Fun_People Archive
16 Jan
LIT BITS V3 #17

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 100 16:20:03 -0800
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #17

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #17

Today is Monday, 17 January 2000; on this day,

464 years ago (1536),

    Francois Rabelais is absolved of apostasy by Pope Paul III and allowed
    to resume the practice of medicine in Montpellier.

294 years ago (1706),

    Benjamin Franklin--printer, statesman, philosopher, and writer
    (_Autobiography_, 1771-88)--is born in Boston.

229 years ago (1771),

    "Father of the American Novel," Charles Brockden Brown is born in
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His first novel, _Wieland_ (1798) set the
    stage for two of America's greatest authors, Edgar Allan Poe and
    Nathaniel Hawthorne.

180 years ago (1820),

    Anne Bronte (pseudonym, Acton Bell: _Agnes Grey_, 1847; _The Tenant of
    Wildfell Hall, 1848_) is born at Thornton in Yorkshire. (When Charlotte
    discovers Emily's poetry in 1845, Anne reveals hers. The collected
    poems of the three sisters are then issued--under pseudonyms--at their
    own expense.) Visit the Bronte Society homepage and Bronte Country.

140 years ago (1860),

    Anton Chekhov is born in Taganrog, Russia. In 1904, the year he dies,
    his last play, _The Cherry Orchard_, will open at the Moscow Art Theater
    on his 44th birthday.

Today's poem:

                           Dreams

	WHILE on my lonely couch I lie,
     I seldom feel myself alone,
     For fancy fills my dreaming eye
     With scenes and pleasures of its own.

     Then I may cherish at my breast
     An infant's form beloved and fair,
     May smile and soothe it into rest
     With all a Mother's fondest care.

     How sweet to feel its helpless form
     Depending thus on me alone!
     And while I hold it safe and warm
     What bliss to think it is my own!

     And glances then may meet my eyes
     That daylight never showed to me;
     What raptures in my bosom rise,
     Those earnest looks of love to see,

     To feel my hand so kindly prest,
     To know myself beloved at last,
     To think my heart has found a rest,
     My life of solitude is past!

     But then to wake and find it flown,
     The dream of happiness destroyed,
     To find myself unloved, alone,
     What tongue can speak the dreary void?

                                                 Anne Bronte

© 2000 Peter Langston