The Saxon Spirit in a Modern Age: Kipling’s The Norman and the Saxon

Rudyard Kipling’s The Norman and the Saxon is a poem steeped in history, but it also serves as a stark and prophetic warning. On the surface, it appears to be a study of the differences between the Norman conquerors and the Saxons they subdued, but beneath the historical veneer lies a commentary on resilience, justice, … Continue reading The Saxon Spirit in a Modern Age: Kipling’s The Norman and the Saxon

Tending Life’s Garden: A Reflection on Christina Rossetti’s Warning

Christina Rossetti - she always did have a knack for wrapping melancholy in silk and leaving us to untangle the knots. Her poem here, with its mournful musings and botanical regrets, is no exception. It’s a lament, to be sure, but one that blooms with quiet beauty even as it wilts under the frost of … Continue reading Tending Life’s Garden: A Reflection on Christina Rossetti’s Warning

The Power of the Classics: Enoch Powell and the Legacy of Political Rhetoric

It has always struck me as curious that, in an age where fewer and fewer people read the great works of antiquity, classical literature still finds its way into the mouths of politicians. Like incantations spoken in a dead language, these references - often half-remembered, plucked from history like ripe fruit - are meant not … Continue reading The Power of the Classics: Enoch Powell and the Legacy of Political Rhetoric

T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding & The Waste Land

T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding is the grand finale of Four Quartets, a poem of spiritual reckoning and renewal that reads like a soul’s dark night before the dawn. It is a tapestry woven with threads of history, theology, and poetry, each stitch pulling the reader deeper into Eliot’s meditative vision of time, suffering, and redemption. The poem … Continue reading T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding & The Waste Land

Waking into Winter: Regret and Ruin in Rossetti’s A Daughter of Eve

Christina Rossetti’s A Daughter of Eve is a lamentation in miniature, a bitter draught distilled into three stanzas, each drop heavy with regret. It is the wail of one who has slept too long beneath a summer sun and awoken to find the warmth fled, the landscape altered beyond retrieval. The speaker’s grief is not loud but … Continue reading Waking into Winter: Regret and Ruin in Rossetti’s A Daughter of Eve