More wombats

So maybe that's why I've been feeling so lousy the past week – I got around to taking my temperature last night & discovered I'm running about 3 degrees of fever, & probably have been for days & days. No doubt some kind of touch of the 'flu. Today I'm just toddling around the house in robe & slippers, shunning classes and trying to get a little writing done.

In response to my recent "Adorno and the wombat" post, Alex Davis from Cork has put me onto some fascinating wombat-related arcana, the wombat-obsession of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Who would've thought?) The University of Virginia's Rossetti Project has a wombat page which includes some wombat drawings by Dante Gabriel and William Michael, and a set of wombat verses. This by Christina Rossetti:

O Uommibatto
Agil, giocondo,
Che ti sei fatto
Liscio e rotondo!
Deh non fuggire
Qual vagabondo
Non disparire
Forando il mondo:
Peso davero
D'un emisfero
Non lieve il pondo.

And these by Dante Gabriel:

Ode to a Wombat
(written while waiting for his mail-order wombat)

O how the family affections combat
Within this heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul! Neither from owl nor from bat
Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat.

Death of a Wombat

I never reared the young wombat
To glad me with his pinhole eye
But when he was most sweet and fat
And tailless he was sure to die!