Fun_People Archive
30 Nov
LIT BITS V3 #335

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 100 16:29:41 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #335

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #335
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Friday, 1 December 2000; on this day,

410 years ago (1590),

     Edmund Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ is registered for publication with
     the Stationers' Company.

140 years ago (1860),

     The first installment of Charles Dickens' _Great Expectations_ is
     published in _All the Year Round_.

114 years ago (1886),

     Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe, is born in Noblesville, Indiana.

114 years ago (1886),

     Ernst Toller, playwright, poet, pacifist, Expressionist, Munich
     "Soviet" leader, is born in Samotschin, Germany (now Szamocin, Poland).
     His 1920 play _Masse-Mensch_ (_Man and the Masses_) will bring his
     widespread fame.

13 years ago (1987),

     In Saint-Paul de Vence, France, American essayist, novelist, and
     playwright James Baldwin dies.

Today's poem:

              LXXV (from _Amoretti_)

     One day I wrote her name upon the strand;
     But came the waves, and washed it away:
     Again, I wrote it with a second hand;
     But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
     Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
     A mortal thing so to immortalize;
     For I myself shall like to this decay,
     And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
     Not so, quoth I; let baser things devise
     To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
     My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
     And in the heavens write your glorious name.
       Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
       Our love shall live, and later life renew.

                                              Edmund Spenser

© 2000 Peter Langston