I’m with family for the holidays, so as of right now there will not be a reading. That said, I felt like posting this classic. The actual authorship is subject to debate (see the wiki article), but it’s been with us for nearly two centuries. 27. A Visit from St. Nicholas By Clement Clarke Moore …
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My Lost Youth
This old poem ties in the visuals of the sea, and far-off places. The exotic, and the familiar. The quest for something that returns him to memories of those old times also reminds me of the saying that you can never go back home. Note: For some reason, whether software bug or I somehow overlooked …
Kubla Khan
This is one of the relatively few poems I was introduced to in High School, that are among my favorites. It is epic in every sense of the word, and the story of its creation is nearly as interesting as the poem itself. Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. BY SAMUEL …
Rikki Tikki Tavi
There isn’t room here for the entirety of the Story Rikki Tikki Tavi in one post, much less the entirety of the Jungle Book. Nevertheless, the stories of the Jungle Book, like many of his other short stories, often contained snippets of poems, or entire poems, created for the story being introduced. My first exposure …
Music, Ships, and the War of 1812
One of the time periods I’ve delved into was the War of 1812 between the United States and England, including reading (President) Theodore Roosevelt’s books on the subject. As it happened, I was recently looking for music on Spotify to see what else I could find by one of my favorite celtic singers, Heather Alexander, …
The Sons of Martha
The Sons of Martha is one of many poems by Kipling that celebrates engineers, and what they do to keep things running. It’s loosely based on an interpretation of the following gospel story: As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home …
La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad
This is one of the few poems I love that I first ran across in High School english. The title means “The beautiful lady without mercy.” It’s worth noting that the depiction of faerie folk in older literature often depicts them as human-sized, and ethereally beautiful. Things rarely end well for those who are convinced …
MacDonough’s Song
Many who were exposed to Kipling almost exclusively through his more popular poems (such as “If”) or the Jungle Book, would be surprised to know he had also written what would be considered science fiction and horror. Two of his stories, “As easy as A.B.C” and “With the Night Mail” were set in a future …
Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Dodgson, was a mathematician and logician who delighted in wordplay. Jabberwocky – another of my lifetime favorites that I’ve long ago committed to memory – is made up largely of nonsense words that, looked at with a metaphorical squint, almost make sense. (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872) Twas …
Ozymandias
This poem has long been a favorite of mine, and is one of the handful of poems I’ve always been able to recite from memory for my entire adult life. I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. Near them, on the …