You know that moment when you look in the mirror and see that you've got bed head, something on your face, or your clothing is wrinkled -- whatever makes you less than presentable? My mother used to say, "Oh, I look like the wreck of the Hesperus!" Vaguely, I knew it referred to some shipwreck, but never looked it up until now. "The Wreck of the Hesperus" is the name of a poem by Longfellow, from the 1800s, about a schooner that crashed somewhere along the coast of Massachusetts. I never read it in school and doubt that my mother did, either. I think it was just a phrase she heard being used while growing up. When someone says that, it means they think they look like a wreck, a mess, untidy, etc. According to one source, the idiom "seems to have little to do with the poem or the Hesperus itself. The greatest similarity may possibly be with the unkempt state in which the deceased daughter of the poem was found, though whether anyone would want to claim to look that bad is rather doubtful."
(from [
h2g2.com])
Anyway, my mother's been gone for 20 years and I hadn't heard anyone say it in at least that long -- until just the other day! A British guy on YouTube said it about himself: "I must look like the wreck of the Hesperus!" That really caught my attention!
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Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2024 08:25PM by shopnyc.