"When the Ancients Speak"

In a lecture given at Oxford, Wilamowitz said: 'To make the ancients speak, we must feed them with our own blood.' When the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves. They tell us about us. They do that in every case in which they can be made to speak, because they tell us who we are. That is, of course, the most general point of our attempts to make them speak. They can tell us not just who we are, but who we are not: they can denounce the falsity or the partiality or the limitations of our images of ourselves. I believe they can do this for our ideas of human agency, responsibility, regret, and necessity, among others.

--Bernard Williams
from Shame and Necessity (pages 19-20)

Here's the link to the book itself from UC Press.

Clay: Figures of Speech

Exercises with models: 2008 or 2009, I believe.

Arnold: "With Noiseless Current Strong, Obscure and Deep"

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel -- below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel -- there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

--Matthew Arnold

(1869)

Robert Graves: "Arrow Shots" and Hitting The Mark

ARROW SHOTS


Only a madman could mistake,
          When shot at from behind a tree,
The whizz and thud that arrows make--
          Yours, for example, fired at me.


Some bows are drawn to blind or maim,
          I have known others drawn to kill,
But truth in love is your sole aim
          And proves your vulnerary skill.


Though often, drowsing at mid-day,
          I wince to find myself your mark,
Let me concede the hit, but say:
          "Your hand is steadiest after dark."




SHE TO HIM


To have it, sweetheart, is to know you have it
Rather than think you have it;
To think you have it is a wish to take it,
Though afterwards you would not have it--
And thus fear to take it.
Yet if you know you have it, you may take it
And know that still you have it.




THE YET UNSAYABLE


It was always fiercer, brighter, gentler than could be told
Even in words quickened by Truth's dark eye:
Its absence, whirlpool; its presence, deluge;
Its time, astonishment; its magnitude,
A murderous dagger-point.
                                            So we surrender
Our voices to the dried and scurrying leaves
And choose our own long-predetermined path
From the unsaid to the yet unsayable
In silence of love and lover's temerity.


--Robert Graves