Tree-tufted islands
Trees as tufts - trying to imagine how they would look. I imagine wind-blown short trees, dwarfed and compacted by...
Secret-seeming combe
'Secret-seeming' promises quiet landings of a boat shingling onto a beach, or morning departures. 'Combe' is curious in the context...
Nestor berates the Greeks
Old Nestor has a few choice words to say to his fellow Greeks for their unwillingness to take on the...
Heart-breaking hostilities
Homer's Iliad pulsates with war and violence, sometimes wrapped in glory but often shrouded as much in sorrow. Here, hostility and quarrel...
Broad-leaved sycamores and weary-hearted women
George Eliot writes sensitively and movingly of the early manifestation of Methodism. She wrote Adam Bede around 1850 but set...
That’s no way to speak to God
Here we have Helen’s cuckolded husband Menalaus screaming at God in the most colourful terms. I like the idea of...
Over-wrought fretwork
A damning description of Victorian writing, contrasted with the delicious sizzle and flavour of 'fat-bacon language'.
'After the fat-bacon language...
Dungeon-like gloom
This gloom was no doubt accentuated by the blinding brilliance outside, and may even have been a soothing balm to...
Sheet-smooth beaches
Yes, brown hours spent in a place of rippling reefs and sheet-smooth beaches, the sea washing the shore and cleaning...
Honeyed hope
Sounds lovely, although Erasmus uses it to refer to the hare-brained gold, elixir or immortality quests of alchemists. One more...
Mastiff-like tenacity
Such jaw-gripping tenacity is used to describe the force that the ending '-cious' adds to words, as in the word...
Worm-channered posts
This suggests woodworm tunneled posts and I imagine that 'channered' refers to the tiny channels they carve on the surface...
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