obsidian

“Glass itself is older than man, as old as the earth. The first glass was fused in the fires that built the continents, natural glass formed from masses of silica by volcanic action; chemically, it is very much the same as manufactured glass. A most common natural glass is obsidian; there is an entire mountain of it in Yellowstone Park. Usually black and translucent, obsidian can easily be chipped or flaked into long, sharp pieces. Over 25,000 years ago, men fashioned these pieces into weapons and tools; in time, mirrors, jewelry, and even ceremonial masks were carved or ground from this hard natural glass.”

—from The Corning Glass Center, a beautiful hard-cover souvenier book published by Corning Glass Works in 1958. Penned by perhaps the first anonymous corporate technical writer in New York State history—no writer or editor is mentioned.

wings of mellow green

“The green woodpecker flying up and down
With wings of mellow green and speckled crown”

—John Clare, the opening lines of The Green Woodpecker’s Nest. The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

A fashionless Delight

“It’s like the Light
A fashionless Delight
It’s like the Bee
A dateles Melody”

—Emily Dickenson, “It’s like the Light”. The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

my scarlet ladybird

“Come back, my scarlet ladybird,
Back from far away;
I weary of my dolly wife,
My wife that cannot play.

She’s such a senseless wooden thing
She stares the livelong day;
Her wig of gold is stiff and cold
And cannot change to grey.”

—Christina Rossetti, from I caught a little ladybird. The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

the greene fresh fading withered rose

“Like to the thund’ring tone of unspoke speeches, . . .
Or like the gray freeze of a crimson cat, . . .
Or like a shadow when the sunne is gone, . . .

Like to the greene fresh fading withered rose, . . .
Even such is man, who dy’d and then did laffe
To see such strange lines writ on’s Epitaph.”

—Richard Corbett, from Nonsense. The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

the voice from the grave

“For the voice from the grave reverberates in others’ mouths, as the sails
Of the whitethorn hedge swell up in a little breeze, and tremble,
Like the spiral blossom of Andromeda: so suddenly are shrouds and branches
Hung with street-lights, celebrating all that’s lost, as fields are reclaimed
By the Starry Plough. So we name the constellations, to put a shape
On what was there; so, the storyteller picks his way between the isolated stars.”

—Ciaran Carson, from Hamlet. The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

white sheep white sheep

“White sheep white sheep on a blue hill
when the wind stops you all stand still
when the wind blows you run away slow
white sheep white sheep where do you go?”

(To bed.)

—anonymous, a riddle from The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

riddle me that

“The land was white
the seed was black
it’ll take a good scholar
to riddle me that”

(Paper and pen.)

—anonymous, another riddle, The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse, edited by Tom Paulin, 1988.

Gold paint

“She’s dead. Covered in paint. Gold paint.”

—Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger, 1964.

the deeds of light

“Colors are the deeds of light, what it does and what it endures.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from his Farbenlehre, or Theory of Color, 1808. Translated and edited Douglas Miller, 1988. Miller notes that “endures” could also be read in German as “suffers.” I love that. That is so German.