Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Empire!

Empire!


With thanks to Google Images.
Jeremy Paxman on a recent episode of the BBC series on "Empire" reflecting on what it is or was that makes for greatness recited a few lines from Henry Newbolt's Vitai Lampada a poem that extols the virtue of doing the right thing or "playing the game" which in this particular had some mix of christian zeal, public school values and  the taking up of the white man's burden, whatever that might be, or however misguided. Profit would surely follow. I have no idea what the modern equivalent might be but maybe something on price as opposed to anything of value. Someone once said that when Britain was great the book keepers were out the back but now they haunt our every move. Some arithmetic where the sum is always smaller than the parts and themselves the exception  A poem, I don't know.. Yeats 1913, or maybe I'll go off and listen to Jeff Buckley "A Satisfied Mind".

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