Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Poem for Wednesday and King James Bibles

The Harvest Moon
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the Harvest Moon!  On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

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Tuesday was a miserable rainy day on which it felt like the sun never really came up. I had work and chores to do. I had a very good time folding laundry, since I was watching the unexpectedly delightful Stone of Destiny, which I'd heard of only because Billy Boyd is in it and whose plot I hadn't known at all (or heard about but thought it was fictional): the theft of the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in the 1950s by a group of Glasgow students as a symbol of Scottish pride. I enjoyed it immensely and was recording it, but for the third time in a week my DVD burner decided to crash instead of closing the disc. *gnashes teeth*

Gblvr and I had tentative plans to see Breaking Dawn, but neither of us was really in the mood for it -- it was more a tradition thing, we saw the first three Twilight movies together...and before anyone gets going on how Twilight is evil, be warned that I have had to listen all day to the great irony of the very same people who are boo-hooing over Anne McCaffrey and her sexist, heterosexist world declaring that Twilight is bad for girls. Well, guess what, kids, Hermione (who has supportive loving parents and teachers who think she's smart) is not the hero of the Harry Potter books, and Eowyn (who is the daughter of Kings, a shield maiden of Rohan) falls apart over Aragorn until Faramir swoops in to finish her healing -- and I won't even get started on Reboot!Uhura. So leave Bella alone already.

Anyway, having decided that we were not up for the movie, we got Indian food in the mall and walked around looking at costume jewelry and things that smell good (and watched Santa run away and got more See's Candies samples, always a good thing). At home I caught up on last night's Terra Nova -- finally the arc gets going, I just hope it's not too late for the show -- and, since Glee and Ringer weren't on, watched a bit of football and listened to some music. Wednesday both kids are home early for Thanksgiving!


A family Bible with genealogy at the Folger Shakespeare Library's Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible.


Elizabeth I's Bishop's Bible.


'The workes of the most high andmightie Prince, James.'


The Humble Petition by the Puritans of Oxford.


Edward Fitchew's 1888 drawing of Hampton Court, where the conference that created the King James Bible was convened.


First Edition King James Bible with Jesus's genealogy.


Scathing Broughton tract condemning KJV.


Newer Bibles influenced by the King James Bible.

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