Hazlitt Overlooked

by Tim Veater.

I woke at two, I woke at six,

To pass the time I read my book.

Try as I may, I could not recall,

One famous name at all, at all.

I wracked my brain which wasn't home,

I knew it had been mentioned in the tome,

I'd checked the index many times,

But nothing matched and nothing chimed.

Then out of the blue the name appeared,

To prove the brain is very weird,

Somehow I remembered it,

That famous writer, Will Hazlitt.

I checked the index yet again,

To prove how stupid I had been;

Low and behold it wasn't there,

No matter where I looked or how I stared.

Despite the mention in the text,

Devoid the index was of poor Hazlitt.

So yet again he had been snubbed,

Just like his writings, all been rubbed.

As in his life he was passed by,

“So who was Hazlitt?” I hear you cry,

A double insult to the man,

Who died two decades ere the book began.

Sam Smiles' 'Self Help' was all the rage,

Sadly it came too late to help the sage.

Of all the exemplars in the book,

He gives not Hazlitt a second look.

Tis said of him, 'One of the greatest essayists

In English language history”,

Yet all his pamphlets are out of print

And Samuel Smiles gives not a hint,

Of Hazlitt's heroic life or trials

Or what lasting legacy he left behind

Upon the age or on the mind

Of Michael Foot, the much maligned!

William Hazlitt :  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hazlitt

3.12.2024:  "The right to defend itself", continuously repeated by the State Department spokesman and all those who wish to excuse Israel's barbarity and heinous crimes too numerous to mention, has been shorn of meaning. It would appear the concept neutralises every atrocity, justifies any action however illegal or inhumane. Will it now be applicable to all the murderers in the United States? All the defense attorney need do is assert the claim it was 'self defence', however ludecrous, to get off. Of course in refusing to condemn the outrages that continue; to keep supplying the bullets and bombs that kill and maim innocent civilians and its own hostages - not only by accident but by intent and design; to even blocking the Security Council motions and UN demands for a cease-fire; America has alligned itself with a very dark and ominous philosophy for mankind. That there are in war, no moral or legal boundaries; that 'might' alone is right; that the internationally binding principles, agreed after the Second World War no longer apply; that when it comes to, the whole apparatus of the United Nations and its subsidiary organisations, can be made of no effect, by the determined action of a racist, fanatical, apartheid, genocidal regime, so long as it calls itself a 'Jewish State' only 'defending itself'! https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/