Month: June 2015
Sonnet To The Nile
Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing’s inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest for a space ‘twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
‘Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
– John Keats
30th June – On This Day In History
Born:
1966 Mike Tyson (Heavyweight boxing champ)
Died:
1520 Montezuma II (Aztec emperor)
On This Day:
1953 First Chevrolet Corvette manufactured
Have a good Tuesday, 30th June
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Sonnet To Homer
Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind; — but then the veil was rent,
For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green
There is a budding morrow in the midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.
– John Keats
29th June – On This Day In History
Born:
1943 Eva Boyd (Little Eva – singer, Locomotion)
Died:
1861 Elizabeth Browning (poet)
On This Day:
1916 Boeing airplane flies for the first time
Have a good Monday, 29th June
To A Cat
Cat! who has pass’d thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit-bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and
prick
Those velvet ears – but prythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me – and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick;
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists, –
For all the wheezy asthma – and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nick’d off – and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is thy fur as when the lists
In youth thou enter’dst on glass-bottled wall.
– John Keats
28th June – On This Day In History
Born:
1491 Henry VIII
Died:
2003 Gregory Peck (actor)
On This Day:
1919 Treaty of Versailles signed (ending WW1)
Have a relaxing Sunday, 26th June.
With A Flower
I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too –
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.
– Emily Dickinson
27th June – On This Day In History
Born:
1983 Dale Steyn (South African cricketer)
Died:
2001 Jack Lemmon (actor)
On This Day:
1977 Djibouti gains independence
Have a great Saturday, 27th June
There Is A June When Corn Is Cut
There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed
As should a Face supposed the Grave’s
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—
Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—
May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?
– Emily Dickinson
Nearly Weekend…!
Happy Friday – just stick with it.
Weekend is nearly here.
Have a good one!