Edward Shils in Heaven
Dear Edward, sleepless, lonely, I think of you tonight
In Heaven, out for a leisurely stroll, yet ready for a fight.
Before illogic, false sentiment, sophistry you could never bend,
Now five years dead, why change, allow mere Heaven to forfend?
Master of blistering tirade, scorching academic cant,
Skewering intellectual charade with terrifying rant.
You were the best of haters and for the best of reasons,
Blasting all the virtuous clerks and all their little treasons.
A lover of courage, Dickens, Dunhill’s ink in deepest green,
Useful shops, dark thick soups, competence, spiced“up aubergine.
Has Heaven food fiery and rich enough for your ample need?
Are there good books and journals in the place for you to read?
Have you discovered an angel with your gift for repartee?
Did you abandon salty Yiddish, shift to Quaker thou and thee?
Pious agnostic, I cannot picture you sitting at God’s knee.
Sweet curmudgeon, do you ever think of me?
”Joseph Epstein
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Why the Death Penalty Is a Sore Point for Papal Authority
Pope Leo XIV marked World Day Against the Death Penalty, observed on October 10, with the following…
Candace Owens and the Sin of Anti-Semitism
According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) was “an Italian-born businessman who was noted…
The Myth of St. Francis
At the beginning of his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis speaks of “an episode in the…
