If it is not clear---this concerns the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary


To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall at al

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall et al

The breaths of sighing are time travelers
that draw one hundred fifty years up close
and reify old ghosts who will not sleep
between the pages of a history
that they created. Setting self aside,
they died with only slight regret, aware
that they would never see the end, yet knew
the glory of the OED in birth.

Look back at them, who saw ahead to us
and breathe your sighs in concert, for you are
fulfillment of their dream to prowl the earth
beyond the breadth of England, or the sea,
to hold a candle high above the page
of humankind that speaks from every age.
~




Poetry by R. Dean Ludden
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Written on 2011-07-19 at 23:06

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countryfog
Should some distant archaeologist, looking to discover who we in the West were, come across the OED he will have found the Rosetta Stone of our language and, therefore, of who we defined ourselves to be.
2011-07-20