Wordsworth and Watercolors

  — Poetry Month — Ancient Greek Song of Exile,  Felicia Hemans First published 1823,  The New Monthly Magazine Later published 1825, The Forest Sanctuary, and Other Poems                                                             Felicia Dorothea Hemans (née Browne)  was a Late Romantic poet very popular in her time both in Britain and in the United States, sales coming in second to Lord Byron, and is still admired today. She was born in Liverpool on the 25th of September in 1793. She moved with her family to a cottage on the grounds of Gwrych Castle in Wales in 1800, where she lived until the age of sixteen when they moved to Bronwylfa, St. Asaph, in Flintshire. Her first volume of poetry, Poems , was published in 1808, when she was just fourteen years old; it was dedicated to the Prince of Wales. The work was notice...

The spin has spun and hasnae gone agley with: #17, Kidnapped , by Robert Louis Stevenson Och, we'll have a braw time! *  *  *  *  *  * A Somber Sonnet of Sunless Things On a dark and dreary night, When all living things lie still,— When awakes cold hollow Death, And Prudence flees in darkened fear, And Sorrow sleeps with one eye op'd, And Slumber w ith a frost-burn torch Slyly mutters  memento mori — Then must all who look on pages bound— Inky companions: even they— Prepare a  c reepy Classics Club Anthology of spinning books, Spelling out their company By number—always twenty! (The hyphens make it Gothic.) Huzzah for another Classics Club Spin ! I have not reviewed #41 , Lyrical Ballads , but needless to say it was a much adored spin.   For a reason which I can only suppose to be Hallowe'en I've written a poem for this one, of dubious clarity and meter. The books I've ended up with are all ones I'd love to read right about now! To say that the sp...

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells Published 1895 Classics Club Review #6/ 50 IAN:  I'd set the class a problem with A, B, and C as the three dimensions. . . . . [ Flashback ] SUSAN:  It's impossible unless you use D and E! IAN:  D and E? Whatever for? Do the problem that's set, Susan. SUSAN:  I can't, Mr. Chesterton—you can't simply work on three of the dimensions. IAN:  Three of them? Oh, Time being the fourth, I suppose. Then what do you need E for? What do you make the fifth dimension? SUSAN:  Space.     Doctor Who, "An Unearthly Child", 1963 Episode written by Anthony Coburn ("Spoilers!") The opening scene of the novella, in which "the Time Traveller" gives us a lecture on the reality of physics, reminded me of Susan Foreman's frustrated near-breakdown in this first episode of Doctor Who—though I recognize that Susan and the Traveller are saying slightly different things.  Also, the flickering and the rush of wind as the model mac...

"We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things." — Dracula , Bram Stoker A little time after creating my Classics Club List I began to ponder the titles I'd included, to muse upon the genres, to think of myself submerged in their atmospheres, and discovered an in-and-of-itself disturbing lack of . . . disturbance . The du Mauriers, Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë,—where Mrs. Radcliffe? M. R. James? Where Gorey and Poe? I then peered inwards: what, as Catherine Morland and her friends would say, horrid novels did I know of? Disgusted, I determined to create (with no particular chronological guidelines) A To-Be-Read List of Gothic Tomes, Horrific Tales, Eerie Mysteries, & Unsettling Volumes Date Created: August 2nd, 2025 1/50 1. "A Ghost Story For Christmas" Stories, Various — ongoing 2. Trilby , George du Maurier 3. Rebecca , Daphne du Maurier 4. Mrs. de Winter , Susan Hill 5. "Jamaica I...

I am impatient as the wind to begin reading, as joy is all I feel upon spinning, number 11: Lyrical Ballads , by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Now: to find some laudanum and a large, white seabird . . . A NEW SPIN LIST! You spin me right round, baby, right round . . . We wait 'til next Sunday to settle into another great Spin —the fifth since I began Clubbing!—hopefully to finish. Here is my list; all I know is that to me these books look like they're lots of fun! Good luck to all! 1. North and South , Elizabeth Gaskell 2. Greyfriars Bobby , Eleanor Atkinson 3. The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki 4. Rob Roy , Sir Walter Scott 5. Agnes Grey , Anne Brontë 6. Gulliver's Travels , Jonathan Swift 7. Trilby , George du Maurier 8. The Warden , Anthony Trollope 9. The Mystery of Edwin Drood , Charles Dickens 10. Rebecca , Daphne du Maurier 11. Lyrical Ballads , William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge 12. Brideshead Revisited , Evelyn Waugh...