Wisdom – This Jolly Beggar

Kant, Kermit, and I

I see you, Kant, you pietist old goat,

thinking to save my faith apart from reason,

old toad, when a frog could have told you

like Kermit did, that phenomena be damned

it’s the noumena that we long for

not what our five senses perceive

but what we’re born knowing

that rainbows begin here but end there

that there are monsters under beds

and angels glowing near us

that what we can’t see is more powerful

than what we do see

that God is good and we’re not

so there’s an infinite gulf between us

only God himself could bridge

and, Kermit, that’s why there’s so many

songs about rainbows.

We’re into week five of SYW’s two-parter, with Share Your World meeting the world of Harry Potter. We’re answering Melanie’s muggle-themed queries alongside those of Roger, this time with The Order of the Phoenix in mind. Check out everyone’s answers and join in.

A Common-Place Jotting: Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 7

Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember

proxy-image — Michael Radford directed *The Merchant of Venice* (2004), with David Harewood as the Prince of Morocco

In this Act II, Scene 7 of The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare has the Prince of Morocco, one of Portia’s many suitors, guess which of the three boxes (gold, silver, lead) contains her portrait. “The one of them contains my picture, Prince,” Portia tells him. “If you choose that, then I am yours withal.”

On the gold box are inscribed the words: “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.” Placing his worth as high as that of Portia’s, he chooses the gold box and finds within this note written by her father:

All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—