All Purls. No Swine.
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”
Longfellow called it "Retribution" Though the mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, With exactness grinds he all. I've seen this play out more times than can could possibly be accounted for by chance. As someone else--Thomas Fuller, maybe--said: As virtue is its own reward, so… Continue reading On Karma
She’s the ultimate femme fatale. And it’s one of the oldest stories in the world. The Beautiful Lady Without Pity. (No, for those of you with only rudimentary French, the title doesn't mean The Beautiful Lady Who Never Says Thank You.) The subject of my second-favorite poem by John Keats, which was written in 1819, when Keats was… Continue reading La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Serendipity! I've recently been re-reading Pattiann Rogers. Her poems are stuffed full of brilliant observations about the physical and metaphysical world. Penned by a gifted writer chock-a-block with scientific knowledge of the natural world, Rogers' work has a distinct kinship to haiku. But haiku it is not. This set me to thinking about what distinguishes… Continue reading Hot Dish on Haiku