θεός νύ τις ἦ βροτός ἐσσι;

[sovay]

I like Robin Williamson's "Fool's Song (Columbine)," but I really wish he had included the verses Hope Mirrlees wrote for Lud-in-the-Mist (1926).

"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,
And Life is a nymph who will never be thine,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier,
And bon-fire,
And strawberry-wire,
And columbine."

My poem "Leukothea's Odyssey 6" has been accepted by Goblin Fruit.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful song. Beautiful.

windfalls of dreams --makes me think of Greer's Unleaving

Congratulations on the poem!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Also, what does your post's title say/sing/mean?

[ericmarin.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the Goblin Fruit sale!

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the acceptance!

The link seems to be deleted--I don't know if that's the one you intended to post or...

I've never read Lud-in-the-Mist; I need to remedy that, someday.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

I was recently loaned a copy of Lud-in-the-Mist and look forward to finally reading it; I am glad to read the verses you quote, but even more so to read "Homeric Hymn to Demophoon". I am more than a little awed by it -- I feel that my first reading barely scratched its depths. I must with some shyness confess to being woefully underread not only in classical poetry but virtually in poetry's entire arc. I've read some Hebrew poetry and Shakespeare and bits of Poe and Crane and Eliot and Auden and Hacker and Kinnell -- and not much else save oddments of English greats, and none of it enough for deep intimacy. I feel I still lack many of the tools or better the properly sharpened sensibilities to read you aright. And yet phrases like (but of course no two are alike) "threshings of godhead" and lines like (and otherwise) "the smart of pennyroyal on his tongue like a word / he had forgotten to say" are deeply thrilling and light up the palace of possiblity in new ways, flicker through scrims of gem and leaf. I shall return. Have you written of the poem's background or constellations of allusion? But that's for critics to write of, or so some would say. Anyway I shall return.

Congratulations on the placement of the new poem.