Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers

The Sun Has Long Been Set

noreply@blogger.com (V. Mahfood) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:04:00 +0000

--Description: Wordsworth W., 19th C, Nature, Night, Seasons

The sun has long been set,
The stars are out by twos and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and the trees;
There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,
And a far-off wind that rushes,
And a sound of water that gushes,
And the cuckoo's sovereign cry
Fills all the hollow of the sky.
Who would go `parading'
In London, `and masquerading',
On such a night of June
With that beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses?
On such a night as this is!

William Wordsworth

--Did You Know: (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which the poet revised and expanded a number of times. The work was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850. The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland—part of the scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who would become a poet and enjoy nature with William and Dorothy until he died in an 1809 shipwreck, from which only the captain escaped; and Christopher, the youngest, who would become an academician. Their father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale. Read more at: William Wordsworth

--Poetry Terminology: Aide-memoire poem -
Poem which helps the memory e.g. 'Thirty days hath September,/April, June and November'

--Word of the Day: evanescence \ev-uh-NES-ens\, noun:
1. A gradual dissappearance.
2. The state of becoming imperceptible.
Example:
This is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with water surface, for by these means a variety of color and a grace and evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise impossible.
-John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin: Modern painters, v.1-5

--Quote of the Day: In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other. ~Linda Ellerbee

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Posted by V. Mahfood

Two Streams

noreply@blogger.com (V. Mahfood) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:36:00 +0000

--Description: 19th C, Holmes O.W., Aging, Life--

BEHOLD the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending as they fall,
In rushing river-tides!

Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.

So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends,--

From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,--
One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!

Oliver Wendell Holmes

--Did You Know: (August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) Holmes was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He is recognized as an important medical reformer. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holmes was educated at Phillips Academy and Harvard College. After graduating from Harvard in 1829, he briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. He began writing poetry at an early age; one of his most famous works, "Old Ironsides", was published in 1830. Following training at the prestigious medical schools of Paris, Holmes was granted his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He taught at Dartmouth Medical School before returning to teach at Harvard and, for a time, served as dean there. During his long professorship, he became an advocate for various medical reforms and notably posited the controversial idea that doctors were capable of carrying puerperal fever from patient to patient. Holmes retired from Harvard in 1882 and continued writing poetry, novels and essays until his death in 1894. See more at: Oliver Wendell Holmes

--Word of the Day: mammonism \MAM-uh-niz-uhm\, noun:
The greedy pursuit of riches.
Example:
We will bring to mind a young man or young woman bitterly awakened from a fancy dream of accomplishment, action or glory, forced instead to come to terms with a considerably reduced status, a betrayed love, and a hideously bourgeois world of crass mammonism and philistine taste.
-- Rudyard Kipling, Kim

--Quote of the Day: What is necessary to change a person is
to change his awareness of himself.
- Abraham Maslow

Enjoy these other unique locations:

Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers

The Sun Has Long Been Set

Two Streams

A Duet

A Lover's Complaint

The Swallow

Brighter Shone the Golden Shadows

Mattins

Camomile Tea

Daylight and Moonlight

[Month of] February

Sea Fever

Good-by

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