Place de Pyramides, Paris (Daniel Frémiet)
Place de Pyramides, Paris (Daniel Frémiet)
“Si je n’y suis [en la grâce de Dieu], Dieu m’y mette; et, si j’y suis, Dieu m’y tienne! Je serais le plus dolente de monde si je savais ne pas être en la grâce de Dieu”
— Jeanne d’Arc

Today’s Feast Days

8 July

Adrian III
(c. 830–885)
Pope
Eugenius III
(c. 1080–1151)
Pope
Kilian
(c. 640–690)
Bishop, Martyr, Missionary

A poem is made of real words and real things. You start with the base physical world and your own base physical self. If some meaning or beauty comes out of it, then that is, I suppose, the wonder and relief of art. You want gold, you have to go down a mine to hack it out of the ground, you have to sweat your guts out in a filthy forge to smelt it: it doesn’t fall in gleaming sheets from the bar of heaven. You want poetry, first you have to muck in with humanity, you have to fight with paper and pencil for weeks and weeks until your head bleeds: verses aren’t channelled into your head by angels or muses or sprites of nature.

Stephen Fry (1957– )

English comedian, writer, actor, humourist, novelist, columnist, filmmaker and television personality

The Hippopotamus (1995)