“The Green Man in Autumn”
The air is crisp, the berries have turned brown, The final harvest has been taken in, The once new leaves have dropped from the Green Man’s crown. And the Summer’s Sun has come to rest and dim. […]
“The Cask of Amontillado”
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled—but the very definitiveness [...]
“Bird, Gift”
You hold the bird with open hands Until it flies to distant lands. You love when it returns again, Within your palm, you see it then, But if you try to tightly grasp This gift, embrace it, hold it fast, You lose it by its being too near— By being free, it is more [...]
Constancy and Coleridge
As Samuel Taylor Coleridge expresses in his poem “Constancy to an Ideal Object,” we might find in art the most constants, idealized in our creations, which piece together some meaning of truth amid a world of change where it might appear that nothing has meaning. Although this essay will be about Samuel Taylor Coleridge [...]
Late and Soon
The pervasive “world” is a man-made complex of ambitions and obligations, a dense social and cultural and financial web that captures us and estranges our experience from the primal realities of earth and sky. We need to remind ourselves of the blessedness that can come even in the midst of the busiest days, that [...]
“The Tell-Tale Heart”
True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in [...]
Manzoni’s Political Economy
Alessandro Manzoni’s gift for seeing the humorous, pathetic, and anger-making aspects of a world in which justice is difficult to find ought to be more recognized. But it is no wonder that what attracts people are the faith, hope, and love that are both the hidden foundation and crown of political and economic life. [...]
The “Eumenides”: Patriotism & Moderated Modernity
The “Eumenides” is not a tragedy of the unresolvable impasse, of the unavoidable fatality. It is a “pragma,” an affair practically handled, whose outcome is not all-round cleansing by devastation, but a future of good daily living. Aeschylus invests this drama of sweet reason, of moderation triumphant, with exhilarating solemnity and participatory splendor. Aeschylus’ Eumenides [...]
“Pied Beauty”
Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. […]
“The Green Man”
Effoliating foliage, he haunts His local habitation. The tutelary Spirit, ripener of wildest blackberry, Protector of the bees’ humblest wants. […]
Tolkien’s “The Return of the Shadow,” 1937-1939
Christopher Tolkien, in “The Return of the Shadow,” breaks down J.R.R. Tolkien’s drafts of the sequel to “The Hobbit” into three phases. In the third phase, the situations around the characters do grow tellingly darker, with drastic implications for the story that could shake the foundations even of the Blessed Realm, the land of [...]
Tolkien Begins the Sequel to “The Hobbit”
J.R.R. Tolkien intended the new book, which would later develop into “The Lord of the Rings,” to be a simple sequel to “The Hobbit.” Yet somehow the sequel was growing more adult, and Tolkien admitted it reflected the “darkness of the present days” in the shadow of the Second World War. On September 21, [...]
Understanding William Faulkner
In the forties and fifties, the most influential literary quarterlies in America featured “new criticism,” a brand of formalism that never succumbed to the absolute relativism of the deconstructionists. One of their foremost practitioners was Cleanth Brooks, who devoted himself to interpreting and popularizing the work of one of America’s greatest but most difficult [...]
“Gretchen at her Spinning Wheel”
My solace is gone My heart feels dead, It’s gone forever, Forevermore fled. His absence is To me a grave; The world seems lifeless Without his gaze. […]