Liam's write-only LJ

The wonderful L Sprague de Camp was a great early figure not only of SF itself but also of its history and criticism. His 1978 collection The Best of L. Sprague de Camp contained two poems that I loved so much that I committed them to memory.
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Awake! For morning, in the bowl of night
Hath cast the stone that put the stars to flight
And lo, the hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's turret in a noose of light.

Lovely poem, awesome translation. I read it to a girl once. She fell asleep. Poetry: not always a great seduction technique. Mind you, a fragment of Beowulf did very well, once.

Looming terrifyingly soon is the solstice, too, of course, a particularly significant dawn...