Richard Lovelace: The Quotable Unknown

It is frequently interesting to find where a familiar quote comes from. It is particularly interesting to find a couple familiar quotes that came from someone you've never heard of.

I'm reading Sound and Sense by Laurence Perrine, which is essentially a textbook for students of poetry. The subtitle is "An Introduction to Poetry." I'm not a great lover of poetry; poets depend way too much on symbolism and allusion as far as I'm concerned. Allusion is great if you know what it is they're alluding to, but if you don't you're clueless. Still, I'm OK with that. What I really don't care for is symbolism. I don't do well when it comes to reading between the lines. I want things stated clearly and bluntly. Otherwise I generally miss them. But I digress.

My point is, I'm reading this text on poetry and I came across two poems by Richard Lovelace, who is described as being a Cavalier poet, who supported Charles I in England's civil war. I've never heard of Richard Lovelace, but it turns out I'm familiar with his work. See if this line from "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars" is familiar to you:

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

So those words come from Richard Lovelace. Then, in the very next poem in the book, "To Althea, From Prison," here's this:

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage

Lovelace obviously got around a bit, writing to Lucasta while going to war and then to Althea when going to prison for his royalist sympathies, but he also knew his way around words pretty well, too, considering that they've survived nearly 400 years.

Two well known quotes from one guy I've never heard of? That's pretty dang interesting in my book.

Our Twisted Farm Policy: Tobacco Farmers Thrive After Subsidies Cut

If this doesn't demonstrate that our farm subsidy program is doing more harm than good I don't know what does. The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 18, 2007, ran a front page article about how tobacco farmers are absolutely thriving since subsidies for the crop were ended three years ago.

How is that? Apparently what has happened is that farmers who never grew tobacco now find that they can be competitive, now that the other guys don't have us giving them loads of cash. Here's part of the article:

Since 2005, U.S. tobacco acreage has risen 20%. Fields are now filled with it in places like southern Illinois, which hasn't grown any substantial amounts since the end of World War I.

The fellow they use to illustrate the article, Martin Barbre, says he is making $1,800 per acre on tobacco, while he can only make $250 per acre on corn. That's in spite of corn hitting all-time highs due to the demand for use in ethanol.

So tell me again, why are we subsidizing other farmers to grow other things? Is that money all being wasted? Would our farmers be more profitable if we stopped throwing tax dollars at them?

I don't know the answers to these questions, and I'm not sure I even know what factors you'd need to consider to find the answers. But I think it is an absolute truth that these questions need to be asked and answered before Congress again votes a single dollar more for farm subsidies.