Jazzoctopus
well, sometimes the best stuff is at the bottom of the barrel


I admire your optimism. Can you hear that really horrible sound of metal against metal---s-c-r-a-p-i-n-g?


Have you heard of James Russell Lowell? He must be an ancestor of Robert Lowell.
Well, here's what he says of a sonnet, written when he was very young:

SONNET

If some small savor creep into my rhyme
Of the old poets, if some words I use,
Neglected long, which have the lusty thews
Of that gold-haired and earnest-hearted time,
Whose loving joy and sorrow all sublime
Have given our tongue its starry eminence,--
It is not pride, God knows, but reverence
Which hath grown in me since my childhood's prime;
Wherein I feel like my poor lyre is strung
With soul-strings like to theirs, and that I have
No right to muse their holy graves among,
If I can be a custom-fettered slave,
And, in mine own true spirit, am not brave
To speak what rusheth upward to my tongue.


James Russell Lowell
(1819-1891)

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