How strange a thing to think upon:
Whilst we sit here with pipes and wine
This world of ours goes roving on
Where stars and planets shine.
And round and round and round and round
This brave old ball, still out and in—
Whilst we sit still on solid ground—
Doth spin and spin and spin.
And, whilst we're glad with pipes and wine,
We travel leagues and leagues of space:
Our arbour's trellised with the vine,
Our host's a jocund face.
Yet on and on and on
This brave old ball spins in and out:
Why, here's a thing to think upon
And make a song about.
Ho, landlord, bring new wine along
And fill us each another cup.
We're minded to give out a song.
My journey, mates; stand up.
For round and round and round and round
This noble ball doth spin and spin.
And 'twixt the firmament and ground
Doth bear us and our sin.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, June 05, 2012
How Strange a Thing
Ford Madox Hueffer, aka Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939), How Strange a Thing, in his Collected Poems (London: Martin Secker, 1916), p. 86: