Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta
General
Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta
Literary curiosa; Literature -- Dictionaries
Roma ibi tibi sedes—ibi tibi Amor;
Roma etsi te terret et iste Amor,
Ibi etsi vis te non esse—sed es ibi,
Roma te tenet et Amor.
At Rome you live—at Rome you love;
From Rome that love may you affright,
Although you’d leave, you never move,
For love and Rome both bar your flight.
Dean Swift wrote a letter to Dr. Sheridan, composed of Latin words
strung together as mere gibberish but each word, when read backwards,
makes passable English. Take for example the following short sentences:—
Mi Sana. Odioso ni mus rem. Moto ima os illud dama nam? (I’m an ass. O
so I do in summer. O Tom, am I so dull, I a mad man?)
Inscription for a hospital, paraphrased from the Psalms:—
Acide me malo, sed non desola me, medica.
The ingenious Latin verses subjoined are reversible verbally only, not
literally, and will be found to embody opposite meanings by commencing
with the last word and reading backwards:—
Prospicimus modo, quod durabunt tempore longo,
Fœdera, nec patriæ pax cito diffugiet.
Diffugiet cito pax patriæ, nec fœdera longo,
Tempore durabunt, quod modo prospicimus.
The following hexameter from Santa Marca Novella, Florence, refers to
the sacrifice of Abel (Gen. iv. 4). Reversed, it is a pentameter, and
refers to the sacrifice of Cain (iv. 3).
Sacrum pingue dabo non macram sacrificabo,
Sacrificabo macram non dabo pingue sacrum.
The subjoined distich arose from the following circumstance. A tutor,
after having explained to his class one of the odes of Horace, undertook
to dictate the same in hexameter verses, as an exercise (as he said). It
cost him considerable trouble: he hesitated several times, and
occasionally substituted other words, but finally succeeded. Some of his
scholars thought he would not accomplish his task; others maintained
that, having begun, it was a point of honor to complete it.
Retro mente labo, non metro continuabo;
Continuabo metro; non labo mente retro.
Addison mentions an epigram called the _Witches’ Prayer_, that “fell
into verse when it was read either backward or forward, excepting only
that it cursed one way, and blessed the other.”
One of the most remarkable palindromes on record is the following. Its
distinguishing peculiarity is that the first letter of each successive
word unites to spell the first word; the second letter of each, the
second word; and so on throughout; and the same will be found precisely
true on reversal.
SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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