"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't" -- or won't ...

 

"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't; the other half have nothing to say and keep on saying it."

          ~ attrib. Robert Frost

"Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation." #QotD

"Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation."
          ~ attrib. Aristotle 

"My object in life is
To unite my vocation with my avocation
As two eyes make one in sight.
Only when love and need are one
And the work is done for mortal stakes,
Is the work ever done
For heaven and the future's sakes."
          ~ Robert Frost, from his poem 'Two Tramps in Mud Time'
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'Two Tramps in Mud Time' – Robert Frost

Over a few drinks in Raglan this weekend, we agreed while smoking cigars and staring out at the sunset that a necessary skill to have on such occasions is to reach into your memory and pull out a poem for recitation.

Or to call on two or three that you’ve committed to memory at some stage.

James K. Baxter’s ‘Lament for Barney Flanagan’ is popular with one friend [for which, head here and scroll down a lot], and Coleridge with another.  Limericks and Irish rebel poetry (and songs) are popular with others. “Grooks” are fun. But the job is to remember them when they’re needed – when you’re two drinks down with more to come, and the sun’s just slipping down over the horizon.

So here’s one I’m resolving to remember: Robert Frost’s 'Two Tramps in Mud Time,' for which this is the last stanza.

...But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Our Hold on the Planet - Robert Frost

One of my favourite Robert Frost poems . . .

OUR HOLD ON THE PLANET

We asked for rain. It didn’t flash and roar.
It didn’t lose its temper at our demand
And blow a gale. It didn’t misunderstand
And give us more than our spokesman bargained for;
And just because we owned to a wish for rain,
Send us a flood and bid us be damned and drown.
It gently threw us a glittering shower down.
And when we had taken that into the roots of grain,
It threw us another and then another still,
Till the spongy soil again was natal wet.
We may doubt the just proportion of good to ill.
There is much in nature against us. But we forget;
Take nature altogether since time began,
Including human nature, in peace and war,
And it must be a little more in favor of man,
Say a fraction of one percent at the very least,
Or our number living wouldn’t be steadily more,
Our hold on the planet wouldn’t have so increased.

- Robert Frost

Two Tramps in Mud Time - Robert Frost

...But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Last stanza of Robert Frost's poem, 'Two Tramps in Mud Time'