My father's Plato
And that’s not a claim to paternity –
it’s the possessive case; though to what degree
my father possessed Plato, or Plato, him,
remains one of those unsolved mysteries
stored in that little room of sadness in the hearts
of children of that more formal, distanced age…
Like so many self-made men, he’d never read
a novel before he retired; and then
set out to educate himself
as would befit the father of a son
he planned – God unwilling, at first – to have,
whom he would provide with all the advantages
he’d never had… alas; alas for both of us…
He’d read of course, Smiles’ ‘Self-Help’ – they all had;
moved on to Carlyle, Ruskin (briefly) , Emerson; wrote
in warm approval to George Bernard Shaw,
who responded with one of his printed pre-texted postcards…
then worked through those nicely-bound
sets of Hardy, Galsworthy, Dickens, Scott, and H.G.Wells,
offered cheaply by the Daily Mail or by Wills’ Cigarettes…
then – Plato; or at least, his Republic;
a yellow bound, standard Everyman; but this one
- I discovered far too late in life -
fiercely underlined in summary pencil lines…
and that was really, all he needed; busy
with his hens and chicks, his toddler son (at last…) :
later, novels of another sort crept up on him; he lived
a – no, don’t call it fantasy – a parallel life
in volume after volume of those yellow-covered
Wild West Club. (That’s where he would have flourished,
aggressive boss of bosses, if he had not been stone-deaf…)
So what was he to Plato, or Plato said to him?
Are the underlinings an extension of that angry, abrupt man
meaning, that’s my experience; so he’s right…;
or was there stunned admiration; or
was there a humility I never saw
until efficiency turned to eccentricity,
eccentricity to dementia…
a humility, perhaps, that took him to another world
of ancient Greece, and glories, virtues, and ideals,
where Spartans from the wild wild East
rode roughshod over democracy, and
where a good man must be sought,
to run them out of town…?
One day, I’ll have to face the mist of tears,
read those fierce underlinings made
as if by the muzzle of a Colt
guarding civilisation by the gully and the scrub,
the horses tethered, (Indians, always the third estate) :
seek in the underlinings to immortal thought,
the man I loved but never knew.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Related quotes
What Then?
His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'
Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'
All his happier dreams came true –
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'
'The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought;'
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'
poem by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Transcending Platonic Platitudes
Coxcomb, charlatan and bore,
Plato paved immoral ways for Byron. He
transcended platitudes that bore,
transforming them with his immortal irony.
Inspired by Byron’s lines in Don Juan, CXVI, cited by Roger Scruton in Sexual Desire: A Phiosophic Investigation, p.237:
Oh, Plato! Plato! You have paved the way,
With your confounded fantasies, to more
Immoral conduct by the fancied way
Your system feigns o’er the controlless core
Of human hearts, than all the long array
Of poets and romancers: –– You’re a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb –– and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.
8/29/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.
quote by Saint Augustine
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
For Those Who Have Not Read
for those who have not read his work
he reminded them that he is the gadfly
that bit the complicated ass of Plato's cow
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Platonic Love
do not mistake
the kind of
love that
plato offers
during
his times
you say
platonic
one that
is pure
and free
from lust
one
that merely
gazes
at the other
without
hormonal
considerations
nothing
chemical
but pure
feelings
of being
intimate
and
sweet
i hear
it once
that plato
also loves
boys
and he
must
have called
it
platonic
baloney
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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To My Name-Child
1
Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.
In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?
2
Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!
poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
Plato in The Republic
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
The Other half of me
Plato told a fabulous tale
of two souls so meant to be
that when they met together
she completed he.
For so it was with us, my Love,
from childhood's first shy glance.
For far longer than most married folk
we shared Love's sweet slow dance.
Now it seems you want a break
We no longer are a pair;
At parties where we'd both attend
there is one empty chair.
Our once shared bed is empty, too.
This place I toss and turn.
Faint fragrant traces of perfume
remind me why I yearn.
A brief lacuna in our life
I hope this proves to be.
If this parting is forever
were we never meant to be?
I've lost the best part of myself,
our friends so clearly see.
Like part of Plato's soul I seek
the other half of me.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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The beginning is the most important part of the work.
All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.
quote by George Santiano
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.