Blagodysseus
Recently, Rod Blagojevich has trotted out several authors, including Kipling and Alan Sillitoe.
Just last week, good old Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria’s mild-mannered and myopic poet laureate, was invoked by the ill-mannered and beady-eyed Governor of Illinois to seal his impeachment press conference with what he thought was just the right tone of defiance and unconquerable will.
Citing the closing lines of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” which he had evidently memorized some time back for just such an occasion as this, Blagojevich intoned with school-boyish pride:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’The beginning of the poem would be more appropriate for one who has tried to auction off Obama’s senate seat: “It little profits that an idle king…”
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.