work as if you live in the early days of a better nation
as performed by the flite speech synthesizer and some shell scripts
Not quite as good as having the late Prof. Morgan recite it to you himself — one of the few high points of my school experience — but you take what you can get in this economy.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
*** FORTRAN STOP
I’m of an age that I had to learn to recite Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty at school, on several different occasions. I did not excel at learning poems by heart; at least, not the ones I was told to learn. I have a difficult relationship with the poem, you could say.
So when my mother-in-law asked for me to recite it for her daily poetry readings (and knowing full well what she would get), I said yes. Here’s something like what she got:
It’s a great poem, but one that should never be inflicted on a teenage boy. Yer man GMH was quite the one for making up words: brinded isn’t a thing, and I dunno what happened with the accents on ‘áll trádes’, but they’ve gone well into the twee zone. And as for ‘trout that swim’: is there any other kind, Gerry? Mibbee there’s ones that fly where you’re from, but they’re all strictly aquatic here.
There is somewhere an abandoned house
With cracked walls and sagging roof
In its yard the grass unmown
Unswept dust the door unmoved
Guarded by a dog
A small forgotten man
With unshaven beard and unkempt hair
Paces back and forth like a madman
Lost face hope abandoned
Looking for his dog
— Eqrem Basha, “Introduction to the meaning of solitudeâ€