The only thing more awkward than getting The Talk from your parents is reading poetry written by horny old guys living in the 1700s
What about horny old ladies living in the 1600’s?
(Source: cortnan)
Showing posts tagged poetry
Picking up chicks, Viking-style:
“Soft words shall he speak and wealth he shall offer
Who longs for a maiden’s love,
And the beauty praise of the maiden bright;
He wins whose wooing is best.”
Hávamál, Stanza 92 (Henry Adams Bellows)
It’ll do.
(Source: thevirginprince)
I long for the land that is not,
For all that is, I am weary of wanting.
The moon speaks to me in silvern runes
About the land that is not.The land where all our wishes will be
wonderfully fulfilled,
The land, where all our shackles drop,
The land, where we cool our lacerated
forehead
In the lunar dew——— from the poem The Land That Is Not
by Edith Södergran
(second verse translated by Gunnar Damström
photo of Saariselkä by Timo Suominen
“
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
Rudyard Kipling, Harp Song of the Dane Women
“The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn.” (by fraley_tera)
A Centuries-Old Mystery Hidden in West Virginia University’s Rare Book Room
A Latin poem written by Elizabeth Dacre is found at the back of a 1561 edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works.
“I think it’s a particularly important find…On the one hand it’s not brain surgery. It’s not a major discovery like DNA or something. But I think I’m right in saying that we don’t have any other nonreligious Latin poetry written by a woman possibly at all—and certainly in this period. So it’s the only love poem written in Latin by a woman ever until maybe the 18th century. That’s kind of astonishing really.”
Old Norse motto generator
This is highly entertaining, at least if you are bored to start with. An old Norse motto generator, fool around and create new words of wisdom, in an old tongue.
Af bardaga er gleði, folks!
It’s like those refrigerator poetry things. My mottoes were:
ást ok mjöðr Love and mead. This is about all I ask for.
gleði er nóttu járn Gladness is iron to night (“be glad and drive back the darkness”).
af eiði er grátr From oaths comes weeping. A meme for the Noldor.
“
The fierce aurochs Vsevolod speaks:
‘My only brother, Igor,
you are my only bright light.
We are both the sons of Sviatoslav.
Brother, order the saddling of your swift steeds,
as those of mine are ready.
They were already saddled at the city of Kursk.
And my men of Kursk are famed warriors.
They were swaddled under trumpets.
They were brought up under helmets.
They were fed at lance point.
The roads are known to them.
Their bows are taut,
their quivers are open,
their sabers have been sharpened.
They race into the prairie like grey wolves,
seeking honor for themselves
and glory for their prince.’
‘My only brother, Igor,
you are my only bright light.
We are both the sons of Sviatoslav.
Brother, order the saddling of your swift steeds,
as those of mine are ready.
They were already saddled at the city of Kursk.
And my men of Kursk are famed warriors.
They were swaddled under trumpets.
They were brought up under helmets.
They were fed at lance point.
The roads are known to them.
Their bows are taut,
their quivers are open,
their sabers have been sharpened.
They race into the prairie like grey wolves,
seeking honor for themselves
and glory for their prince.’
The Lay of Igor, Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles and Tales, Serge A. Zenkovsky (ed), New York: Meridian, 1974, p. 171-2.
Considered the finest work of Kievan Rus, it was composed after Igor’s disastrous campaign against the Kumans in 1185, probably by a warrior poet in Igor’s court.
Wow… Finrod vs. Sauron, a dramatic verse reading in Italian. This makes you understand why opera is usually sung in Italian.
Portrait of Walther von der Vogelweide. From the Codex Manesse (Folio 124r).
Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170 – c. 1230) is the most celebrated of the Middle High German lyric poets.
And one of my favorites!
“…Vor dem walde, in einem tal,
tandaradei,
schoene sanc diu nahtegal.”
For a little Saturday afternoon dystopia… I enjoyed this short film interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “Ulalume.” It’s like a mixture of woodland fantasy and horror.
