Alexander Pope

A clerihew

Oh, witty Alexander Pope–

As if you hunted with a scope,

You pierced your targets to the heart

With ev’ry pointed verbal dart.

 

“BARGAIN”

[A fanciful and fake etymology from my series Devil’s Derivations: Etymologies from Hell (found here: https://paulwhitberg.wordpress.com/fun-with-etymology-devils-derivations/)]

“Bargain”
Although no longer used as a compound, “bargain” was originally formed in the early 1700s by combining “bar” and “gain”. While the meaning of “gain” is clear, the relevant sense of “bar” is less certain. Two prominent theories disagree about the correct meaning of “bar”: one theory suggests that “bar” refers here to the legal term associated with lawyers (or “barristers”), while the other theory asserts that the relevant “bar” is the one at which alcohol is served.

Both theories agree that “bargain” referred originally to an agreement disadvantageous to a swindled party and that “bargain” gradually shifted in denotation and connotation from the negative “that which is unjustly obtained at a reduced price” to the more positive “that which is obtained at a reduced price”. The “Legalists”, as they call themselves, argue that “bargain” originally referred to the type of deals sly lawyers managed to obtain for clients. If a clever person swindled someone else, people would say that the beneficiary had gained the sort of deal usually obtained only by “the bar”—a shortened form of “members of the bar”, i.e. lawyers. “Alcoholics,” on the other hand, insist that “bargain” was the sort of “gain” a person might obtain from someone who had been drinking heavily at a “bar;” the Alkies—as many know the group—has found evidence that con artists would pace their drinking carefully to remain more or less sober while befriending drunken people at bars. The con artists would then convince these drunken people to sell or exchange valuables at low prices and coax the intoxicated dupes into making imprudent bets and investments. A successful con would often brag that he or she had walked away with a “bar gain”—i.e. the type of gain one was mostly likely to obtain at a bar.*

*Regardless of the term’s origins, the Alkies’ explanation is the one that most early moderns accepted. Supporting the Alkies’ claims is a well-known example from Anaximander Snope’s An Essay on Witticism:
When fellows get themselves a little drunk,
Transactions smelling foul as any skunk
Obtain with ease their signed and sealed consent
[A fact for which they later will repent]—
…For, while the lads are drinking to my health,
I’m busily depriving them of wealth.
The morning after, dupes will blame their stars,
And I will count the gain I got from bars.

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“The Blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemus”

Modern Heroic Couplets by Paul Burgess–inspired by a scene in Homer [Book 9 of The Odyssey; one might view these lines as a compressed adaptation and modernization of a much longer passage.]

While clutching at his mutilated eye,
To Ulysses, the Cyclops gave reply:
“An oracle, whose words I could recite,
Predicted that the man who’d take my sight
Would be the famous hero Ulysses.
From mini morsels, shorter than my knees,
I had no fear of death or even harm—
A shadow might have caused me more alarm!
Assuming only force could make me blind,
I was not ready for a deadly mind.

 

–Anyone interested in Homer, Classical Poetry, or Early Modern English Literature* should check out George Chapman’s brilliant translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. The following link leads to information on an inexpensive edition of the translation so famously praised by Keats: http://www.amazon.com/Chapmans-Homer-Odyssey-Classics-Literature/dp/1840221178/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401367076&sr=1-3&keywords=wordsworth+classics+chapman%27s+homer

*from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods in which Shakespeare was one among several brilliant minds

“Achilles in the Underworld” [adapting some lines from Homer]

“Achilles in the Underworld—A Modernization of Some Lines from Achilles (in the Odyssey) [Book 11 642-45]

I’d rather have a humbler life on Earth
As one who serves someone of nobler birth
Or labors hard to earn his daily bread
Than reign as first in fame among the dead.

Immortal Wisdom in Deathless Verse by Dr. Burgess [Epigrams] #5

“Expectations [Not Working with What IS]”

When clinging hard to “should” and “shouldn’t be’s,”
We’re trapped as insects glued by sap to trees.