Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Letter X


The letter X in all it's various forms through history.  I put every X word in the dictionary behind the letters and used the color yellow, because the word xanth means yellow.


"A shrewish, tart-tongued woman is often called a Xanthippe, after the wife of Socrates, who filed this bill of particulars in a spectacularly venomous fashion."
~Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins

I couldn't help myself!  
I will leave you with this poem.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Have an eXciting day!

8 comments:

  1. Xanthippe was an answer on Jeopardy! recently. Answer meaning question meaning the contestant had to ask the question "Who is Socrates?". That show can be confusing!
    Jen Hemming and Hawing Again

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  2. The letter X is interesting! Thanks for sharing this!...Daniel

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  3. Cool idea with the letter X artwork. Confess that I loathed the movie Xanadu but like the poem :)

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  4. And here I had no idea the Phoenicians had such odd-looking Xs (or that they had an X at all, for that matter). And thanks for sharing the Coleridge; it had been ages since I'd read Kubla Khan, and I'd forgotten how much I liked it.

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  5. What an awesome X post...great artwork, and a cool poem too. Love it!

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  6. Jen, I agree, I could never be a contestant on there. I don't have that great of a memory to keep up with all the info they have to store in their brains.
    Daniel, thanks. I was really at a loss for the letter X.
    Thanks Li, I confess, I've never seen the whole movie, just bits and pieces, there's a reason for that...haha. I had to put it up, for the sheer cheesyness of it.
    Thanks Diane. :)
    Indeed Nate. I really liked the poem and it was fitting for Xanadu. The info of the letters, came from one of our dictionaries.
    Rasz, thank you! It was very last minute, I really threw it together.
    Hope you all had a wonderful day!

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  7. love this - love the poem that had wandered through my x-crazed eyes before but oh it is a good one...

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