More poems
Oct. 18th, 2004 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenTwo more from the poetry meme, then. I'm not much of a fan of love poetry - IMHO, most love poetry is heavier on feel-good sentiment than on artistic merit, and hopelessly melodramatic - but I thought I'd offer a couple of the exceptions.
Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,
With groundless jealousy repine;
With silly whims, and fancies frantic,
Merely to make our love romantic?
More Byron. The full title of this one is To a Lady Who Presented To The Author a Lock of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed At a Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden. Byron's response, paraphrased, was "In December? It'll be bloody freezing! How about during the day, or inside, so we won't freeze to death?"
Although Byron is my favourite poet, his love poems generally leave me flat - puppy-eyed stuff that would be right at home on a Hallmark card. IMHO his muses were anger and cynicism, neither of which are in much demand in love poetry. But in To a Lady..., cynicism actually makes for a better love poem, because he uses that cynicism to strip away the superficiality and reveal something more solid underneath.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
- John Donne, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"
Donne, now, there's a love poet. This one has a similar message to my previous choice - love itself, not the show of love - but it has other strengths as well. Donne draws three lessons from a single metaphor, and he describes something that's very important to me: the way one partner 'grounds' the other, and keeps them on course, even when they might not be physically or mentally at the same place.
And he gets extra points for using both geometry and malleability in a love poem. Take note: science *is* sexy.
With groundless jealousy repine;
With silly whims, and fancies frantic,
Merely to make our love romantic?
More Byron. The full title of this one is To a Lady Who Presented To The Author a Lock of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed At a Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden. Byron's response, paraphrased, was "In December? It'll be bloody freezing! How about during the day, or inside, so we won't freeze to death?"
Although Byron is my favourite poet, his love poems generally leave me flat - puppy-eyed stuff that would be right at home on a Hallmark card. IMHO his muses were anger and cynicism, neither of which are in much demand in love poetry. But in To a Lady..., cynicism actually makes for a better love poem, because he uses that cynicism to strip away the superficiality and reveal something more solid underneath.
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
- John Donne, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"
Donne, now, there's a love poet. This one has a similar message to my previous choice - love itself, not the show of love - but it has other strengths as well. Donne draws three lessons from a single metaphor, and he describes something that's very important to me: the way one partner 'grounds' the other, and keeps them on course, even when they might not be physically or mentally at the same place.
And he gets extra points for using both geometry and malleability in a love poem. Take note: science *is* sexy.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-18 10:14 am (UTC)None of my favorite poems are love poems, at least not in a straightforward way. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" might be my favorite poem, but one wouldn't call it a love poem.