Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Show Me One In A Yeats Poem, And We'll Talk

One expert's idea of the 100 most beautiful words in English. Potamophilous? Blandiloquent? I eschew most of them.

3 comments:

John Whittaker said...

As a logophile myself, I generally like sesquipedalian people and pursuits. In this case, I can't say that a best words list subjectively evaluated by any one individual is interesting.

Best,

J.

Fr. John said...

Thanks, John. My idea of beautiful words:

"I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree

"And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made

"And I will have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow

"Dropping on the veils of the morning, to where the cricket sings."

Or, perhaps:

"We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done; and there is no health in us."

Thanks for reading my blog!

Blessings.

J+

John Whittaker said...

Indeed beautiful... Yeats is a master.

While we're chatting poetry, I generally prefer the Romantic to 20th Century or Victorian period, but I recently read Pied Beauty. Written in a time very similar to our own when great advancement in science was causing some to look at nature and doubt the existence of God, Hopkin's did the same and found him:


Glory be to God for dappled things

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.