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tree_and_leafThe Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
***
As I remember Michael Alexander pointing out, there's something slightly Anglo-Saxon about that, not merely that the first line is a perfect example of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, but also that its most obvious literary ancestry is directly from the riddles of the Exeter Book and similar. I actually translated this into Old English when I was revising for finals, which goes to show what finals does to you.
***
Slept very badly, and also forgot that if you're going to use your computer as an alarm, you need to de-mute it. For some reason was obsessing over the thought that I'd rather stay in Freiburg than go back to Oxford, though this is not realistic, and I've still got over four months left here (though that's not really all that long, when you get down to it).
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
***
As I remember Michael Alexander pointing out, there's something slightly Anglo-Saxon about that, not merely that the first line is a perfect example of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, but also that its most obvious literary ancestry is directly from the riddles of the Exeter Book and similar. I actually translated this into Old English when I was revising for finals, which goes to show what finals does to you.
***
Slept very badly, and also forgot that if you're going to use your computer as an alarm, you need to de-mute it. For some reason was obsessing over the thought that I'd rather stay in Freiburg than go back to Oxford, though this is not realistic, and I've still got over four months left here (though that's not really all that long, when you get down to it).
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-08 10:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-08 10:20 am (UTC)I haven't read this for years, so I'm delighted that you posted it and jogged my memory. I've always loved the "wrinkled sea" bit, it gets the snese of height so well.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:29 pm (UTC)Yes - that's such a brilliant phrase.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-08 05:20 pm (UTC)I was unaware that finals had the tendency to make one more awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 01:31 pm (UTC)