oblivion wrote:

Penelope wrote: Your English is brilliant!! Is it your mother tongue? Don't tell me if you don't wish to. xx

Hee, hee....was wondering when someone was going to ask that. I have 2 mother tongues, English and German, Penelope. Makes things a bit easier.

I thought to ask way back when, but then you were so fluent in English I just made the assumption your first language was English.

Oh, I do so like that Cynara poem.

I don't know why, because it's about a man sleeping with a prostitute, I think. And trying to alleviate his guilt by saying that his passion for Cynara was interfering.

But he does it so well, doesn't he?

4 dings.

I've never heard of this poem before.

Oblivion thank you!
My grandchildren, in their excellent public school have learned all the different forms of poetry and I remember the Haiku. (p.s. I share your love of classical music and right now my favorite is liebestod. . . but much opera)

Oh, I love this poem. Would it were true of all old lovers! (I of course being Cynara!)

Penelope, why do you think it is a prostitute? I would imagine its a new love.
"I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;"

why would she "in love" lay?

LofS asked:

Penelope, why do you think it is a prostitute? I would imagine its a new love.
"I felt her warm heart beat,

Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,


It was a 'bought' red mouth.

Yep, you are right. The lines seem to contradict each other. Also I've decided I do not want to be Cynara as she died of t.b.! This is from googling the poem and finding it under dissident.

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;

These are the lines that describe her funeral (according to this site) however it also says that it was Dowson who died of t.b. and "Cynara" after him. Hmm mm how would you like your lover to kill you off in poetry?

Well, at least we have a clue about where Margaret Mitchell got the idea for the title of her civil War-era epic "gone with the wind"). I was lukewarm on Dowson's poem; it just wasn't hitting me.

86. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," by W. B. Yeats. This is the poem of Yeats' that everyone seems to run into. It's an early one and shows some of the Pre-Raphaelite influence in a sort of gauziness of language. But it's nice, and it's unusual for Yeats in its Wordworthian theme of finding deep peace in nature. Yeats didn't go in for that elsewhere that I can recall. 2 1/2 dings.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

What the heck. No. 85, the famous "Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This was indeed sung as a hymn in 1837 at the dedication of the Concord monument. It does well what Emerson intended, can't really be judged as a typical "art" poem is.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

DWill wrote:86. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," ... unusual for Yeats in its Wordworthian theme of finding deep peace in nature. Yeats didn't go in for that elsewhere that I can recall.

Lake Isle of Innisfree is one of my favourites. I wrote a musical setting of it, adding extra words, which I recorded last month. My guitar playing is okay but sadly my singing leaves something to be desired.

Yeats was a nature magus. Hints of this theme of peace in nature can be seen, admittedly not in the explicit wording of 'and I shall have some peace there', in The Stolen Child, The Two Trees and The Wild Swans at Coole. His hermetic order of the golden dawn was devoted to finding peace in nature, as I understand it. His book A Vision seeks to present a natural cosmology as a basis of peace.

Penelope wrote:

LofS asked:

Penelope, why do you think it is a prostitute? I would imagine its a new love.
"I felt her warm heart beat,

Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,


It was a 'bought' red mouth.

perhaps the red was bought, not the lips

The Concord Hymn is familiar and dear to me, coming from that area

I remember Papa's Waltz too from probably Junior High or so

I never noticed we were doing both of the threads together, so I have a lot of catching up to do

Robert wrote:

My guitar playing is okay but sadly my singing leaves something to be desired.

Whereas I was instructed to play softly and sing loud.

I really like Innisfree too. It is very lyrical as opposed to The Concord Hymn,

I like them both - but it is like comparing a Waltz to a March is it not?

I know we aren't comparing them....it is just that they don't sit nicely together.

froglipz wrote:

perhaps the red was bought, not the lips

Could be, although I think that in those days, perhaps only prostitutes and actresses wore lip colour. It never occurred to me.....I just got the feeling that he was protesting too much.

Robert Tulip wrote:

DWill wrote:86. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," ... unusual for Yeats in its Wordworthian theme of finding deep peace in nature. Yeats didn't go in for that elsewhere that I can recall.

Lake Isle of Innisfree is one of my favourites. I wrote a musical setting of it, adding extra words, which I recorded last month. My guitar playing is okay but sadly my singing leaves something to be desired.

Yeats was a nature magus. Hints of this theme of peace in nature can be seen, admittedly not in the explicit wording of 'and I shall have some peace there', in The Stolen Child, The Two Trees and The Wild Swans at Coole. His hermetic order of the golden dawn was devoted to finding peace in nature, as I understand it. His book A Vision seeks to present a natural cosmology as a basis of peace.

Several ways of looking at "nature" as it might be discussed in literature. One of the common ways is nature as a restorative for the ills of civilization. That's common in the Romantic/transcendentalist tradition. Although Yeats does somewhere call himself "the last of the Romantics," I think the remark applies to Blakean aspects, not to the Wordsworthian, which as I say I see expressed here but not elsewhere in his poetry. Though I've read only a few pages of it, "A Vision" is latter-day Blake all the way.