Friday, February 17, 2012

For Every Southern Boy...And Girl, Not Limited To Age 14 Either

I like to remember the quote by William Faulkner about Gettysburg. It goes like this:
"For every Southern Boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the otehr looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happend yet, it hasn't even begun yet...and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time..."
I think that quote applies to "us girls" as well, and maybe not fourteen but whatever age we are. As Stesphen Vincent Benet said in his wonderful poem John Brown's Body - "It is not lucky to dream such stuff, for dreaming men are haunted men..." but we do dream, don't we?

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