Summer Poems
Four summer poems by A.E. Housman, the Welsh poet Edward Thomas, Robinson Jeffers, and Robert Louis Stevenson
Yearly Archive: 2025
Scott’s Ivanhoe Part II
The most striking feature of Ivanhoe is probably the depiction of the conflict between Saxons and Normans.
The Master Builder
The London theatre-goer has to get used to seeing what he reveres systematically demeaned. Such a thought occurred to me as I watched ‘My Master Builder’, a play very loosely based on Ibsen’s striking late work The Master Builder.
The London theatre-goer has to get used to seeing what he reveres systematically demeaned. Such a thought occurred to me as I watched ‘My Master Builder’, a play very loosely based on Ibsen’s striking late work The Master Builder.
Trump Turns Epsteingate into Watergate 2.0
President Richard Nixon wasn’t involved in the 1972 Watergate break-in of Democratic National Headquarters that led to him resigning in 1974. The problem was he ok’d the coverup. As he later said, “I handed them a sword, and they drove it in.”
Poetry: Douglas Young
This is one of Douglas Young’s few poems in English (as opposed to what he called Lallans, Lowland Scots), though it is also in German, French, and Doric Greek. Note the date: 1939.
Wednesday’s Child: North and South
The Feast of St. Rosalia, which a couple of days ago was celebrated in Palermo for the 401st time since the Church had assigned it to the plague-curing Saint, is above all a noisy affair.
Walter Scott: Ivanhoe, Part I
Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, published in 1818, took Britain by storm. As he explains in the preface he wrote for a later edition, he had begun to realize that the reading public, after enjoying nine Scottish novels in four years, was beginning to typecast the unknown “author of Waverley” as a Scottish localist
Notice to Greek and Italian Students
I have paused the classes for part of the Summer in order to give some students, who have told me they are lagging behind, the chance to catch up.
The Trump Dilemma
The MAGA coalition, if we can believe the media, is about to explode into antagonistic fragments. While many Trump voters are still loyal, others, following the lead of his would-be successors, are in rebellion. The cause of the rebellion is indicative of what is wrong with the entire movement.
Wednesday’s Child: U2 and Non-U2
In a fit of nostalgia, which is another name for a moment of historical clarity, one may gaze into the distance that separates the Mitford sisters from the Kardashian sisters.
