Good-Bye, Boccaccio

Hello, Summer!

Yes, believe it or not our school year is over, even though winds still shake the darling buds of May. I have just posted my final grades, making Aghaveagh a free woman for the first time in weeks. It's been a month since I've last posted here; the demands of teaching and scholarship have left me little time to indulge in such pasttimes such as blogging.

E pur si muove.

Reading a hundred undergraduate papers on the geography of Dante's Inferno may have scarred me for life...certainly I see myself landing in more and more levels every year.

As for the pursuit of poetry, here's a poem by Lord Byron that is one of my favorites:

So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.


When we traveled to Greece last summer with a group of students, one of my goals was to find the spot where Byron had scratched his name onto a pillar of the Temple of Apollo at Sounion . . . alas, you cannot get very close to the temple, and at the time I didn't know where the grafitto was. O, for a pair of binoculars!

Perhaps next time. (Here's where it is, for those of you who might be going in the future, from a photo by Steven Christenson)

Interestingly enough, we found ourselves on the trail of Byron again in Sintra, Portugal. He stayed at Lawrence's Hotel in 1809. We went to look at the restaurant but it was too expensive for us academic types.

Now, finally, I can go check out what's been happening at MP's place for the last month or so.