The Weekly Reading List - June 16

Welcome to The Weekly Reading List, in which I compile a collection of interesting articles, poems, and other media.

What have you been reading this week, and what have you been thinking about? Let me know down in the comments.

Our meddling intellect

Most readers of this newsletter are bookish types — the author of this newsletter certainly is. And so beginning with a poem calling on us to quit our books and clear our looks may seem odd.

Yet Wordworth’s ‘The Tables Turned’ is certainly worth your time.

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

I first read this poem in a very strange undergraduate class titled ‘Difficult Dialogues about Religion,’ a course taught by a classics professor in which we read Dawkins, Lewis, the Gospels, the Book of Mormon, and quite a bit more, including Wordsworth. The goal of the course was to just have the difficult conversation. Thus I, an atheist at the time, sat in a circle with a secular Jew, a few evangelicals, and a convert to Islam and just talked about the material. That experience could be its own post.

Wordsworth came to mind while I was talking to my wife – who studied the piano extensively during childhood in China – about a piece of music she loves. (I erroneously attributed this poem to Keats in the conversation, so at least I was in the same country and century.) She was talking about how she wanted to learn to play the piece on the piano, but she was afraid a close study would ruin the beauty. Her thoughts were oddly similar to our recent discussion of Marcus Aurelius.

The song in question: