Chapter and Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

More queries from the archive: 

“The dawgondist skaw/that a man ever saw/I saw on Vesuvius side/as I wandered one day/in the middle of May.…” (From a poem, possibly by the American artist and writer Peter Newell, describing the 1872 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.)

“What was Karl Marx but Macaulay with his heels in the air?” 

“What the rugged soil denies/The harvest of the mind supplies.” (Attributed to “a sweet New England poet.”)

“Reflecting one night on the pains and toils…encountered by those in search of what this world calls Pleasure…I had resolved to quit my native land forever…and in some remote country…to establish a new character.” (A passage copied into a commonplace book kept by a merchant seaman from 1849 to 1852.)

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

Click here for the May-June 2011 issue table of contents

Most popular

Rebecca Henderson: Does Capitalism Need to be Reimagined?

How to reform capitalism to confront climate change and extreme inequality, with economist and McArthur University Professor Rebecca Henderson

The New Gender Gaps

What to do as men and boys fall behind

An Original Magna Carta, Hidden in Plain Sight

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

Explore More From Current Issue

Harvard Percussionist and Composer Jessie Cox

An experimental percussionist-composer pushing the limits of music

Filmmaker Salvador Litvak's Jewish Movies

The “Accidental Talmudist” on making Jewish movies

Children's Books from Ann Kim Ha

Ann Kim Ha’s poignant children’s books