Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Poetic Justice

Dorothy Rabinowitz opines in The Wall Street Journal about the alien in the White House:
A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.
I've had this sense, too, and it reminds me of a poem that I had to memorize in the eighth grade. Here is Sir Walter Scott's The Patriot:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who ne'er to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel's raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish could claim;
Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

3 comments:

freespeak said...

My God. Yes.

freespeak said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
freespeak said...

I do not believe he is natural born , nor eligible for Presidency.
I am not of the fringe, nor demented.
Why go out of the way to say so?
Why do ANY do such a thing?