Poem: An Exile’s Bicentennial
This was the first of a number of “sermons,” a play on Horace’s term (sermones) for his satires plus an implied rebuke to the poet’s tendency to preach.
Category: Poetry
Poetry: Savage Comments on Journalists
Richard Savage, whose birthday falls in January, was a close friend of Johnson who celebrated his unfortunate life and death in prison from liver failure. This passage is from a longer satire “The Authors.” Note how brutally relevant are down to the last detail, e.g., the stupid press’s attack on inoculation and their cruelty toward the unfortunate.
Poem: “Advent Calendar” by Archbishop Rowan Williams
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould
Poems: Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
A great hymn by Charles Wesley, an Anglican minister who never abandoned the church in which he had been ordained.
Poems: Advent Sunday by Christina Rossetti
Behold, the Bridegroom cometh: go ye out
With lighted lamps and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.
Poem: “An Interlude” by Charles Algernon Swinburne
This is a poem I loved in the days I regarded myself as a cynical roué and was only a very foolish romantic.
Poem: “Adam’s Curse” by William Butler Yeats
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
