Thursday, April 10, 2008

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

"It can only be the thought of verdure to come, which prompts us in the autumn to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable matter covered by a brown papery skin, and lovingly to plant them and care for them. It is a marvel to me that under this cover they are labouring unseen at such a rate within to give us the sudden awesome beauty of spring flowering bulbs. While winter reigns the earth reposes but these colourless green ideas sleep furiously."

--C.M. Street

2 comments:

Koona said...

Hello, Radigan Neuhalfen. I found your profile on virtual tourist when I was looking for information about Mongolia. You seem like a really interesting person. I like this selection by C.M. Street. It seems familiar to me somehow. I think maybe one of my lit profs shared this in class once. Anyway, I turned it into a poem after I read it on your posting. So here it is:

Only the thought of verdure to come
Prompts us to buy white lumps in autumn

Vegetable matter covered in brown
Lovingly planted in the ground

What a marvel to me that under this cover
They labour more quickly than the mind can discover

And then when these spring flowering bulbs finally “budden,”
They give us their awesome beauty so sudden!

Earth rests through winter, but somewhere unseen
Ideas sleep furiously in colourless green.

Radigan Neuhalfen said...

Thank you for the poem.

The story on that phrase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously