falling
You look round for maybe a chance of forestalling
But too soon it’s over and done
And the man for all seasons
Is lost behind the sun

Too soon this week is over and done — or maybe not too soon, considering how worn out I am.

But Al Stewart’s line points to the life that’s too soon over and done. In the case of Thomas More, it’s a life cut too short by his own decision, the action that can’t be undone. For others, it’s a life cut short by tragedy or evil, as exemplified by Pim Fortuyn or Theo Van Gogh, both murdered for opposing Islam.

And there are numerous other more mundane ways in which one’s days may be cut short — disease, accident, being at the wrong end of a gun late at night in a bad part of town…

It can’t happen to me, though. I have already attained to a venerable age, so if I were to keel over and expire after typing this sentence, mine would not be an untimely death. Yes, it’s true that by doing so I would save Uncle Sam a whole lot of money in Social Security payments, but still…

The “too soon” aspect of it for me is that I cannot possibly live to see the dénouement of the great struggle between the Light and the Darkness. About ten years ago I realized that this is indeed the “Long War”, and will take at least two generations to resolve. I haven’t seen any reason to revise that estimate in the decade since then. I simply won’t be around to see how it all turns out.

My faith in God tells me that the Light will prevail in the end, but there’s no telling how much suffering and death and evil the world will have to endure before it does. And there’s no guarantee that Western Civilization will even survive to see the triumph of the Light. We could go the way of Ozymandias*:

I met a traveller 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 on 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.

How long will it be until the sneer of cold command on the wrinkled lip of our current Commander in Chief lies forgotten in a desert waste?

How long until our Babylon is fallen, to rise no more?

Broken in the dust again…

Maybe the dénouement is something I don’t really want to live to see. Yes, I know that out of those ashes will rise something new and good. But those are the ashes of my civilization, my culture, my people.

However…

Many people reading these words are considerably younger than I am. Those who are under 35 may well live to see the dénouement, whether it be grim or glorious. If you are among the fortunate who will live through the coming Troubles, you will get to see what lies on the other side of them.

Despite our demographic difficulties, millions upon millions of young Westerners are included in your age group. You and your cohort will be critical to the formation of whatever civilization is rebuilt upon the ruins of this one — or if there is in fact a civilization at all.

So when you rise from your chair after reading this, think about what you will do later today, and tomorrow, and next month, and next year. What you see around you can only last can only last a little while longer. And what will come after it?

Will it be something worth lending a hand to?

Or will it be a shattered visage lying in the boundless sands?

On that gloomy note, I leave you until next quarter’s fundraiser, which will be held in the spring, probably about the time the irises are blooming. A much pleasanter season — maybe I’ll be more cheerful then.

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say…

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Yesterday’s extraordinarily generous donors came from:

Stateside: Arizona, California, Federated States of Micronesia, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Montana, New York, Ohio, and Washington

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Croatia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand

* From the poem of the same name by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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19 thoughts on “Too Soon It’s Over and Done

  1. two generations to resolve.
    Its been going on for 1400 years.
    The US has been at war with islam since its founding. I suggest you read Michael Oren’s book which encapsulates American involvment with Islam since day one.
    The time is gone the song is over though I ‘d something more to say. Well he is saying it. roger waters has been spewing judeocidal propaganda all over the place. The judeocidal song is not over, actually its in the process of crescendo, with the US unfreezing 150 billions for the Ayatullahs to use, and the UN genesec blasting away at Istrael where the human toll is in the single digits wheras elsewhere in the ME its in the tens of thousands.

  2. Yeah, but I want it ended now.

    The thought of the cemetery desecrated soon after I’m buried is something I don’t want to contemplate happening. We paid good money for that tombstone.

  3. I often wonder why old Christendom is suffering so much, why it has lost its way. Then I think, how many babies were murdered (aborted) today? Since children are the most obvious blessing of God, we cannot reject/destroy that one and expect the others!

    • Christians seldom practice abortion. Christianity is a minority religion but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the current pope give the okay for a “simple procedure” to help the poor…

      • If Francis were to really declare, ex cathedra, that abortion was no longer wrong, it would be the end of the modern Catholic Church. There would be schism, and declining congregations in the non-schismatic remainder.

  4. “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.”

    Anybody willing to parse and explicate this line of poetry?
    What role in this sentence do “the hand” and “the heart” play?
    Are they the direct object of “read”, i.e., that the sculptor
    read the hand and the heart of Ozymandias?
    Or are they the direct object of “survive”?
    The passions have survived the hand and heart?
    What is the antecedent of the pronoun “them’?
    Who or what are “they”? Is the verb “fed” transitive
    or intransitive? What did the heart feed, or feed on?

    • I read this powerful poem as follows. The heart and hand are details of the scattered lifeless things (of stone). The sculptor stamped a tyrant’s passions on the statue–frightening even in turns and after the tyrant is dead countless ages past. The poet not only points to the frown and sneer on the face but how the tyrant’s hand had mocked his unfortunate people as his heart fed on (tore crushed devoured ) them. How do you read it?

      • I meant even in ruins. But don’t let’s forget the optimism of Shelley–that the rule of Ozymandis and every tyrant passes away. It seems to totally rule for a time and place but not eternally. As this dramatic examples illustrates.

  5. “And there’s no guarantee that Western Civilization will even survive to see the triumph of the Light.” I suppose it depends on how long we have to wait. I don’t know, how long do we give Western Civilisation?

  6. I love this poem but for some decades this question vexed me and slightly took away from my enjoyment. This is what I have come to think:

    The frown and sneer of Ozymandias depict those passions felt and expressed by him. Those passions were fed by his passionate (and , one suspects, dark) heart.

    The sculptor was well able to read these passions in the tyrant whose likeness he sculpted. The expression of the frown, wrinkled lip, sneer of cold command are such excellent depictions of those (otherwise internal) passions that their depiction remaining after all this time show how well the sculptor could read human nature.

    It is those passions which survive, in the sense that they remain, stamped on the remains of Ozymandias’ face, and have outlived (yet survive) the hand that mocked them (mocked in the 18th Century sense of mimic or depict) i.e. the sculptor, and the heart that fed them, i.e. Ozymandias’ heart.

    But I’m interested in anyone else’s opinion;

    Damn, I managed to take a work of great beauty and power and make it sound banal. Mea Culpa 🙂

    • It is those passions which survive, in the sense that they remain, stamped on the remains of Ozymandias’ face, and have outlived (yet survive) the hand that mocked them (mocked in the 18th Century sense of mimic or depict) i.e. the sculptor, and the heart that fed them, i.e. Ozymandias’ heart.

      But I’m interested in anyone else’s opinion;

      100% correct imho.

      The subject of these two lines is Ozymandias’ passions (emotions). The two lines are a bit easier to understand with a bit of explanatory editing and deletion.

      Which yet survive (i.e. outlive),
      The hand that mocked (i.e. sculpted) them and the heart that fed (them).

      So the sculptor read Ozymandias’ passions so well that carved in stone Ozymandias’ pride and contempt outlived both the hand that sculpted them and the heart that fed them.

      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.

  7. The conflict may take forever, but I would be happy if Islam becomes as socially unacceptable as Nazism within my lifetime, at least in the US.

    • From your keyboard to the Jokester Karma Dude. If I were to word it as a petition to the Cosmos, I would very carefully say what I’d like to see instead. The Karma Dude abhors a vacuum just as much as the rest of the Universe does.

      • Good point. How about “…and all the Muslims decide to convert to Christianity or voluntarily move to a Muslim country.”

  8. . . . . . and in despair I bowed my head, there is no peace on earth I said –
    For hate is strong and mars the song, Of peace on earth, goodwill to men. –
    GOD IS NOT DEAD, nor doth He sleep . . THE WRONG SHALL FAIL, THE RIGHT PREVAIL . . . . With peace on earth, Goodwill to men! (From the song, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”.)

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