Fun_People Archive
27 Nov
LIT BITS V3 #332

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 100 16:27:06 -0800
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #332

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #332
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Tuesday, 28 November 2000; on this day,

418 years ago (1582),

     A bond is entered to secure the marriage of William Shakespeare and
     Anne Hathaway at Stratford-upon-Avon.

306 years ago (1694),

     In Osaka, Japan's greatest haiku poet, Matsuo Basho, dies. His 1684
     journey to northern Japan gave the poet the material for one of the
     loveliest works of Japanese literature, _Oku no hosomichi_ (_The Narrow
     Road to the Deep North_, 1694).

243 years ago (1757),

     William Blake--artist, poet, and mystic--is born in London.

141 years ago (1859),

     Washington Irving dies in Tarrytown, New York, at the age of 76,
     shortly after publishing the fifth and final volume of his biography
     of George Washington. His last words: "When will this end?"

124 years ago (1876),

     In an article for the _Atlanta Constitution_, Joel Chandler Harris
     first uses the pseudonym Uncle Remus.

96 years ago (1904),

     English writer known for her witty novels of upper-class life, Nancy
     Mitford is born in London. One of her most widely read books will be
     _Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of
     the English Aristocracy_ (1956), in which will be shown the distinction
     between linguistic usages that are U (upper class) and those that are
     non-U (not upper class). [Like saying "home" in place of "house"? -psl]

40 years ago (1960),

     In Paris, France, American writer Richard Wright dies. His first
     popular work was _Uncle Tom's Children_, his most famous, _Native
     Son_, the story of Bigger Thomas's accidental killing of a white girl
     which makes clear and immediate his hitherto vague awareness of
     antagonism from the white world.

Today's poem:

                           XVIII

     Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
     Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
     Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
     And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
     Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
     And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
     And every fair from fair sometime declines,
     By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed.
     But thy eternal summer shall not fade
     Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
     Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
     When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
	So long as men can breathe or eyes can see.
	So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

                                         William Shakespeare

© 2000 Peter Langston