Monday, October 23, 2023

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Early typewriter art.

"My Birds that Fly No Longer

Have ye forgot, sweet birds,
   How near the heavens lie?
Drooping, sick-pinion'd, oh
   Have ye forgot the sky?

The air that once I knew
   Whispered celestial things;
I weep who hear no more
   Upward and rushing wings."

--Adelaide Crapsey

Punic faith.

"Why pour the fruitless strain? to winds, and waves,
Deaf winds, dull waves, and senseless shades of woods
I chant, and sing mine unavailing song."

--Royston's Lycophron

"High-flown, elaborately patterned poems written on commission to praise a victorious boxer or wrestler and assure him that he has scaled the heights of mortal achievement, the encomiastic element combined with bits of gnomic wisdom and seemingly personal utterance and leading out to passages of myth not always obviously related to the occasion and presented in concentrated lyrical form — the whole gallimaufry set to the most intricate meters in Greek and designed to be sung and danced by a chorus of citizens: this is a literary oddity the like of which the world has not seen again."

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