{"id":18264,"date":"2013-10-01T17:28:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T16:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=18264"},"modified":"2017-08-08T15:36:05","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T14:36:05","slug":"all-lapis-all-sons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2013\/10\/01\/all-lapis-all-sons\/","title":{"rendered":"All lapis, all, sons!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lapis<\/a>
Lapis Lazuli (\u00a9Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is my chunk of Lapis Lazuli: mainly lazurite ((Na,Ca)8<\/sub>(AlSiO4<\/sub>)6<\/sub>(S,SO4<\/sub>,Cl)1-2<\/sub>) with some shiny pyrite (iron sulphide) streaks.  This piece is about 3 inches high.  It’s a semi-precious stone which when ground up becomes ultramarine, the intense blue pigment you see in old religious paintings.  Modern ultramarine is most often synthetic.<\/p>\n

Strangely perhaps, my resonance with this rock is poetic, not scientific, as it featured in a Robert Browning poem I studied for my English Literature O-Level; I can still remember sitting in the exam scribbling – all those years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.<\/p>\n

So here it is.  The storyline is about an old Bishop on his death bed, planning the construction of his tomb in a prime spot in the church – something that will outshine that of his predecessor Gandolf (as opposed to Gandalf).  As he rants, the materials of the tomb get grander and grander, progressing from basalt, then basalt embellished with a lump of lapis he has secreted away for the task, to the entire tomb being fashioned from the blue mineral.  All the time he’s getting more and paranoid his family will ignore his wishes and bury him in trashy travertine, gritstone, or, horror of horrors: onion-stone.   Make of it what you will:<\/p>\n

\"lapistombsmall\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed\u2019s Church\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

 Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
\nDraw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
\nNephews \u2014 sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well \u2014
\nShe, men would have to be your mother once,
\nOld Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
\nWhat’s done is done, and she is dead beside,
\nDead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
\nAnd as she died so must we die ourselves,
\nAnd thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.
\nLife, how and what is it? As here I lie
\nIn this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
\nHours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
\n“Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.
\nSaint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace;
\nAnd so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
\nWith tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
\n\u2014 Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
\nShrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
\nHe graced his carrion with. God curse the same!
\nYet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
\nOne sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side,
\nAnd somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
\nAnd up into the aery dome where live
\nThe angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk;
\nAnd I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
\nAnd ‘neath my tabernacle take my rest,
\nWith those nine columns round me, two and two,
\nThe odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
\nPeach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
\nAs fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.
\n\u2014 Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
\nPut me where I may look at him! True peach,
\nRosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
\nDraw close: that conflagration of my church
\n\u2014 What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
\nMy sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
\nThe white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
\nDrop water gently till the surface sink,
\nAnd if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .
\nBedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
\nAnd corded up in a tight olive-frail,
\nSome lump, ah God, of ,
\nBig as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape,
\nBlue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast . . .
\nSons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
\nThat brave Frascati villa with its bath,
\nSo, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
\nLike God the Father’s globe on both his hands
\nYe worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
\nFor Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!
\nSwift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our years:
\nMan goeth to the grave, and where is he?
\nDid I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black \u2014
\n‘T was ever antique-black I meant! How else
\nShall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
\nThe bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
\nThose Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
\nSome tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
\nThe Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
\nSaint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
\nReady to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
\nAnd Moses with the tables . . . but I know
\nYe mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
\nChild of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
\nTo revel down my villas while I gasp
\nBricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine
\nWhich Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
\nNay, boys, ye love me \u2014 all of jasper, then!
\n‘T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
\nMy bath must needs be left behind, alas!
\nOne block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
\nThere’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world \u2014
\nAnd have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to pray
\nHorses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
\nAnd mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
\n\u2014 That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright,
\nChoice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word,
\nNo gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line \u2014
\nTully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
\nAnd then how I shall lie through centuries,
\nAnd hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
\nAnd see God made and eaten all day long,
\nAnd feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
\nGood strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
\nFor as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
\nDying in state and by such slow degrees,
\nI fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
\nAnd stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
\nAnd let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
\nInto great laps and folds of sculptor’s-work:
\nAnd as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
\nGrow, with a certain humming in my ears,
\nAbout the life before I lived this life,
\nAnd this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
\nSaint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
\nYour tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
\nAnd new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
\nAnd marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet,
\n\u2014 Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
\nNo Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
\nEvil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
\nAll lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
\nMy villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
\nEver your eyes were as a lizard’s quick,
\nThey glitter like your mother’s for my soul,
\nOr ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
\nPiece out its starved design, and fill my vase
\nWith grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
\nAnd to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
\nThat in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
\nTo comfort me on my entablature
\nWhereon I am to lie till I must ask
\n“Do I live, am I dead?” There, leave me, there!
\nFor ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
\nTo death \u2014 ye wish it \u2014 God, ye wish it! Stone \u2014
\nGritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
\nAs if the corpse they keep were oozing through \u2014
\nAnd no more lapis to delight the world!
\nWell go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
\nBut in a row: and, going, turn your backs
\n\u2014 Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
\nAnd leave me in my church, the church for peace,
\nThat I may watch at leisure if he leers \u2014
\nOld Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
\nAs still he envied me, so fair she was!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my chunk of Lapis Lazuli: mainly lazurite ((Na,Ca)8(AlSiO4)6(S,SO4,Cl)1-2) with some shiny pyrite (iron sulphide) streaks.  This piece is about 3 inches high.  It’s a semi-precious stone which when ground up becomes ultramarine, the intense blue pigment you see in old religious paintings.  Modern ultramarine is most often synthetic. Strangely perhaps, my resonance with … Continue reading All lapis, all, sons!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"All lapis, all, sons! (a poetic memory on Zoonomian) http:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-4KA","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[92,1116],"tags":[1388,1389],"class_list":["post-18264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-geology","tag-lapis-lazuli","tag-robert-browning"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-4KA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18264"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18493,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18264\/revisions\/18493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}