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Mad, bad, and dangerous to know... George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born today in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1788. Lame and bisexual, he had a miserable childhood, and left Britain as a young man to travel the eastern Mediterranean. He wrote a long poem about that trip,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and it made him an overnight success... success which he handled badly. Eventually his scandalous life made it dangerous for him to remain in Britain, and he fled to Italy, where he died at 36, deeply involved in the cause of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire and still working on his final poem,
Don Juan (which, in true English fashion, is pronounced Don Joo-an - as we see from the very first stanza, where it rhymes with "true one" and "new one".)
Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos
IF, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!
If, when the wintry tempest roar'd,
He sped to Hero, nothing loth,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!
For
me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat today.
But since he cross'd the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo, -- and -- Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;
'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest;
For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.
Labels: birthdays, poetry
5 Comments:
Yeah, but at least the series that was available to me left things off right in the middle: we'd found out about the bad guys chasing after his brother, and we get the idea that his brother might be alive after all, and.........
What's next? Is there more? Or did they abandon it at that point?
There is a second series; amazon.co.uk recommended it to me and I shall buy it once I get back to Maryland.
Cool! And they have a region 1 version (or you have a hacked DVD player)?
What I have is a multi-region DVD player that I bought off Amazon Marketplace. It came set for all regions - pre-hacked, I guess. About $70, if I remember.
Не первый раз уже подымалась эта тема на других сайтах но здесь лучше описанно чем у других, а вообще меньше думайте - а то медицина не поможет
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