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The Magic of the Silver Swan. Bowes Museum, until 7 January 2024. At the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, Mark Twain was mesmerised by a life-sized silver swan with ‘a living grace about...
- Laura Gascoigne
Automata provided avenues for social criticism not only towards the absolute monarchy or the mechanization of society, but also toward the aristocracy in whose circles automata were displayed. In a play by Büchner (1813-1837), Kang points out how two (assumed) automata are described to ridicule the habits of the high society.
- Laura Tradii
The legendary ninth century Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan created moving statues. There are accounts of a marvellous mechanical man that entertained King Mu of Zhou in 10th-century China. The Ottomans produced automated birds that sang, like those in WB Yeats’s poem Sailing to Byzantium.
As ‘Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d.’ nears its end, the speaker finally decides to reveal the boy’s cause of death. Assuming the reader is listening with a “tearful eye” (17), they explain that “His soul did from this cold world fly, / By falling down a well” (19-20).
- Male
- May 13, 1994
- Poetry Analyst
You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts; battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us.
Aug 18, 2020 · In today’s audio piece I give some of the story of Emmeline’s poetic endeavor from the novel, and then sing as a folk song of the sadful death of Mr. Bots using for lyrics the example poem of Grangerford’s Twain has given us. The full text of the poem is here.
The two most popular interpretations of the poem are: it is a poem about the transition from life to death; and it is a poem about the loss of reason, a slipping into a senseless void of...
