Thread: Hidden Gems
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Unread 04-04-2017, 12:25 PM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is offline
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Melville wrote a few great poems. I like

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat—
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

and Greek Architecture, which for an incomprehensible reason has always unsettled me:

Not magnitude, not lavishness,
But Form—the Site;
Not innovating wilfulness,
But reverence for the Archetype

And surely Nabokov was jesting re: Emerson. His is the sort of literature Nabokov disliked.
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