All Purls. No Swine.
When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don’t stand still and look around On all the hills I haven’t hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the… Continue reading A Time To Talk–World Poetry Day, March 21, 2023
To be infatuated with the power of one's own intellect is an accident which seldom happens but to those who are remarkable for the want of intellectual power. Whenever Nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer, A Pilgrimage Beyond the… Continue reading Quote of the Day: Longfellow On Self-Conceit
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion Ah! The sainted Rabbie Burns. Scotland's national poet. Romantic to the end. Socialist. Raconteur. A man who dropped his seed wherever he felt like it, upon whichever woman struck… Continue reading Burns Supper Night: 2023
Well. There I was, noodling around a few hours ago during a hydration break (it’s been in the mid-90s today, and I have three rather large trees to plant), looking for something to write about so I could sit inside, turn on the air conditioner for a bit, and allow the sweat to dry up. … Continue reading Mad, Bad, And Dangerous to Know: “Ghostly Galleons” and “Dark Red Love-Knots”
I can't review it, because I haven't read it yet. But I'm charmed by a lengthy excerpt which the author himself has posted on Lapham's Quarterly. It's the story of an unlikely friendship that developed towards the end of Blake's life, and one which reminds me--as do so many biographies and vignettes of eighteenth century… Continue reading Not A Book Review: William Blake Verus The World, by John Higgs
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion Ah! The sainted Rabbie Burns. Scotland's national poet. Romantic to the end. Socialist. Raconteur. A man who dropped his seed wherever he felt like it, upon whichever woman struck… Continue reading Burns Supper Night
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up… Continue reading Quote of the Day: For the “Specially” Enabled, When it Comes to Growing Old
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, If worth in me or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same Than may your worthy self from whom it came? The principal might yield a greater sum, Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; My stock's so small I know not… Continue reading “To Her Father with Some Verses”
I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!–Tennyson, Ulysses I don’t often think of… Continue reading “I am a part of all that I have met”
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here… Continue reading “A damsel with a dulcimer”