Thursday 19 June 2014

On Travel and Tourism: For What Good End? Weymouth Poet, Spirit-Rapper


From "For What Good End?", a poem by Thomas Love Peacock:

Spirit-Rapper: 

'Men are become as birds', and skim like swallows
The surface of the world.

Gryllus: For what good end?

Spirit-Rapper:

The end is in itself - the end of skimming
The surface of the world.

******

Note: I thought for a moment that Weymouth-born Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), a friend of Shelley, was well ahead of his time with his "spirit-rapper".

Then I found out that a "Spirit-Rapper" referred to a medium who “conversed” with spirits who replied by knocking on a table. The spirit-rappers were apparently easily exposed as the ones doing the knocking...

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