Did Coleridge See His Own Future in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

Oxford World's Classics

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge was not quite nine years old his father died. He became eligible for a place in the great London charity school, Christ's Hospital, to which he was sent a year later. From there he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, but at the end of 1793, during his third year, he ran away and joined the army under an assumed name, Silas Tomkyn Comberbache.

"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony."

The Paris Review

Proof that poets are time travelers: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s grim prognosticating in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Did Coleridge See His Own Future in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

In today’s arts and culture news: a scholar contends that Coleridge was a…

THEPARISREVIEW.ORG

Raymond Carver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver

雷蒙德·卡佛（英語：Raymond Carver，1938年5月25日－1988年8月2日），全名小瑞蒙·克列維·卡佛，美國短篇小說家，詩人。

生平

卡佛出生於奧勒岡州哥倫比亞河邊的鋸木城鎮克拉斯坎尼，後在華盛頓州的亞基馬市長大^[1]。他的父親是從亞利桑那州來的鋸木工人、漁夫，長期酗酒；母親則是餐廳服務生和銷售員，工作不穩定。他有一個弟弟，生於1943年。

卡佛逝後葬在華盛頓州安吉爾港的海典灣公墓。他的墓碑上刻了他的詩篇〈晚期斷章〉：

你是否得到
你人生所期望的？
我得到了。
你想得到什麼？
稱自己為摯愛，感受到我自己
被世上所愛。

瑞蒙·卡佛：《晚期斷章》

Everyman's Library

Poet and short-story writer Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. was born in Clatskanie, Oregon eighty years ago on this day in 1938.

"The River" by Raymond Carver

I waded, deepening, into the dark water.
Evening, and the push
and swirl of the river as it closed
around my legs and held on.
Young grilse broke water.
Parr darted one way, smolt another.
Gravel turned under my boots as I edged out.
Watched by the furious eyes of king salmon.
Their immense heads turned slowly,
eyes burning with fury, as they hung
in the deep current.
They were there. I fel them there,
and my skin prickled. But
there was something else.
I braced with the wind on my neck.
Felt the hair rise
as something touched my boot.
Grew afraid at what I couldn't see.
Then of everything that filled my eyes—
that other shore heavy with branches,
the dark lip of the mountain range behind.
And this river that had suddenly
grown black and swift.
I drew breath and cast anyway.
Prayed nothing would strike.

*

THE ART OF ANGLING offers a bountiful catch of poems from around the world and through the ages on every aspect of the beloved sport. Fishing has inspired a wealth of poetry—Tang Dynasty meditations; Japanese haiku; medieval rhymes; classic verses by Homer and Shakespeare; poems by Donne, Goethe, Tennyson, and Yeats. Modern masterpieces abound as well, by the likes of Federico García Lorca, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell, Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde, Richard Hugo, and Derek Walcott. In the hands of the poets collected here, fishing with a hook and line yields reflections both sparklingly light and awe-inspiringly deep. Filled with humor, nostalgia, adventure, celebrations of the beauties of nature, and metaphors for the art of living, The Art of Angling is sure to lure anglers and lovers of poetry alike. READ an excerpt from the foreword here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/the-art-of-angling-by…/

Coronach. Sir Walter Scott

Oxford World's Classics



"He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest." - Sir Walter Scott

HE is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font reappearing	5
From the raindrops shall borrow;
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,	10
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing	15
When blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi,
Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,
How sound is thy slumber!	20
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone—and for ever!

LRB · Quentin Skinner · What does it mean to be a free person?

London Review of Books

Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse
We can create.'

LRB · Quentin Skinner · What does it mean to be a free person?

For Milton, as for so many later writers in the republican tradition, the price of freedom is nothing less than eternal vigilance.

LRB.CO.UK

"Broken Thoughts" by Gabriel Dante Rossetti

· 

"Broken Thoughts" by Gabriel Dante Rossetti

Poet Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born in London, England on this day in 1828.

The thoughts are broken in my memory,
Thou lovely Joy, whene'er I see thy face;
When thou art near me, Love fills up the space,
Often repeating, "If death irk thee, fly."
My face shows my heart's color, verily,
Which, fainting, seeks for any leaning-place;
Till, in the drunken terror of disgrace,
The very stones seem to be shrieking, "Die!"
It were a grievous sin, if one should not
Strive then to comfort my bewildered mind
(Though merely with a simple pitying)
For the great anguish which thy scorn has wrought
In the dead sight o' the eyes grown nearly blind,
Which look for death as for a blessed thing.

"As I Walked Out One Evening" (1937) by W.H. Auden

"As I Walked Out One Evening" (1937) by W.H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

*

W. H. Auden once defined light verse as the kind that is written by poets who are democratically in tune with their audience and whose language is straightforward and close to general speech. Given that definition, the 123 poems in this collection all qualify; they are as accessible as popular songs yet have the wisdom and profundity of the greatest poetry. AS I WALKED OUT ONE EVENING contains some of Auden’s most memorable verse: "Now Through the Night’s Caressing Grip," "Lullaby: Lay your Sleeping Head, My Love," "Under Which Lyre," and "Funeral Blues." Alongside them are less familiar poems, including seventeen that have never before appeared in book form. Here, among toasts, ballads, limericks, and even a foxtrot, are "Song: The Chimney Sweepers," a jaunty evocation of love, and the hilarious satire "Letter to Lord Byron." By turns lyrical, tender, sardonic, courtly, and risqué, AS I WALKED OUT ONE EVENING is Auden at his most irresistible and affecting. READ more here:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/as-i-walked-out-one-e…/

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