Sunday 26 April 2009

Professor Slughorn at Aragog's burial

Here's an excerpt from page 453 of the paperback edition of 'Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince'.  To set the scene, Aragog was a vicious giant spider. Professor Slughorn has attended his burial with the sole purpose of sneakily harvesting some spider venom, but has to make Aragog's only half-human friend think that he actually cared:

"Farewell, Aragog, king of arachnids, whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you won't forget! Though your body will decay, your spirit lingers on in the quiet places of your Forest home. May your many eyed-descendants ever flourish and your human friends find solace for the loss they have sustained"

From what little I remember of O-level Eng Lit, that doesn't seem to 'scan' properly. Here's my attempt:

Farewell King Arachnid! Aragog, dear pet!
Whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you won't forget.
Though your body may decay, your spirit will live on
In the quiet places your descendants call their home.
May they flourish in the Forest; may your human friends find solace
For the loss they have sustained but they will long remember yet.

7 comments:

Nick Drew said...

so you had better present y'self @ Idle's poetry compo's, then Mark

Pedant's Revolt said...

Lose the full stop after "lingers on" - no punctuation necessary there.

Just a suggestion..... :-)

Mark Wadsworth said...

PR, good point, done.

Dr Evil said...

JKR will sue you for breaching copyright.

Mark Wadsworth said...

C - JKR wouldn't stand an earthly as I have the fair use exemption for not-for-profit criticism and comment on short excerpts.

Anonymous said...

Fair Use is only applicable in American law. The UK law uses Fair Dealing, which is far less protecting.

You could claim that you have breached JKR's copyright for the purposes of criticism, which would probably make it OK.

I won't tell her if you won't.

Jonathan Miller

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, I stand corrected. But so does she.