The hour badly spent

Among English majors — well, the fun ones, not  — there is an unspoken race to make sex the topic of conversation. Wednesday afternoon, in the process of reviewing for an impending exam, I found out that winning isn’t everything. Rhymes With Fairy and I discussed Alan Seeger’s poem, "I Have a Rendezvous With Death."

I have a rendezvous with Death    
At some disputed barricade,    
When Spring comes back with rustling shade    
And apple-blossoms fill the air—    
I have a rendezvous with Death            
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.    
It may be he shall take my hand    
And lead me into his dark land    
And close my eyes and quench my breath—    
It may be I shall pass him still.            
I have a rendezvous with Death    
On some scarred slope of battered hill    
When Spring comes round again this year    
And the first meadow-flowers appear.    
 
God knows ’twere better to be deep            
Pillowed in silk and scented down,    
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,    
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,    
Where hushed awakenings are dear …    
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death            
At midnight in some flaming town,    
When Spring trips north again this year,    
And I to my pledged word am true,    
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Pompous English Major: It’s a strangely erotic poem.  It’s written in the language of love, with sexual imagery. I think exaggerating the erotic with the valorisation of Death mocks Romantic ideals.
Rhymes With Fairy: Erotic? I don’t see it that way.
Pompous English Major: "Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep?" Come on. That’s clearly a wet dream.
Rhymes With Fairy: No! I don’t wanna look at the poem like that.
Pompous English Major: "I close my eyes and quench my breath." Come on. It’s an orgasm.
Rhymes With Fairy: Fine, you’re right.
Pompous English Major: Well, what do you think of it?
Rhymes With Fairy: I hate you. [ed. note: not really]

In American (Literature) Survey, Tim Dayton walked us through Emma Lazarus’ famous poem, "The New Colossus."

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!