paramour, bereft, muggle, bamboo capitalists, darksome burn, somber, twin

The feats of Casanova were formidable, especially when you consider that he was bereft of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the rest of the social media by which to pursue his conquests. Now, a campaign for a line of personal products seeks to make up for that.
The campaign, scheduled to get under way on Monday, is for the Wet brand of lubricants sold by Wet International, part of Trigg Laboratories. The campaign, timed to coincide with the coming of Valentine’s Day, is centered on a social application that lets computer users declare a friend, family member, paramour or special someone the “world’s greatest lover.”

According to the Congressional report, state-owned firms account for two-fifths of China’s non-agricultural GDP. If firms that benefit from state largesse (eg, subsidised credit) are included, that figure rises to half. Genuinely independent firms are starved of formal credit, so they rely on China’s shadow banking system. Fearing a credit bubble, the government is cracking down on this informal system, leaving China’s “bamboo capitalists” bereft.

Muggle

Men, needless to say, are not, as a gender, uniquely skilled at coining compelling words, however uncelebrated female neologists have been. With their contributions to culture frequently marginalised, is there any wonder that we find that the Oxford English Dictionary attributes to female writers the first usage of such words as ‘outsider’ (to Jane Austen in 1800) and ‘angst’ (imported from German by George Eliot in 1849). In our own age, it has once again fallen to a female novelist to define who is endowed with the powers of the initiated and those left wanting of wizardry ways. J K Rowling’s coining of ‘muggle’ in her 1997 book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to describe mortals bereft of supernatural skill, reminds of the perennial magic of words – those who have it and those who don’t.

The Republic of China's (Taiwan) Twin Oaks Estate
Post Date：2008/2/23
Home to Nine ROC Ambassadors, A National Historic Site, and A Symbol of Friendship with the United States
Situated atop a hill on a parcel of land once owned by a one-legged Revolutionary War general is a 26-room mansion that served as the official residence of nine ambassadors from the Republic of China (ROC) between 1937 and 1978 and which still belongs to the ROC government in Taiwan.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

33. Inversnaid

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth	5
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,	10
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;	15
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

這首詩1881年 極難懂。 我們只注意"音效"。

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,

darksome

(därk'səm) 
adj.
Dark and somber.

somber

(sŏm'bər) adj.

1. 1. Dark; gloomy.
   2. Dull or dark in color.
2. 1. Melancholy; dismal: a somber mood.
   2. Serious; grave.

burn

n. (名詞 noun)[C]

1. 【蘇格蘭】小溪
2. 賣假毒品給人;毒品交易中收了錢卻不給貨

rollrock 還不知道確定意思.....或可從 Rock Roll 解

muggle

ˈmʌɡ(ə)l/

noun

informal

1. a person who is not conversant with a particular activity or skill.

   
   

   "she's a muggle: no IT background, understanding, or aptitude at all"

Muggle - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggle

In the Harry Potter book series, a Muggle is a person who lacks any sort of magical ability and was not born in a magical family. Muggles can also be described as people who do not have any magical blood in them.

bereft
(bĭ-rĕft')
v.
A past tense and a past participle of bereave.

adj.

1. 1. Deprived of something: They are bereft of their dignity.
   2. Lacking something needed or expected: "Today's graduates seem keenly aware that the future is bereft of conventional expectations" (Bruce Weber).
2. Suffering the death of a loved one; bereaved: the bereft parents.

par·a·mour (păr'ə-mʊr') n.
A lover, especially one in an adulterous relationship.

[Middle English, from par amour, by way of love, passionately, from Anglo-Norman : par, by (from Latin per) + amour, love (from Latin amor , from amāre, to love).]