horseless carriage
Well-known Member
William Shakespeare: 23rd April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including callaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets & three long narrative poems as well as a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Saint George's Day, also called the Feast of Saint George, is the feast day of Saint George as celebrated by various Christian Churches and by the several nations, kingdoms, countries and cities of which Saint George is the patron saint including, Bulgaria, England, Georia, Portugal & Spain (Catalonia and Aragon).
Saint George's Day is normally celebrated on 23 April. However, Church of England rules denote that no saints' day should be celebrated between Palm Sunday and the Sunday after Easter Day so if 23 April falls in that pgoneriod the celebrations are transferred to after it. 23 April is the traditionally accepted date of the saint's death in the Diocletianic Persecution of AD 303.
Nowadays, wearing the national flower, the red rose and celebrating St George's Day is often deemed racist by the woke types:
St George's Day Is A Racist "Holiday" And Its Celebration Should Be Banned. https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1216731&page=8
But as always, I will be proudly wearing a rose in my button hole, and, although I am no monarchist, I shall quietly remember Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth and his enduring quotation:
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'
