"Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep

"Israfel" by Edgar Allen Poe

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

"Whose heart-strings are a lute";

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell),

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamored moon

Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,

Which were seven,)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir

And the other listening things)

That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings-

The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty-

Where Love's a grown-up God-

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest

An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit-

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute-

Well may the stars be mute!

>Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours;

Our flowers are merely–flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

A new approach to translating and Metamorphoses 11.1-6

My prof wants us to try a new approach to translating. Instead of looking up every word, we try to read it, and when we can't do it, look at the translation. Then, cover up the translation and try again. It isn't memorizing translations - it is the equivalent of leaving the Phonics method of learning to read and doing Whole Word instead.

I don't know, but I'm going to give it a shot. So, instead of translating a passage once and looking up every word, I'm going to translate it several times, until I read the whole thing in Latin without looking at the English once. That means I'm going to type out the translation several times. It'll look the same on the screen every time, or at least close, but the method for creating the translation will be slowly, slowly more independent. The goal is to go through the whole bit at least three times.

Thoughts on this passage:

• I didn't translate it three times. In fact, I only translated it the once. It worked out okay and it was fine in class, but I wish I had started earlier so I could have done without referring to notes at all. 
• I forgot that manium comes from manis, a dead soul. So regina manium is Queen of the Dead, which is a phrase that just has to come in handy some day. 
• The goddess only shows up when fate is done with him? But at the end of 6, she says she can override fate.
• “the first beginning of things” is primis rerum exordiis, language from Lucretius, who wrote about atoms and the first generation of matter.
• ululatibus is my favorite Latin onamonapeia. It means “howling”
• Lucius reminds me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. He could always have found salvation, but he needed to change.

MacBeth Quotes I

MacBeth has some of the most amazing one liners in literature. The play is awesome on its own, but the out-of-context quotes are fun as well. There are so many I'm going to split them up.

1. Angels are bright still, although the brightest fell. Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, grace must still look so. 

2. Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.

3. There's no art to find the mind's construction in a face.

4. Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my dark and deep desires.

5. If chance will have me king, why, chance my crown me.

"Poetry and a Beverage" by K.P.

Blinded eyes are killing me
My heart is tight and I can't breathe
Epexegetical nightmare come true
Roman Dianas cry out for you
A slow spreading smile of sinister glee
Extrapolation means nothing to see
Parenthetically, night is thick with deep spite
And streams from a height the vissisitude light
The infusion of blood bids the watermelon bleed
It's too late...I'm too slow...he's coming for me.

"The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao" by Orson Scott Card

When I was a child, I thought
a god was dissapointed
whenever some distraction
interrupted my tracing of the lines
revealed in the grain of wood.
Now I know the gods expect
such interruptions,
for they know our frailty.
It is completion that surprises them.

When I follow the path of the gods
through the wood,
My eyes take every twisting
turn of the grain,
But my body moves, straight
along the planking,
So those who watch me see
that the path of the gods is straight
While I dwell in a world with
no straightness in it.

--Orson Scott Card

"Genius Child" by Langston Hughes

This is a song for the genius child
Sing it softly, for the song is wild
Sing it softly as you ever can-
Lest the song get out of hand.

Nobody loves a genius child.

Can you love an eagle
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
of frightening name?

Nobody loves a genius child.

Kill him - and let his soul run wild!

--Langston Hughes

More Hughes here.

Tuesday quotes

1. Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he's been robbed. The fact is, most putts don't drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most marriages take a high degree of toleration, most jobs are more often boring than otherwise.

Life is a lot like an old time rail journey...delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts interspersed only occaionally with beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride. --Jenkins Lloyd Jones

2. But remember, young man...you are not the first person who has ever been alone and alone...--F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. There is no terra firma. Eternal rest must be earned, sleep must be earned, dreams must be lived, and life must be dreamt. --Kurt Wolff

4. If you can't convince them, confuse them.  --Harry S. Truman

5. I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me. --Tennyson

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour,
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day,
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

"since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis
--e.e. cummings

Metamorphoses 3.17

Sadly, this one I didn't finish translating. Sorry.

Metamorphoses 4.23-24

Stolen while dressing for her wedding. That is a TERRIBLE wedding day.

• The girl that gets brought in is clearly high class. 
• She also obviously thinks so. When she laments what she's lost, she mentions her house and her slaves before her parents.
• Apuleius puts the highest rhetoric and most erudite speech in the mouth of the child bride. Interesting.
• We won't translate what happens to her, but while she survives this present calamity, things go very, very south for her later. But things go south for everyone Lucius encounters eventually

Today's Five Quotes

1. Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. --T.S.Eliot
2. The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infitnity of things which surpass it. --Blaine Pascal
3. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious. --Alfred North Whitehead
4. Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad. --Anonymous
5. Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness...were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find those words. --Rainer Maria Rilke

Metamorphoses 3.24

Man accidentally turns into a donkey? That happens a LOT in literature. Even this story wasn't the first - it's a retelling of an older Greek story.

• I didn't translate all that I was supposed to last week because I was preparing for my presentation on Wednesday. However, this paragraph is amazing, and it's worth looking at again.
• My prof brought up in class the question of Photis's motives. I just KNEW her attitude was fishy.
• This is a hilarious passage. I'm not translating everything literally - this is a family blog.
• Since this is done quick and I'm getting better at Apuleius, I'm not making the table like I did for the other passages.

"Eldorado" by Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight a gallant knight
In sunshine and in shadow
Had journeyed long, singing a song
In search of Eldorado

But he grew old, this knight so bold
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found No spoint of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength failed him at length
He met a pilgrim shadow.
"Shadow," said he, "where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the mountains of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow,
Ride, boldly ride," the shade replied,
"If you seek for Eldorado!"
--Edgar Allen Poe

Five more quotes

1. It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. --Alfred Adler
2. The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the posessor, if he know not discreetly how to use it. --Michel de Montigne
3. What lies before and what lies behind you are tiny matters compared to what lies within you. -- R.W. Emerson
4. His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world "This was a man." - Hamlet
5. It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends? --Willa Cather

"The Two-Sided Man" by Rudyard Kipling

Much I owe to the Lands that grew-
More to the Lands that fed-
But most to Allah who gave me two
Separate sides to my head.

Much I reflect on the Good and the True
In the Faiths beneath the sun,
But most upon Allah who gave me two
Sides to my head, not one.

Wesley's following, Calvin's flock,
White or yellow or bronze,
Shaman, Juju, or Anglekok
Minister, Mukanuk, Bonze-

here is a health, my brothers, to you
However your prayers are said
And praised be, Allah, who gave me two
Separate sides to my head!

I would go without shirt or shoe,
Friend, tobacco, or bread,
Sooner than lose for a minute the two
Separate sides of my head.
--Rudyard Kipling

Metamorphoses 3.16

Undoubtedly this is where Photis's story took place.

• So this chasing after young men - and sending her slave to do it - is not a new habit of the magical woman.
• Interesting that apparently her habits are well known. I need to finish reading those books on magic in the classical world to know how reluctantly magical women were tolerated. 
• Photis is laying on the flattery pretty thick. I can't remember this part of the book well - I almost wonder if she is under orders. Lucius is apparently a good-looking guy, but is he really worth abandoning her escape plan?

Five More Quotes

New format for the quotes: quotes above the break and my thoughts about them after.

1. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. --Edward Gibbon
2. Little minds are interestd in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. --Elbert Hubbard
3. Loneliness and the feeling of being unwatned are the most terrible poverty. --Mother Theresa
4. In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are always consequences. --Robert G. Ingersoll
5. What you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. --Thomas Carlyle

Metamorphoses 3.15

1868 Painting of Medea, a "witch" from antiquity. Love made her fearsome, like several other characters from that time.

Thoughts about this passage:

• Photis's act with the strap and the tears was really something. Lucius is now putty in this girl's hands, and I almost have to admire how she mixes flattery with fear to coax from him his natural curiosity.
• A witch who preys upon young, good-looking men...there is a trope in there, I am sure of it. Erika would know better. Part of what makes the mulier so disturbing is the control that she is credited with - not only does she control men, but she controls the stars, the gods, the very elements. It doesn't matter what she does with it - a woman with that kind of power in that time would automatically be labeled a witch, no matter the source of the power.

"My dreams are of a field afar" by A. E. Housman

My dreams are of a field afar
And blood and smoke and shot
There in their graves my comerades are,
In my grave I am not.


I too was taught the trade of man
And spelt the lesson plain
But they, when I forgot and ran,
Remembered and remain.


--A. E. Housman

More Housman poetry