When this Verse was first dictated to me I consider’d a Monotonous Cadence like that used by Milton & Shakspeare & all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Rhyming; to be a necessary and indispensible…
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The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593)
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Orwell and Milton: By the known rules of ancient liberty; Jesuit Relations and The Dawn of Everything
Orwell ends The Freedom of the Press, his introduction to Animal Farm, with: In our country … it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention…
Transparent: “Paradise has many gates”
Surely we fear from our Lord a stern, distressful day. Therefore Allah win guard them from the evil of that day and cause them to meet with ease and happiness; And reward them, because they were patient, with garden and…
Acker, Acre, Aker, Akyr… A land, a river, a swamp…
The OED lists two meanings for Acker: Acker, n. 1 Etymology: Origin uncertain; perhaps a variant of eagre n. (although this is first attested later; compare the form agar at that entry). In later use English regional (Yorkshire). †1. A strong or turbulent current in the sea; a flood…
Orwell’s Animal Farm: “a statement about human society everywhere and at all times”?
Orwell’s Animal Farm is commonly read as a critique of Stalinism. However, is it a cautionary tale of how quickly and easily any power structure might turn totalitarian? Does any power structure contain seeds of potential abusiveness? Did the animals…
John Clare: Love, Old, Day, See, Green, Summer, Flowers, Heart
Find John Clare’s POEMS CHIEFLY FROM MANUSCRIPT in our library. Edmund Blunden, who edited the volume, writes: For the present volume over two thousand poems by Clare have been considered and compared; of which over two-thirds have not been published.…
100s of Words for Ice – a “precious knowledge”
“…focus attention on selected aspects of the world as it is taken to be by other cognitive systems, and provide intricate and highly specialised perspectives from which to view them, crucially involving human interests and concerns even in the simplest…
Almuce, Otototoi, Plutomania, Foolosophy, Cockamamie, Septemfluous
Origin: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin almussa.Etymology: < post-classical Latin almussa, almucia, almucium, amusium, etc. amice n.2 Compare earlier amice n.2 1, aumusse n. A hood, cape, or similar garment made of or lined with grey fur and worn by a member of a religious order (esp. a canon). Cf. amice n.2 1. The exact garment has varied at…