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Silence; Lapis Lazuli
In speaking with Brian and Laura this evening, I decided I should post two of my favorite poems. I linked to them some time ago in a long-winded post with no discernible thesis, but they are good enough to be posted on their own. I started to write something up about each one, but I…
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Ave Atque Vale
Ave Atque Vale by Billy Collins Even though I managed to swerve around the lump of groundhog lying on its back on the road, he traveled with me for miles, a quiet passenger who passed the time looking out the window enjoying this new view of the woods he once hobbled around in, sleeping all…
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Memory
from Rococo by Algernon Charles Swinburne Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme; But rose-leaves of December The frosts of June shall fret, The day that you remember, The day that I forget. Some weeks ago Alan posted a pair of…
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Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne by Trumbull Stickney It’s autumn in the country I remember. How warm a wind blew here about the ways! And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber During the long sun-sweetened summer-days. It’s cold abroad the country I remember. The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain At midday with a wing aslant and limber;…
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Stately Pleasure-Domes
I have survived my exams (though I did not excel—thankfully, my grades do not interest me), but I still carry a few battle scars. My Property Law professor gave us a 7-hour exam centering around the hypothetical intellectual property issues that would be involved if (1) Samuel Taylor Coleridge had written Kubla Khan 150 years…
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Nash on
MetaphorSimilieSelection from Very Like a Whale by Ogden Nash Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold? In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there…
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On Growing Old
On Growing Old by John Masefield Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying, My dog and I are old, too old for roving, Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving. I take the book and gather to the fire, Turning old yellow…
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Secrets
Twelve Songs [Song VIII, April 1936] by W. H. Auden At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend; Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never…
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Plums
On a particularly slow and boring evening, I happened to breeze through this site on my way to nowhere (side note: the post from June 18th is about the linotype; all of my graduate work was done in a building named after its inventor, Mergenthaler), and was reminded of a poem that has been a…
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Selections
from Félise by Swinburne Two gifts perforce he has given us yet, Though sad things stay and glad things fly ; Two gifts he has given us, to forget All glad and sad things that go by, And then to die. from Ilicet by Swinburne A little sorrow, a little pleasure, Fate metes us from…