Bethlehem

Some of the people you meet around Bethlehem quote from the Bible, some recite from the Koran, some chant from the Torah. Some show you their fields, some point to their olive groves; some invoke history, some envision the future. Some pray with knees on the ground, some with foreheads on the ground, some with feet firmly planted but but with torsos turning and swaying. Some throw stones and some drive tanks and some wrap themselves with explosives. But when you get right down to it, when you boil away the hatred and the politics and the wars that have shaken the planet, the one thing most people are talking about, when it comes to Bethlehem, is land. A tiny scrap of land. A wind-scoured, water-starved, rock-strewn bit of ground.

(Michael Finkel, Christopher Anderson, National Geographic)

Byron: Epitaph for a Dog

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,
Unknown by Glory, but upheld by Birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below,
When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose hones heart is still his Master's own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the Soul he held on earth -
While Man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power -
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy tongue hypocrisy, the words deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on - it honors none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one - and here he lies.