[HN Gopher] The Gods of the Copybook Headings
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       The Gods of the Copybook Headings
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2023-09-14 06:27 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | jamesgreenleaf wrote:
       | That's funny, I was thinking about that poem just this morning.
       | 
       | One of those ones that sticks with you, and rings true for so
       | many domains, whether you want it to or not!
        
       | dash2 wrote:
       | Very interested to hear the HN crowd's reaction to this one. I
       | like to annoy English grads by telling them that If... [1] is the
       | greatest poem of the 20th century.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
        
         | cafard wrote:
         | Well, you annoyed me by the loss of time spent looking for
         | verification of its date, given that half of Kipling's life
         | fell in the 19th century.
         | 
         | Kipling was a genius, with some notable blind spots, to call
         | them no worse. My summary is to say that given the qualities,
         | brave, clever, and honest, groups other than the English got to
         | choose at most two. (OK, the Scots could pick three, also.)
         | 
         | I would say that Kipling's genius comes through far more in his
         | fiction than in his verse.
        
         | B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
         | http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
        
       | Michelangelo11 wrote:
       | Grug had a riff on it for programming:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/GrugBrainedDev/status/159074853815336960...
        
       | ZeroGravitas wrote:
       | Presumably openly telling coal miners that they need to work
       | harder, when you're a well connected writer was enough to get you
       | cancelled even in those days, hence the need to be so oblique
       | about it.
        
       | nataliste wrote:
       | I memorized both this poem and William Knox's "O why should the
       | spirit of mortal be proud?"^1 as an exercise in rote
       | memorization. It took me a couple of days, but it's now been
       | years and they're still burned in there.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | 1 -
       | https://hymnary.org/text/o_why_should_the_spirit_of_mortal_b...
        
       | rezmason wrote:
       | I was conflicted when I first read this, because it's beautiful
       | and speaks to the actual tenets of ideal conservative thought:
       | preserving and making accessible the hard-learned lessons of the
       | past.
       | 
       | But like real conservative thought, it conflates these with the
       | fear of good things that are new, such as promoting equality and
       | collective action.
       | 
       | The strongest rebuttal to this poem is acknowledging that
       | comparing our wisdom and foolishness with foreign wisdom and
       | foolishness can inform us of what is truly fundamental.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-17 23:02 UTC)