'Prizes are for boys, and I’m all grown up.'
Real talk from Charles Ives, parting with the Pulitzer Prize money he was awarded for the Third Symphony in 1947; half went to Lou Harrison, who had only recently conducted the premiere of the piece. The fact that Ives could afford the bravado hardly diminishes his trademark badassery.
[via wwnorton]
Contented river! in thy dreamy realm–
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
Thou beautiful! from every dreamy hill
What eye but wanders with thee at thy will…
Contented river! And yet over-shy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown…
Ah! there’s a restive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves –September’s firstlings–faster drift;
Wouldst thou away, dear stream? Come, whisper near!
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me to-morrow thy companion be
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!
‘To the Housatonic at Stockbridge’
Robert Underwood Johnson, excerpted by Charles Ives
Ives – Three Places in New England, The Housatonic at Stockbridge
WCFSO – March 2009
