Fighting the Current

"Poetry is what is lost in translation."

We've begun ancient Roman poetry in Latin. (Catullus, possibly the most respected raunchy poet ever.) I think it was Robert Frost who said, "Poetry is what is lost in translation." I couldn't agree more...

Started looking through that old poetry collection... No other way to describe this poetry than purrrrrrrrr.

Here are some other ones I love:

"Fame" - John B. Tabb

Their noonday never knows
         What names immortal are:
'Tis night alone that shows
         How star surpasseth star.

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"Anonymous" - John B. Tabb

Anonymous--nor needs a name
To tell the secret whence the flame,
With light and warmth, and incense came
A new creation to proclaim.
So was it when, His labor done,
God saw His work, and smiled thereon:
His glory in the picture shone,
But name upon the canvas, none.

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from "Thought" - Christopher Pearse Cranch

Thought is deeper than all speech,
         Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
         What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;
         Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
         To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;
         Mind to mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone
         Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,
         Far apart, thought seeming near,
In our light we scattered lie;
         All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company
         But a babbling summer stream?
What our philosophy
         But the glancing of a dream?
...
We, like parted drops of rain,
         Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
         Melting, flowing into one.

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"Fate" - Francis Bret Harte

"The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare,
The spray of the tempest is white in air,
The winds are out with the waves at play,
And I shall not tempt the sea to-day."

"The trail is narrow, the wood is dim,
The panther clings to the arching limb,
And the lion's whelps are abroad at play,
And I shall not join in the hunt to-day."

But the ship sailed safely over the sea,
And the hunters came home from the chase in glee,
And the town that was builded upon a rock
Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.

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I might add more later. Onto homework.