Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The Fool Multitude

This bird's nest, covered in snow, sits right at eye-level along the Heritage Trail.  What kind of bird aims so low in life?  Why would any avian creature--capable of flight--choose to make its home within such easy reach of humankind?  It must be a martlet...except that they only exist in medieval heraldry.  Walking past this nest made me think of a line that I haven't recalled in a decade and a half from The Merchant of Venice:

"What many men desire?"  That 'many' may be meant
By the fool multitude, that choose by show,
Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach;
Which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet,
Builds in the weather on the outward wall,
Even in the force and road of casualty.
I will not choose "what many men desire,"
Because I will not jump with common spirits
And rank me with the barbarous multitude.
~William Shakespeare

That's one of the reasons I go hiking; it helps me to reclaim parts of myself that I would otherwise forget, like the fact that I was once a literary snob who sneered at "jumping with common spirits."  

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