PolyArchive

The Second Coming W.B. Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full […]

Over at Jane Austen’s World, Rachel Dodge has been comparing how Austen’s novels use what have now become standard romance tropes. The end of the series is the Sense and Sensibility’s (double) love triangle. Jane Austen’s World | Jane Austen and Rom Coms: Sense and Sensibility (“Love Triangles”) — We often forget that Thomas Alva […]

Death of the Hat Billy Collins Once every man wore a hat. In the ashen newsreels, the avenues of cities are broad rivers flowing with hats. The ballparks swelled with thousands of straw hats, brims and bands, rows of men smoking and cheering in shirtsleeves. Hats were the law. They went without saying. You noticed […]

HENRY V, ACT 3, SCENE I. France. Before Harfleur. Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders KING HENRY V Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But […]

Here’s a little Web 1.0 curiosity that for some reason always manages to stick around in my text files. It’s macabre, and I haven’t verified the authenticity of any of them, but it’s interesting nonetheless. -N Thomas Jefferson–still survives… ~~ John Adams, US President, d. July 4, 1826 (Actually, Jefferson had died earlier that same […]

Przedmowa Ty, którego nie mogłem ocalić, Wysłuchaj mnie. Zrozum tę mowę prostą, bo wstydzę się innej. Przysięgam, nie ma we mnie czarodziejstwa słów. Mówię do ciebie milcząc, jak obłok czy drzewo. To, co wzmacniało mnie, dla ciebie było śmiertelne. Żegnanie epoki brałeś za początek nowej, Natchnienie nienawiści za piękno liryczne, Siłę ślepą za dokonany kształt. […]

Easter, 1916 W. B. Yeats I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a […]

The Soldier Rupert Brooke If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.  There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam. A […]

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death W. B. Yeats I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or […]