If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.
4 comments:
Thanks, deborah.
"A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" is still my favorite John Donne poem. A master English teacher introduced me to it. I remembered him here: link
Great post about an extraordinary teacher. But I found this very disturbing:
" I recall once discussing a passage of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons And Lovers. Mr. V. read aloud:
...there was a jenny wren’s nest in the hedge by the orchard…He crouched down and carefully put his finger through the thorns into the round door of the nest. ‘It’s almost as if you were feeling inside the live body of the bird, it’s so warm.'
He stopped reading, looked up and aimed a question at one of the shyest girls in class: “Now Julie, what would a Freudian say about that?" She blushed and fell silent. Birds twittered outside the open windows and we heard traffic two blocks away on University Avenue until at long last a more outspoken student raised his hand to answer.
@Deborah: That's exactly the sort of thing the parents complained about and sought to oust him over. That's why I put that in the story -- without explaining.
At the time, the defense was that more than half the kids (especially in an advanced English class) were going to hear or experience such confrontation in college so why not introduce it early.
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