When Ruppell's Griffon Vulture takes to wing,
he soars at thirty seven thousand feet.
The view from more than seven miles up
must be the most amazing, wondrous thing.
It seems to me it would occur to him,
when down he looks at microbes on the face
of Earth, and recognises them as men,
the underprospect's surely looking grim.
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Author Notes
Today's word: underprospect (n.) an aerial view.
Elizabethan poet and scholar, Sir Philip Sidney, apparently coined the term in 1590. Horace Walpole, the English politician and author came up with the more popular "bird's-eye" view in the late eighteenth century.
My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.
Thanks for reading.
Photo: Ruppell's Griffon Vulture, by Richard Towell. CC2.0 licence.
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/48975388@N07/5008191947
licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode
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