I've been offline a while, personal reasons, but I'm still here, and will pick up posting soon. It will be spotty a while - related reasons. In the meantime, one of my favorite poems, up there with Jabberwocky, Ozymandias, Kublah Khan, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Tommy, MacDonough's Song, Cells, Sons of Martha, and so forth. Horatius at the Bridge Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800–1859) LARS PORSENA of Clusium, By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suf…
All posts in poetry
Vienna, Lepanto, Tours, all turning points against the encroachment of Islam that the descendants of Europe would do well to remember, and my friend the Didact has reminded us of Lepanto [http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2017/02/lepanto-by-g-k-chesterton.html], in the poem by Chesterson. This battle was not merely pivotal, but is notable as well in that the Spanish author Cervantes participated, and was badly injured. Later, having further spent five years as a slave in Algiers, he wrote Don Qui…
While I love poetry, and Kipling is by far my favorite, it’s been the Didact who not only has been posting excellent works, but has been focusing on the works and observations of this man. Go see his latest post [http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-servant-when-he-reigneth-by-rudyard.html] . Like much of Kiplings work it ponders human nature, and more broadly applies than at first glance. In a more general sense, it applies to those with no skin in the game who nevertheless wish to tell…
Few realize that Rudyard Kipling also wrote a couple of science fiction stories – *With the Night Mail [https://www.blogger.com/]*and As Easy as ABC [http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/abc.htm]. Both feature a international organization – the Aerial Board of Control – that managed all airship traffic and supressed nationalist tendencies. The second of the stories, As Easy as A. B. C.in particular deals with a a Board of Control ship supressing a democratic revolt in Chicago. It’s interest…
I sortof knew Kipling did poetry, if only because of the scraps of doggerel found in The Jungle Book and Just So Stories. Yet somehow, until nearly high school, and picking up a copy of the fourth volume of the “There Will Be War [https://infogalactic.com/info/There_Will_be_War_(series)]” series by Pournelle (because I already loved the collected short stories in “The Mercenary” and hey, the cover looked cool…), I had completely avoided discovering he was a fucking poet of the first order. And…