I Promessi Sposi

Lorenzo had a girlfriend named Lucia.  He got betrothed to her, but a rich nobleman got between them and said they couldn't get married.  They tried to any way but it didn't work and they had to flee their village.
They went to a Nun who said she would help them stay safe until a time would come that they could get married.  She housed Lucia and Lucia's mother who had come with her, but she sent Lorenzo to a Monastery in Milan.  When Lorenzo arrived in Milan he found a riot going on and deciding to see what it was all about, set off for center city.  The present year  was not a good year for the crops and there was a large famine raging about the land.  The common people thought it was all the fault of the bakers and it just so happened that the day when Lorenzo arrived, they decided to attack all the bakeries and get as much flour and bread as they could.  At the days end Lorenzo went to an inn where he got a drink and some dinner.  He wasn't normally a big drinker, but that night he drank more and more until he was very drunk.  The innkeeper said that Lorenzo needed to give his name and where he was from, but Lorenzo didn't want to.  Lorenzo slept in the inn that night and in the morning he got a big surprise.  There were too police men and one other man that Lorenzo had seen the night before.  They said he needed to come with them to court.  They thought he was a ringleader of the riot that had occurred the day before.  On the way to the courthouse he was able to get away and he ran as fast as he could to get away.  That night he came to an inn where he ate and when he was done got on his way again.

The beggining

 Sitting there on the beach he had remembered one night before,

   

Thor sat on the deck of his boat, thinking.  How had this voyage started any way?  Before the voyage Thor and been a horticulturist, but he had decided to switch to South American history.  

   He remembered how ten years before he and his wife were sitting on the beach of a pacific island were he was doing horticultural research.  

  they had heard an old islander saying, "I am the only one left from the people who first came here.  There were men who taught us how to make statues and they were white men with beards."  That night he decided what he wanted to do.  When they returned home he did research about South America and its relation to the Pacific islands and found many books about it.  There were statues on some pacific islands and in South America that looked like they were made by the same people. 
   After years of research he finally decided to make a boat.  He would make one in the style that people going from South America to the Pacific islands would have made and then he would sail from South America to one of the Pacific islands.  

Screwtape Letters 1-3

   I

   My dear Wormwood, be careful what you let your victim read.  Make sure he reads only non-spiritual books with little or no values.  Do this not by argument, for that brings him into the enemies territory, but by trivial means.  For example, when I was younger I had a victim who was about to think about the enemy, so I reminded him that he was hungry.  His thoughts drifted away from the subject at hand and he got up and left.  Outside, I showed him a bus, which he boarded.  He was then safely away from any thoughts contrary to the ones I wanted him to have.   

II

My dear Wormwood, I am very disappointed to hear that your victim has become a Christian.  There are still ways that you can get at him though.  Don't get me wrong, you will still be punished according to the normal rule, but you still have things to do.  At this early stage we still have something on our side, his habits.  Be sure to keep him in them.

III

My dear Wormwood, I am very happy to hear of your victim's relationship with his mother.  They fight but both of them don't think it is there fault.  They think that they are guiltless and the other is at fault.  Keep them at it and when he prays for her at night be sure to have him pray for faults that aren't hers but he thinks she has.  I once had a victim who would pray at night for his wife and children but when he had finished would straight a way beat them and yell at them. 

The hand that signed the paper felled a city

The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death. The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder, The finger joints are cramped with chalk; A goose's quill has put an end to murder That put an end to talk. The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever, And famine grew, and locusts came; Great is the hand the holds dominion over Man by a scribbled name. The five kings count the dead but do not soften The crusted wound nor pat the brow; A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven; Hands have no tears to flow. ~Dylan Thomas This poem has many examples of Metonymy. Metonymy is a word or phrase that is used to describe part of a whole.  For example, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”In that excerpt from Shakespeare's, Julies Caesar, Mark Anthony doesn't want their ears, but he wants them to listen to him.        In the first stanza it talks about a person who murdered another king.  In the second stanza it talks about the murderer and describes how he looks and how he made good laws.  In the third and fourth stanzas it says how he has no pity.  He counted the people who died from the famine but didn't care about them at all.  In this poem it talks about a hand doing things, but behind the hand there is a person.

Metaphors and Similes

A long braid of hair - The braid was a rope of happiness. Metaphor

An old woman's hand - The woman's hands were a scarred and wrinkled story of her life. Metaphor

The smell of a coming rainstorm - The air smelled like a party waiting to happen with all of creation holding it's breath. Simile

A Corvette - The smooth and shining sides sparkled like the sun. Simile

A cat's tongue - The rough, pink tongue of a cat is like a built in comb. Simile

The sound of a chainsaw - The chainsaw was a lion purring. Metaphor

Fish eyes - Wells to nothingness. Metaphor

Fire - The red, orange and yellow looked like a forest at sunset undulating rapidly. Simile

Morning mist - The mist was a white blanket. Metaphor

Umbrellas in a crowd opening all at once - The umbrellas looked like sunflowers searching for the sun. Simile

Gloopily Gross

Bedraggaly horses,

snoozeling slowly around.

Shniky soups of goo

flopping gloopily.

Great greenish glips

glide glackily in.

Fleemish flies

flipping flakily.

The silid air

melackularily molid.

Moldy makish pies

stay stakish.

Giant Sequoia

The 

300 foot giant looms 

black against the night sky.  

4,000 years old, its needle 

like scales 1/6 of an inch long 

wave in the night breeze.  The trunk,

  grey-green at the base, deep green 

above, blend with the other branches.  

The little pink and yellow flowers 

like stars make way for the cones to 

come.  The mini football like cones

with diamond  scales cling tightly to the 

branches.  Soft, thick, red bark, 20 inches thick 

in the oldest trees 

climbs to 

the very top.