I'LL SEE YOU IN THE FUTURE

Off on hols after 3 hard months without a break. Boy, am I looking forward to it. So a Happy New Year to one and all, in advance. Holiday reading is Huck Finn, New Arabian Nights by RLS, Henry V (I've been reading or re-reading some of Shakespeare's plays this year - Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello, so far). I'll be happy if I get two of them finished. Also, a collection of poems by Robert Herrick (1591-1674), who's best known for "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" ("Gather ye rosebuds while ye may..."). I've been picking away at this for a couple of months now, and as ever with poetry, it's taken me a while to get what he's about, but it's coming. He can be very rude, and funny with it, as with Byron's epitaph for Castlereagh, which Yvonne quoted a while back. I daresay this one is popular among published writers:

ANOTHER [the previous poem is "To His Book"]

Who with thy leaves shall wipe (at need)
The place where swelling piles do breed:
May every ill that bites or smarts
Perplex him in his hinder parts.

Have a good one.