On John Lennon's 73rd Birthday

Music can influence us and help change the world through lyrics that send us positive messages of hope, love and peace, just as the music itself can lift the human spirit. As William Congreve wrote, in The Mourning Bride, 1697:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,
And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd,
By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.

No more persuasive Sound, perhaps, than the songs of John Lennon who sang songs of peace and who, tragically, came to a violent end. I sometimes wonder if the world would be better off today were he still alive. John would have been 73 today.