Some Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstacy.

Certainty, fidelity
on the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness till you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

-W.H. Auden-

Yule Tide Cheer

Christmas was most bountiful this year. Here are a few of the gifts I received:

1) A pair of monogrammed cufflinks. Many thanks to Madre, and the good people at Tiffany's.

2) Cash money. Mammonism always becomes a temptation around this time of year.

3) A two-volume OED. Way munificent.

I Should Have Said This in That Last Post. . .

Be sure to drink lots of eggnog and watch "It's a Wonderful Life."

If You Read This. . .

Merry Christmas, Et Pax Vobiscum.

Currently Playing

"I Am Legend" is two hours well spent. Will Smith does a good job pulling off a role which includes no verbal interaction with anyone except a dog for the first hour and a half. Also, as memory serves, the first symbolically Christian zombie flick that I have ever seen.

On the Death of a Metaphysician

Unhappy dreamer, who outwinged in flight
The pleasant region of the things I love,
And soared beyond the sunshine, and above
The golden cornfields and the dear and bright
Warmth of the earth- blasphemer of delight,
Was your proud bosom not at rest with Jove,
That you sought, thankless for his guarded grove,
The empty horror of abysmal night?
Ah, the thin air is cold above the moon!
I stood and saw you fall, befooled in death,
As, in your numbed spirit's fatal swoon,
You cried you were a god, or were to be;
I heard with feeble moan your boastful breath
Bubble from the depths of the Icarian sea.

-George Santayana-

The Most/Least Desirable Women in Fiction

Accentuating the Positives First:

1. Penelope- Always found her attractive not only because of her loyalty and looks, but because she is just ambiguous enough to be psychologically captivating.

2. Imogen- Forceful yet yielding. A character sufficiently strong not to be a mere ornament, a la Hero, while not quite as blustery as Beatrice.

3. Rosalind- Along with No. 2, the most magnetic of Shakespeare's heroines.

4. Jane Bennett- Contrary to popular belief, Elizabeth is overrated and feisty. Jane is where it's at.

5. Calypso- Hard to reconcile with No. 1, but I think it would be pretty hot.

And the Not So Fines:

1. Clytemnestra: Authoress of the original Shower Scene. Need I say more?

2. Guinivere, Helen of Troy, Emma Bovary, Anna Keranina: All hot, but adultery has a way of killing the ratings.

3. Captain Ahab's Wife- She only appears in one sentence in the entire book, but any woman to whom whale-hunting is preferrable can't be such great shakes.

4. Beatrice, Gloriana, Una- Symbolic and ethereal women have a way of not offering much on the physical side of matrimony.

5. Bathsheba Everdean (of "Far from the Madding Crowd")- Something about her name bothers me. Mostly though, I just don't like her.