"A Song of the Harper" for Canada

In an earlier post (“On Conservatives, Roman History and the “Gothic balance”) I commented on Lawrence Martin’s Globe and Mail column “Political scholars fiddle while Rome burns.”[1]  It is worth noting that the Romans did not have fiddles, or violins, but they did have harps, which would suit our current prime minister very well, when he is not playing the Beatles on piano. Here for public edification is “A Song of the Harper”, or Song of the Dead, from fourteenth-century B.C. Egypt.   Put simply: Canadian politics is really about our prime minister playing a harp while the country burns.  Please do note the references to the pyramids, which can be likened to Canadian deconstruction in the oil sands.

“A Song of the Harper”
Prosperous is he, this good prince
Even though good fortune may suffer harm!
Generations pass away, and others remain
Since the time of the ancestors
The gods who lived formerly rest in their pyramids,
The beatified dead also, buried in their pyramids.
And they who built houses-their places are not.
See what has been made of them!
I have heard the words of Ii-em-hotep and Hor-dedef
With whose discourses men speak so much.
What are their places (now)?
Their walls are broken apart, and their places are not --
As though they had ever been!
There is none who comes back from (over) there,
That he may tell their state,
That he may tell their needs,
That he may still our hearts,
Until we (too) may travel to the place where they have gone.
Let thy desire flourish,
In order to let thy heart forget the beautifications for thee.
Follow they desire, as long as thou shalt live.
Put myrrh upon thy head and clothing of fine linen upon thee,
Being anointed with genuine marvels of the god’s property.
Set an increase to thy good things;
Let not thy heart flag.
Follow thy desire and thy good.
Fulfill they needs upon earth, after the command of thy heart,
Until there come for thee that day of mourning.
The Weary [of Heart] bears not their [mourn]ing,
and wailing saves not the heart of a man from the underworld.

Refrain: Make Holiday, and weary not therein!
Behold, it is not given to a man to take his property with him.
Behold, there is not one who departs who comes back again![2]

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[1] The Globe and Mail, Tuesday June 4, 2013, p. A11

[2] “A Song of the Harper” in Landmarks of the Western Heritage, ed. C. Warren Hollister, Vol I: The Ancient Near East to 1789, 2^nd ed (Montreal: McGraw-Hill, nd), pp. 10,11.