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Rabbit Reread : Chapter & Verse : Off the Shelf : Open Book

David Bloom is looking for the author and title of the poem in which the following lines appear: "In the forest must always / Be a nightingale / And in the soul / A faith so faithful / That it comes back / Even after it has been slain."

Findley Burns Jr. wishes to identify the source of the quatrain: "In Heaven there'll be no algebra,/No learning dates and names/But only playing golden harps/ And reading Henry James."

Eve Menger inquires after the author and context of these perhaps inexactly remembered comments: "the boredom of living versus the suffering of being," and "A special place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral on moral issues."

Andrea Keirstead seeks the author of a public radio piece she heard a few years ago that detailed the thoughts of a sperm cell on its way to find the egg, including a memorable line about "docking with the mother ship."

Douglas Stange asks what feminist said, "The only thing that men can do better than women is piss into the wind, and I'm working on that!"

Jessie Howland seeks the text of a poem, perhaps by Longfellow, concerning the battle for Quebec on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.

Sumner Shapiro requests what may be the English version of a text set to Sibelius's Finlandia. He remembers the words "Oh land of lakes, and azure streams aflowing�Let it endure; let it endure for aye."

Patrick Henry asks for the author of the assertion "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

Nancy Mehler would like the text and source of a statement she paraphrases as "The first time a man used a word instead of a sword, that was the beginning of civilization."

Nancy Eisenman hopes someone can provide the text of the poem "The Robber Kitten," which her grandfather loved to recite.

"Whirl is king" (May-June). Susan Kristol was the first of a number of readers-including members of the Harvard classics department's sophomore tutorial-to identify line 828 from The Clouds, by Aristophanes. Thomas Lemann and others noted that "whirl" (Dinos) is often translated as "vortex."

"'Father�I'm burning'"(May-June). Ulrich Baer was the first to identify this passage from the beginning of chapter seven of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. He adds that Jacques Lacan discusses the same dream in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis.

"easier�to be loyal to his club than to his planet" (May-June). Thomas Bethell and Deirdre King Hainsworth identified this statement from the e.B. White essay "Intimations," written in December 1941 and reprinted in One Man's Meat (1944 edition) on page 277.

"suffer the rule of lesser men" (May-June). Michael Comenetz located this warning in Book I (347) of Plato's Republic, and noted that the Loeb Classical Library edition of the work, edited by Paul Shorey, supplies references to related passages in Aristotle, Cicero, Democritus, and Spencer.

Inquiries and answers should be directed to Chapter and Verse, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Readers seeking complete texts of poems or passages identified for others are asked to include a stamped, self-addressed, legal-sized envelope with their requests.

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