"raptor bird, raptor bird / it's a big ol' raptor bird"

[larryhammer]

One of the more interesting Chinese-English translations to show up in a while.

A scribal error, attractively corrected. (via)

Offered without comment: "Iceland-Moss Tea."

Though I will comment on Longfellow's arrangements for the United States: of five volumes, two are devoted to New England, one to the "Middle States" of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, one to the South, being the coastal states of Maryland through Texas, and one to the West, being everything from Ohio on. I am reminded of a famous New Yorker cover depicting the world view of New Yorkers.

---L.

Comments

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

That correction is utterly splendid. I may adopt that method...

[larryhammer]

Please do. Feel free to vary it with parrots and hounds holding the rope.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

All proofreading marks used to be inserted manually by guys in blue coats---the blue coat originated in French workshop usage, of course.

[larryhammer]

Of course. Though that the coats are blue was originally a Flemish thing -- with the French spreading it more widely.

---L.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. 輕 is quite interesting. "Straight" + "cart" = light (as in not heavy).

[larryhammer]

Not what I would have expected, myself.

---L.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

If I were trying to find a previously-written poem that most exemplified the spirit of your blog, I could not do better than "Iceland-Moss Tea." Wow. Nothing makes the spirit more sprightly than a beverage concocted of blandly bitter lichens grown on the blasted, volcanic slopes of Iceland, I hear.

Where, in a word, hills vomit flame,
And storms forever lash the sea,—
There sprang this bitter moss for me,
Thence this astringent potion came.

Now I'm almost thirsty.

[larryhammer]

:-)

The author's an interesting bird, too. His Wikipedia article doesn't indicate whether he'd ever actually visited Iceland.

---L.