A little trial balloon:

Listen! The Spear-Danes in olden times:
we've heard about the glories of those kings,
princes that did deeds of valour then.
Scyld of the Sheaf line – often from enemy warbands,
many nations of them, he tore away their mead benches,
terrorized their fighters, from the time he was first found,
a helpless child. Fortune made it up to him,
he grew up beneath the skies, earned honours,
to the point that every one of the peoples settled round about,
across the whales' roads, was obliged to obey him,
yield tribute – that was a good king for you!

Horace, Odes 1, 22

A man who's pure in thought and deed
Of dangers, Fuscus, takes no heed,
No poisoned arrows will he need,
No bow or quiver.

Whether by Syrtis' surging shore
His way should take him, or the roar
Of torrents that from Caucasus pour:
Hydaspes' river.

In Sabine woods I wandered free
And warbled about Lalage:
A grey wolf took one glance at me
And ducked for cover.

As fierce as any lion you'd meet
That sucked on Libya's barren teat,
It cowered in abashed retreat
Before a lover.

Stuck on some treeless northern plain
If Fate should tell me to remain
While sad-sack Jove pours down the rain
Forever after,

Or in the land where Phoebus' car
Swoops down too low, and houses char,
I'll love her still, however far -
Her voice and laughter.

A couple of years ago, after a service in the University Church in Oxford, I wrote:
'Reflected on forms of prayer – whether reiteration of formulas helps straighten the mind and iron out kinks. Must read what Johnson says on subject. Good literature does the same thing, I think, but more slowly and you have to be exposed to it. Perhaps long exposure of English to Prayer Book liturgy has done something for them, because I think that as people go they are a fairly sane lot.'
Now I read this in New Scientist (May 11, 2013):

‘Feeling run-down? Try a little chanting or meditation – yes, really. Such relaxation techniques can boost the activity of genes that promote good health, and a few minutes each day is enough to show results.’

Yet the benefits, though apparently real, seem to flow only to the practitioner: adherents of religions emphasizing the repetition of rituals or meditation are as prone as anyone to violence against their fellow-person.

Emphasis on the content, rather than the form, of religious observance, while it might do less for you, might do more for others.

Some thoughts about the narrative structure of My Neighbour Totoro (Studio Ghibli 1988):

We open on S2, the new place. It often entails separation from parents, and here, of course, it is separation from the mother that is at issue. It’s a place where everything awaits discovery, but there are images of death as well – the bottle in the limpid stream, the decayed woodwork, the rubbish under the house. The girls’ father, I think, plays the role of King, while the old grandmother is a mentor. There should be an easy task to make the transition to the next phase – perhaps the father’s instruction to the girls in the bath to laugh off the frightening aspect of natural phenomena is it. This phase concludes with their visit to the hospital on the bicycle and the news that their mother will be better soon. The role of Hero is distributed between the two girls here, though Mei is the primary focus.
The garden, a, begins the next day, which opens with the image of the camphor tree. Mei gathers flowers after Satsuki has gone to school, and is led in due course into Totoro’s sanctuary in the heart of the tree. The flowers, ferns and butterflies emphasize the idyllic setting, echoed in the outer world by the landscape through which Satsuki is seen returning from school. Later the father explains the tutelary role of the tree, and the day, and phase, close with Totoro sitting atop the tree in the moonlight. Totoro is clearly Princess here, while Mei is Hero.
The next phase is transitional. We would expect a difficult journey, and what we get is a troubled journey both for the girls – Mei runs away to the school, the two sisters make their way home in the rain, and for their father, who misses the train and isn’t on the expected bus. Totoro makes an early appearance as Donor, giving the girls the bundle of acorns which lead to the dream-sequence promise of protection, ending with Totoro and the girls perched on the camphor tree. In the morning, an image of birth, the acorns have sprouted.
The wilderness, $, begins with the arrival of the telegram. The children are gathering vegetables with the old woman, who as Donor gives Mei the valuable token of the cob of corn which is an assurance of health for her mother. But when Mei, desperate to find her mother, becomes lost, not once but twice, Satsuki takes over the role of Hero and her search for Mei is the difficult task. She invokes the aid of Totoro (Donor), and with the cat bus (Helper) finds Mei and is reassured that their mother will be well. The final sequences reassure us that we have arrived at the city (S1). This often involves a reunion, or the forging of a new relationship, with parents – we have the girls’ mother arriving at their new house in a taxi, and the three of them in the bath together, but also images of the girls playing with the neighbourhood children. They are part of a new society now.

improvised during a waking moment at some early hour:

My love is like a candle
That someone set alight.

My love is like a boxing glove
That's useful in a fight.

My love is like a towel
That's neither wet nor dry.

My love is like an extra lens
Implanted in the eye.

Any reference to a living person? Who knows?

A rant or a raunt

Something I often find surprising is how otherwise well-informed people, when called on to read Middle English – as well-informed people so often are – will fall into a cultural cringe when faced with a word of French origin such as 'gentil' and come out with something like [jontil], or, worse still, [ʒontil] (excuse my phonetics – they're the symbols I find convenient, and pretty transparent, I would have thought).
A quick breeze through any of the Canterbury Tales would make it clear that Chaucer doesn't rhyme French e+nasal+consonant with French a+nasal+consonant: e.g. 'apparence' wouldn't rhyme with 'da(u)nce)' – but on the other hand French e+nasal+consonant does rhyme with OE-derived e+nasal+consonant: thus 'rente' with 'wente'.
The fact is, of course, that the vowels e and a before a nasal didn't merge in northern and western French as they did from about C11 in central French – and the English French vocabulary owes more in this respect to the provincial pronunciation.
Now it's true that we do have loans from central French that show the merger: e.g. 'ensaumple', but in such cases the resulting vowel is spelt a(u) in English. There's also the complicating factor that in Anglo-Norman many verbs were transferred to the -er conjugation – hence 'defendant' rather than 'defendent'. In the case of 'jaunty' from central French 'gentil' the lack of the final consonant  in the English word is enough to mark it as a late borrowing.

In mainstream English, however, French e+N+C (you understand the symbolism) gives English e+N+C (and I'd guess that for semi-learned forms like 'sentence' the current rponunciation of Latin would have played a role. French a+N+C, on the other hand, gives a+N+C, or when stressed au+N+C. Hence French 'lande' > Modern English 'lawn'.

One might reflect that French i+N+C also gives English i+N+C, e.g. 'prince'.

So, Middle English 'gentil' should for preference be sounded as [jentil] – though it's always possible that a 14th century English person wanting to show off their 'French of Paris' might introduce the foreign sound.

See, on this subject, Pope: From Latin to Modern French.

The Aeneid

I have just been rereading the Aeneid: it seems to me that it consists of two narrative series, each of the form S₂ : a : $ : S₁. The first occupies Books I-V, the second Books VI-XII. Aeneas seems to me a rather different character in the two parts – in the first the intervention of Venus is more frequent and more direct, Aeneas more frail and more human. In the second Aeneas is more the Man of Destiny.

Perhaps I am slow to catch on, but it occurs to me as a later thought that Books I-V are Vergil’s answer to the Odyssey, and VI-XII to the Iliad: the first phase a romance, the second a typological narrative (V has interesting parallels with Odyssey XXIV, the funeral games recalling the contests among the suitors, the defection of the women the fate meted out to Penelope’s serving girls).

An interesting thing about the second phase of the poem is that Aeneas only appears in the even-numbered books. These can be considered as successive stages in the narrative, in all of which Aeneas plays the role of Hero, while the odd-numbered books can be considered transitional between the stages.

In Book VI the psychopomp role is played by the Sybil, obviously, while the shade of Anchises is King.

Book VII should have at its centre a test or ordeal – war is forced on Trojans and Latins alike as a result of the intervention of Allecto.

Book VIII (a) has the transport of Aeneas away from war to a place of serenity, and intimations of future glory, both by way of the visit to the site of Rome and the prophetic scenes on Aeneas’s shield. As Ascanius (Iulus) is to Aeneas, Pallas is to Evander: the valued possession in whom his hopes for the future are invested – his value, in other words – which he entrusts to Aeneas. That is to say, Pallas is Princess, which serves to make his death at the hands of Turnus in X that much more heinous. Note that Evander collapses when Pallas leaves (much as Mezentius will when he hears of the death of Lausus).

Book IX is largely concerned with a troublesome journey – the doomed mission of Nisus and Euryalus to seek help from Aeneas, the events that provoke it and those that follow.

In Book X Jove throws the result open to Fate – thus, we are in the wilderness ($), where all things come by chance. Aeneas receives comfort from Cymodoce, leader of the Nymphs which the ships of his fleet have become – the character of the Donor is typically manifested by a comforter in a narrative of this shape – and he is revalorized by association, i.e. being reunited, with Iulus, his value, described as a beautiful object (132-8). The contrast between Aeneas and Turnus here is that Turnus is unwilling to accept the gifts of fortune, in the shape of the opportunity to kill Pallas, with humility (502). Mezentius, ironically, shows himself more pius in defeat than Turnus in victory.

In Book XI the prosecution of the Trojans’ advantage involves the neutralization of a counter-gendered character (Camilla).

Book XII reasserts social values. A compact of single combat is solemnized (though ignored by the Latins), and the Hero is finally able to do battle with the Villain.

One notices at the conclusion of the poem that the ambition to found Troy anew, voiced for example by Venus in the debate that opens Book X, has not been fulfilled: the Trojan name is to be extinguished. On the other hand, not only Aeneas’s enemies but also his allies have been destroyed. The dynasty of Evander is cut off, thus vacating the site for the future Rome, and Latinus has lost his wife to suicide, while one can’t feel too happy for Lavinia. The reader can hardly help asking whether it has all been worth it. There are resonances here of Augustus’s claims to have refounded the republic, and also, in the repeated equation of heirs with value (Aeneas, Evander, Mezentius), of Augustus’s own problems with succession. Together with the curious exit of Aeneas from the Underworld through the gates of ivory (VI 893-899), leave one with the feeling that a pervasive irony underlies this second half of the poem.