The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by steve:

When I consider how my cash is lent
At paltry interest, in a neighboring state,
Full thirty million which I cannot wait
To get my hands on, so it can be spent,
I justly rage, and write you to present
My true account, so that my son's dark fate,
Imprisoned in Abuja, will not bate
The safety of my family, nor prevent
The timely use of my late husband's wealth.
I beg of you to do your very best
And reap your fair percentage: give a damn
And profit. Lo, my daughter comes by stealth
While I post o'er the ether without rest:
They also serve who only sit and spam.

But first Mrs. Miriam Abacha came, our friend Mrs. Miriam Abacha,
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
"Mrs. Miriam Abacha, how art thou come to this dark coast?
"Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
     And she in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and the present civilian regime. I slept in Kano State of Nigeria.
"My son Mohammed is undergoing trial in Oputa Panel Lagos and Abuja.
"But thou, O reader, I bid remember me, in distress and under house arrest,
"Receive this money, secure this money fast, you will be well compensate:
"A man of fortune, with Thirty million US Dollars to come.
"My daughter will provide all necessary details."

there's actually a good reason the French, historically, have seen the need for such a thing

For "the French" read "the French government." And yes, I know most people buy into the equation of themselves with their government; it's the tragedy of humanity.

I just want to put in a plug for Travels in Arabia Deserta, by Charles M. Doughty, which I was glad to see Gilman mention; its stern but lush prose style is an acquired taste, but once you acquire it you can get sucked in for weeks (which is a good thing, because it takes weeks to read). There's a brief sample available here:

"The Derb el-Haj is no made road, but here a multitude of cattle-paths beaten hollow by the camels' tread, in the marching thus once in the year, of so many generations of the motley pilgrimage over this waste. Such many equal paths lying together one of the ancient Arabian poets has compared to the bars of the rayed Arabic mantle. Commonly a shot is heard near mid-day, the signal to halt; we have then a short resting-while, but the beasts are not unloaded and remain standing. Men alight and the more devout bow down their faces to say the canonical prayer towards Mecca. Our halt is twenty minutes; some days it is less or even omitted, as the Pasha has deemed expedient, and in easy marches may be lengthened to forty minutes. 'The Pasha (say the caravaners) is our Sooltan'..."

MacDiarmid probably started it - whole chunks of "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" are (fairly loose, I suspect) translations of Russian poems

Fairly loose, but more importantly superb -- his versions of Blok are the best I know of in English.

Still waiting to hear from Shelly...

This is all so wonderful I can hardly stand it. And by dint of trying to figure out Shelly's strange sentence, I discovered an online version of Bosworth and Toller's 1898 Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, which went straight onto my sidebar. But I'm still puzzled. Shelly, what is that question? None of the words are in the text of the Colloquy; is it your creation? What does it mean? (The only question in the Colloquy that fits your context is asked by the teacher in line 123: Ic ahsige eow, forhwi swa geornlice leorni ge?)

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