smitten

.

oh- do try


lovely fellow bloggers and even beloved ones.

I know it will be hard.

do not be "smitten"

 ever again.



Exceptions:


Now lightning-struck by thee, Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth: --Thus do I lie, Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed With all eternal torture, And smitten By thee, cruellest huntsman, Thou unfamiliar--GOD.-Nietzsche

That fights with Fate, is smitten grievously. -Sophocles

Middle English smiten, from Old English smtan, to smear.

Old English smītan; related to Old High German smīzan to smear, 

Gothic bismeitan, Old Swedish smēta to daub

Holofernes having been  

"smitten"

by Judith

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) 

Judith Victorious over Holofernes c 1530

What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give one's cloak if one's coat were taken?-Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

poor Anna.


For it had not been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured. -Melville's Moby  Dick

Thereupon she approached him, turned the coverlet back, and saw that he was stiff and cold-- that he had died suddenly, as though smitten with a stroke. Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk


A lad whose face had borne an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. Crane's Red Badge of Courage



& it will not be easy
for that sensation to charm, to cavort- to be kittenish  will indeed overtake you.

when it does
resist &

think of A.E.Housman's prophetic words:

O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.

& think of Judith.




read and see the story in paintings of Judith and Holofernes at It's About Time. 
no links to posts with smitten, or kitten cited .

.