Chapter & Verse

Harvey Carnes seeks the author of a poem about Lincoln: "young Abe/of the too-short pants/and too-long legs" who becomes "...Abe/of the sad...

Harvey Carnes seeks the author of a poem about Lincoln: "young Abe/of the too-short pants/and too-long legs" who becomes "...Abe/of the sad eyes/...wrapping his strong hands/around a nation,/trying to hold the bleeding halves together/until they healed."

 

Brent Ranelli hopes someone can identify the source ("most likely Plato") of "Every man should play the flute, but no man should play it too well."

 

Gaston Shumate wants to learn the origin of the lament: "Gone are the excessive days of the Twenties: the speakeasies, the lawlessness, the flappers. ...What a shame. I had a wonderful time."

 

Mary Bundy asks who said: "The course that a free nation runs is from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals; till by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it falls at last a prey to some hardy oppressor, and with the loss of liberty loses everything else that is valuable."

 

Buck Henry inquires after the original author of a remark quoted by the character David in Paul Osborn's play Morning's at Seven: "I am eight miles north of water,/three thoughts under love,/ten beats past despair...."

 

"Wagner is the Puccini of music" (May-June 2002). Arsen Charles attributes the comment, from recollection, to Melville Smith, director in the late 1940s of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.

 

Send inquiries and answers to "Chapter and Verse," Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138.        

Most popular

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Bringing Korean Stories to Life

Composer Julia Riew writes the musicals she needed to see.

Jodie Foster Honored at Radcliffe Day 2025

The actress and director discussed her film career and her transformative time at Yale.

Explore More From Current Issue

Brandon Terry, wearing a blue suit, standing before The Embrace, a large bronze sculpture of intertwined arms in Boston Common.

A New Narrative of Civil Rights

Political philosopher Brandon Terry’s vision of racial progress

James Muller in white lab coat leaning on railing in hospital hallway.

Free Speech, the Bomb—and Donald Trump

A Harvard cardiologist on the unlikely alliances that shaped a global movement to prevent nuclear war

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.