From the Anglo-Saxon mists to the suicidal Thomas, everything is in the museum of its vindications; Executed nobles who, before going up to the scaffold, invented the unrhymed hendecasyllable that Shakespeare consecrated, like the good Earl of Surrey; the precious Lyly; the splendor of Marlowe; Sidney, who died in battle and who raised a northern Laura; the adventurer Ralegh who honored the seas with his flag and the scaffold with his pride; the cunning Wotton; Milton, the relentless loner of Horton, or that other Puritan, Andrew Marvel; the illuminated Blake; the glory of Wordsworth and Coleridge; the greatness of the one whose name is written in the water and the one of Shelley, that next to him rests in Rome; the aristocratic Hellenist Arnold; the radiant heathen, Charles Swinburne; the nobility of Stevenson; Edward Fitzgerald; the light of Yeats; the Georgian De la Mare; the invio...read more
