Tag Archives: History

Entry XXXII – October

Posted on by
The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two – is gone.

A Moment’s Halt – a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste –
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The Nothing it set out from – Oh, make haste!

 

13445299_1695459777395245_3047819408615208150_n.jpg

Entry XXX – October

Posted on by

On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness
Arthur Guiterman

The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.

The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is ferric oxide, known as rust.

The grizzly bear whose potent hug
Was feared by all, is now a rug.

Great Caesar’s bust is on my shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself.

13510769_1698648440409712_9096404670070637549_n.jpg

Entry XXI – April

Posted on by

Winter Warfare
Edgell Rickword

Colonel Cold strode up the Line
(tabs of rime and spurs of ice);
stiffened all that met his glare:
horses, men and lice.

Visited a forward post,
left them burning, ear to foot;
fingers stuck to biting steel,
toes to frozen boot.

Stalked on into No Man’s Land,
turned the wire to fleecy wool,
iron stakes to sugar sticks
snapping at a pull.

Those who watched with hoary eyes
saw two figures gleaming there;
Hauptmann Kalte, colonel old,
gaunt in the grey air.

Stiffly, tinkling spurs they moved,
glassy-eyed, with glinting heel
stabbing those who lingered there
torn by screaming steel.

 

13613287_1701928313415058_7702152928610301260_o

Entry X – January

Posted on by

13932727_1719726761635213_7860351182195493966_n.jpg

III. “For these of old the trader”
A.E. Housman

For these of old the trader
Unpearled the Indian seas,
The nations of the nadir
Were diamondless for these;

A people prone and haggard
Beheld their lightnings hurled:
All round, like Sinai, staggered
The sceptre-shaken world.

But now their coins are tarnished,
Their towers decayed away,
Their kingdom swept and garnished
For haler kings than they;

Their arms the rust hath eaten,
Their statutes none regard:
Arabia shall not sweeten
Their dust, with all her nard.

They cease from long vexation,
Their nights, their days are done,
The pale, the perished nation
That never see the sun;

From the old deep-dusted annals
The years erase their tale,
And round them race the channels
That take no second sail.

Entry III – December

Posted on by

tribute_to_caspar_david_friedrich_by_lupographics-d5k3xh1

Platonic England, house of solitudes,
rests in its laurels and its injured stone,
replete with complex fortunes that are gone,
beset by dynasties of moods and clouds.

It stands, as though at ease with its own world,
the mannerly extortions, languid praise,
all that devotion long since bought and sold,

the rooms of cedar and soft-thudding baize,
tremulous boudoirs where the crystals kissed
in cabinets of amethyst and frost.

—From The Laurel Axe
Brian Phillips

Entry II – December

Posted on by

daubigny_charles-francois-zzz-river_bank

On Seeing the Wind at Hope Mansell
Geoffrey Hill

Whether or not shadows are of the substance
such is the expectation I can
wait to surprise my vision as a wind
enters the valley: sudden and silent
in its arrival, drawing to full cry
the whorled invisibilities, glassen towers
freighted with sky-chaff; that, as barnstorming
powers, rammack the small
orchard; that well-steaded oaks
ride stolidly, that rake the light-leafed ash,
that glowing yew trees, cumbrous, heave aside.
Amidst and abroad tumultuous lumina,
regents, reagents, cloud-fêted, sun-ordained,
fly tally over hedgerows, across fields.