In 1841, a few months before his death (in a pistol duel with a fellow officer at the foot of Mount Mashuk in the Caucasus), Mihail Lermontov (1814-41) composed a remarkably prophetic poem: In noon’s heat, in a dale of Dagestan, With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay; The deep wound still smoked on; … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Poem Of The Day
Quote Of The Day: Lord Byron
From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: There is the moral of all human tales; ‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, First Freedom, and then Glory — when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption — barbarism at last. Continue reading
Poem Of The Day: William Butler Yeats
Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1919 at the end of World War I. The poem uses Christian imagery, but it is about the Europe that existed at the end of World War I and what was to follow rather than about religion… It is just as apt in describing Syria or other such bloody … Continue reading
Poem Of The Day – The Italian War Poets
D’Annunzio: In a lurid vision of battle that champions the victors’ right to slaughter their foe, lay waste his cities and rape his women declared: We shall ransack the mothers’ wombs with fire… I smile upon the land that is my prey Corrado Govoni’s long poem, called simply “War!” describes the entire world turning into “a … Continue reading
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Poem Of The Day: Rudyard Kipling
Ex-Clerk Pity not! The Army gave Freedom to a timid slave: In which Freedom did he find Strength of body, will, and mind: By which strength he came to prove Mirth, Companionship, and Love: For which Love to Death he went: In which Death he lies content. Continue reading
Poem Of The Day: Robert W. Service
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain’s crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And … Continue reading
The Velvet Rocket 