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The Night before Thermopylae—“The Hot Gates”

The Night before Thermopylae— “The Hot Gates” “Phaedrus’s praise for erôs (love) as a precondition for courage employs poetic quotations from poems that in fact state that wisdom is the true precondition, and that erotic passion without thoughtfulness leads to...

Pindar on Theoxenus

      Pindar on Theoxenus   The poet Pindar focuses on love Derived from burning rays from flashing eyes Of young Theoxenus.  They are above All others.  Love in any other guise Is dimness at its best.  The sun can melt The wax of bees, can sting it with its heat....

Invisible Ivory Music

    Invisible Ivory Music   Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. ~ John Keats Herus Pamphilius claimed that Orpheus’s drifting soul, destined to be incarnated anew in some other physical form after he had died, elected to be born a swan so that he...

Centuries and Utterness Separate Them

Centuries and Utterness Separate Them Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse Salonika, where Paul and Xerxes stood, Affords a long Aegean view across To Mount Olympus.  One took on his hood Of holiness and one took on a loss Staggering in...

Sonnets

                 Sonnets Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem ……. A friend of Constable said Virgil’s sense He gained from culture drove him to presume That prime boys were “the...