Before Conrad Aiken was the U.S. Poet Laureate or the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal, and the National Medal for Literature, he was a young boy growing up on Oglethorpe Avenue in Savannah, Ga.
Snap. A warm glow dies and The room is dusty dark. Liquid specimens peer out From their jars. Creatures freeze mid-pounce. This curious collection, This unusual ark Neatly labeled and sorted. Cases of Marrakech brown And panels of wavy, Worn glass. Fingering the new pocket watch, A gift of brushed trinket gold, He was their…
Excerpted from Beowulf (modern English translation) BY ANONYMOUS TRANSLATED BY FRANCES B. GRUMMERE LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst…
On Fatalism BY THE IMAM SHAFAY MOHAMMED BEN IDRIS (767 – 840 CE) Not always wealth, not always force, A splendid destiny commands; The lordly vulture gnaws the corse That rots upon yon barren sands. Nor want nor weakness still conspires To bind us to a sordid state; The fly, that with a touch expires,…
The Land of Nod BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON From Breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do– All alone beside the streams And…