Meditation on a Bone

A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend’s detestable wife; better she should be a widow.

Words scored upon a bone,

Scratched in despair or rage —

Nine hundred years have gone;

Now, in another age,

They burn with passion on

A scholar’s tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen

And turns the bone about,

And writes those words again.

Once more they seethe and shout

And through a human brain

Undying hate rings out.

“I loved her when a maid;

I loathe and love the wife

That warms another’s bed:

Let him beware his life!”

The scholar’s hand is stayed;

His pen becomes a knife

To grave in living bone

The fierce archaic cry.

He sits and reads his own

Dull sum of misery.

A thousand years have flown

Before that ink is dry.

And, in a foreign tongue,

A man, who is not he,

Reads and his heart is wrung

This ancient grief to see,

And thinks: When I am dung,

What bone shall speak for me?

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Poems in English 

• A Riddle Song. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• A Song. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• A Glimpse. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• An Old Man’s Thought of School. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Perfections. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, I Heard the Mother of All. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Patroling Barnegat. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Passage to India. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Ox Tamer, The. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Over the Carnage. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Out from Behind this Mask. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Others may Praise what They Like. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• Or from that Sea of Time. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• One Sweeps By. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
• One Song, America, Before I Go. by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman

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Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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