via Interesting Literature
‘To a Louse’, a poem written in the Habbie dialect, sees Robert Burns musing upon the louse that he spots crawling on a lady’s bonnet in church – the louse does not observe class distinctions and regards all human beings equally, as potential hosts. As Burns concludes, ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’ Such a power or ability would save us a lot of bother and ‘foolish notions’; but we cannot see ourselves as others see us. The one thing we cannot do is take the view of that louse.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
‘Stars, I have seen them fall…’: this short eight-line poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936) is untitled, so we’ve given its first line here. Although the stars seem to fall, they remain in the sky; although rain falls into the sea, the sea remains the same saltwater it has always been. Housman’s poem is about futility, and offers a less celebratory take on the stars in the night sky than the one we tend to get from much (especially Romantic) poetry.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
As the title of this short Yeats poem makes clear, the great Irish poet W. B. Yeats offers the would-be lover some advice: don’t dive headlong into love or infatuation, for your beloved won’t thank you for it: never give all the heart. It’s best to keep a little passion back: ‘He that made this knows all the cost, / For he gave all his heart and lost.’
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
How many great poems about badgers are there in English literature? ‘The Badger’, by the criminally underrated English Romantic poet John Clare (1793-1864), is perhaps the greatest of this small and select group. ‘The Badger’ is written in rhyming couplets, also known as ‘heroic couplets’ – and although Clare describes the way the badger is hunted and caught, he imbues the creature with a quiet heroism and nobility. After describing the badger’s appearance and habits, Clare then details how the badger is caught, trapped, and baited.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
‘To a Skylark’ is one of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s best-loved poems. Shelley completed it in June 1820; the inspiration was an evening walk he had taken with his wife, Mary, in Livorno, in north-west Italy. Mary later described the circumstances that gave rise to the poem: ‘It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark.’
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
Alun Lewis (1915-44) is one of the best-known English poets of the Second World War. Lewis wrote ‘Goodbye’ about his first night with his wife.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
‘Cradle Song’ is intended to be sung by a mother to her newborn child in order to lull the baby to sleep. The repetition of ‘Sweet’ at the beginning of many of the poem’s stanzas (or perhaps we should say, the song’s verses) helps to create a soothing effect. One wonders how many infants have been eased into dreamland by maternal recitals of Blake’s poem.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
There’s something about the seventeenth-century poet Henry Vaughan (1621-95) which smacks more of the later Romantic movement than of the metaphysical ‘school’ to which he belonged. This poem, describing the natural beauty of the waterfall, is a fine demonstration of how Vaughan anticipated Romanticism by over a century.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
Inspired by his impassioned friendship with Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas (1878-1917) wrote his poem ‘Go Now’ about a woman parting ways with the male speaker and the effect that her two simple words – ‘Go now’ – had on him and his appreciation of nature.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen (1832-1911) was an American author and poet whose 1859 poem, ‘Rock Me to Sleep, Mother’ (the ‘mother’ word is sometimes omitted) is still relatively well-known, thanks to the opening lines: ‘Backward, turn backward, O time, in thy flight; / Make me a child again, just for to-night.’
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment