Year: 2017

  • Swinburne on Swinburne

    Swinburne has long been my favorite poet, and on winter nights like tonight, I love to curl up with a small glass of some choice intoxicating liquor and read some intoxicating Swinburne verse. But I am aware that there are some who do not think, as I do, that Swinburne was the greatest English poet…

  • My November Guest

    My November Guest by Robert Frost MY Sorrow, when she’s here with me,   Thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; She loves the bare, the withered tree;   She walks the sodden pasture lane. Her pleasure will not let me stay.   She talks and I am fain to list: She’s…

  • The Shot Heard Round the World

    Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837 By the rude bridge that arched the flood,   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood,   And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept;   Alike the conqueror…

  • Greenough’s Statue of Medora

    Greenough’s Statue of Medora by Richard Henry Dana   Medora, wake!—nay, do not wake!   I would not stir that placid brow,   Nor lift those lids, though light should break Warm from the twin blue heavens that lie below.   Sleep falls on thee, as on the streams   The summer moon. Touched by its might,   The soul comes…

  • Reading Poetry

    Excerpt from Adam’s Curse by William Butler Yeats We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.…